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Kristen Anzelc
Jeff Silverstein
Drew Williams
Apple TV
John Cena’s mantra has been “Never Give Up” throughout most of his career, but on the set of Matchbox The Movie, that phrase took on a whole new level of meaning.
After more than two decades of wrestling and working on various action roles and projects, Cena still found himself genuinely unnerved by some of the film’s biggest stunts. Like when he was suspended hundreds of feet above the ground in one scene and he remembers vividly what was going through his mind: “All I can think of is like, ‘Man, this ain’t gonna hold,’” he tells SWAGGER.
And that was hardly the only time filming Matchbox tested his nerves. Cena says he jumped from a building, hung from a helicopter, was dunked into the Danube River and, at one stage of filming, was suspended roughly 350 feet above the ground. He knew the wires could hold thousands of pounds, but that didn’t make looking down any easier.
“In the moment, it almost doesn’t compute. It looks wrong,” Cena says of his high wire act, but looking back he figures he still did most of the stunt work himself. “A lot, like 90 per cent of that stuff, is me risking my life and crapping my pants.”
Cena is the first one to admit it isn’t all glamorous, and no matter how many stunts he’s called on to perform, it also doesn’t get any easier. “I haven’t conquered that fear, and I don’t hate it any less.”
There is one thing though that does come naturally, and that’s fight choreography, something that comes as no surprise given his years in the ring with the WWE. “I am pretty confident and fluent in fight choreography,” he says. That’s because according to Cena, there’s a process to it that he knows incredibly well, and he can rehearse it, work through what isn’t landing, and come back ready to do it again.
“A lot, like 90 per cent of that stuff, is me risking my life and crapping my pants.”
While the stunts in Matchbox may have pushed Cena physically, when casting his mind back to the making of the movie, what stands out is what went through his mind when the script landed on his desk.
When he first started reading the script, Cena wondered how a story about tiny Mattel cars could be turned into a movie. “How the hell are they gonna do Matchbox?” Still, he kept reading. “One hundred and fifteen pages later, I was sold.”
“The connection between the characters and the Matchbox cars is one of nostalgia, which is something we all understand,”
What won him over wasn’t the power of the Matchbox brand, though that was something close to his heart, but the strength of the characters. “The connection between the characters and the Matchbox cars is one of nostalgia, which is something we all understand,” he says. “It’s not force-fed.”
Every brand carries with it something that is intangible, but for Cena, the Matchbox cars are some of his earliest memories, so for him it had some serious nostalgia factor - something that not everyone on the set might have shared.
“The job as a professional is to use your talent, strengths and gifts to provide those moments for the audience,” he says. In the film, the cars connect Cena’s undercover CIA operative character Sean, to the friends he grew up with and to a time when life was considerably simpler. It all goes back to a garage and the Matchbox cars that Cena and his friends played with as kids. “We had it all figured out just in that garage playing with Matchbox cars,” Cena says.
It’s a feeling that extends well beyond the toys themselves. The older we get, the better the past can start to look, particularly when the present gets messy. “When life gets anxious, what do we do? We look at our past and think it was better,” Cena says. “We reflect on those moments of comfort when we’re in positions of anxiety.”
Once Sean’s old friends are pulled into his CIA world, they’re civilians, not agents, and the movie doesn’t pretend otherwise. Instead, they rely on skills they already have to help him through the mission. “The Matchbox gang is using the skills that they have in everyday life to come and kind of help me save the day,” he says.
For that dynamic to work, the friendships had to feel real. Cena says director Sam Hargrave had the cast, including Jessica Biel, Sam Richardson, Teyonah Parris and Arturo Castro, rehearsing extensively before shooting, working through the script as well as the blocking behind some of the more complicated action. Spending so much time together on location helped too. “We’re dropped in these amazing locations, and we have each other,” Cena explains. “Us just being on locations, where kind of all we had was each other, and that helped form the bonds of the Matchbox gang.”
“We’re dropped in these amazing locations, and we have each other.”
When the cast later reunited at Comic-Con, Cena says they picked up where they had left off.
That ensemble setup also meant Cena didn’t get every moment behind the wheel. A self-described “supercar guy,” he admits there was a selfish part of him that wanted more of the driving, but Sean’s friends needed those moments to show what they could bring to the mission. “The movie is better for it,” Cena says.
He still had plenty of time with the cars. There was a Camaro, a Mustang and, most memorably, a six-wheel Land Rover that he got to put through its paces in the desert. Several were used over the course of filming, and Cena says he managed to “trash” four of them. “I take great pride in knowing that I did drive it like I stole it,” he says, before quickly clarifying, “Not in a reckless way.”
The more extreme stunt work left Cena with an even greater appreciation for the people who do it for a living. He makes a point of crediting stuntman Spencer Thomas, although this time he thinks the usual arrangement might need to be reversed. “I always gotta give props to my stuntman,” he says. “This time, I’m gonna have him give me props.” He also points to performers like Tom Cruise, who seem far more comfortable running toward the kind of danger Cena would rather avoid. “He runs into that stuff, guns blazing,” Cena says. “He’s got a whole subset of courage I know nothing about.”
For all the talk of fear, Cena never turns the experience into some grand lesson. He knew the stunts scared him, he did them anyway and he’s perfectly comfortable admitting he still doesn’t enjoy them. But Cena is also one to Never Give Up.
Cena is equally reluctant to tell audiences what they should take away from Matchbox. When asked what he hopes people experience watching the film, he pushes back against deciding that for them. “I never want to curate an audience’s experience,” he says. There’s the action, the cars, the locations and a story about friendship underneath all of it, but where audiences find their own connection is up to them.
“I just hope they’re entertained.”
Matchbox The Movie premieres October 9 on Apple TV.
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