Aftermath Interview: Dylan Sprouse & Mason Gooding Had Dragon Ball Fights

Aftermath stars Dylan Sprouse and Mason Gooding discussed fighting each other in their new action movie, which is now available to rent and buy on digital. The duo discussed their chemistry, going too fast and having a “Dragon Ball fight scene,” and reuniting for Under Fire as well.

“Trapped on Boston’s Tobin Bridge after a bomb explodes, a former Army Ranger (Dylan Sprouse) must use his elite training to save his sister and fellow hostages from a group of vengeful ex-military contractors led by an unhinged war criminal,” says the synopsis.

Tyler Treese: Dylan, there’s some hand-to-hand combat here, which is pretty fun to see. How’s that experience of getting used to the fight choreography and really getting to get physical during Aftermath?

Dylan Sprouse: Funny enough, like hand-to-hand combat… So, Aftermath was the third action movie that I have done in my life. The first one, I did The Curse of Turandot in China for six months, and that was so much hand-to-hand. It was a lot of wing chun, and it was a lot of obviously choreography made particularly for movies. Then I did Beautiful Disaster and then Aftermath, right? So, the hand-to-hand stuff was actually what I was most comfortable with. What I was learning, kind of fresh, was certainly all of the gunplay during this movie. I had not done a lot of that. I’ve known how to fire, I’ve been to firing ranges and when I was younger, but that was definitely a new experience for me.

I will say, though, that the hand-to-hand combat scenes were my favorite, particularly because I was doing almost the entirety of it with Mason. While we were doing that, I have this distinct memory where we both looked at each other, and we were working it out, and we’re like, “We should do this faster, right?” Because it would look way slicker. Mason was like, “Yeah, yeah, let’s try it faster.” We kept messing it up and we’re like, “All right, but now that we got that, let’s do it even a little faster.” So it looks like really, really intense. So we just kept going faster and faster until the director, Patrick Lussier, he goes, “Hey, guys. It’s actually too fast. You’re not really registering what we’re doing.” We’re like, “Sorry, we’re so good at this.”

Mason Gooding: Allegedly, it looked like a Dragon Ball fight scene, us teleporting all over the place. Very great.

Sprouse: Well, I’m pretty sure it was what we wanted, so…

Gooding: That’s right. That’s what we were going for. It’s also worth mentioning, not to blow smoke up our own asses, but there’s a lot going on on that set. It’s a very involved action film. So you have to imagine they have to make sacrifices as far as timing for rehearsals in certain aspects or another. By the time we got to the choreography scene, where we had to talk about the fight scene, we realized we hadn’t run through it even once. It was a 15-minute window to watch the stunt performers put it together. Then we had lunch, which was about 45 minutes, and then we had to shoot the thing.

So, in the 15 minutes while we were watching, I learned from Dylan a methodology that is probably most easily related to muscle memory. Dylan does this thing where he stands — I don’t know if you do this all the time, but in this case, he did. He stood just off to the stunt rehearsal and performers who were going through the movements. Dylan would embody the movements in real-time as he was learning them. I come from a football background, so I would just watch and try to learn the movements visually, which didn’t help a ton, but lo and behold, we got it eventually. It just took a little lunch break, and we hopped right back into it and it ended up being what you saw in the movie.

Sprouse: It is my favorite action scene of that movie for sure.

Mason, one aspect that really impressed me in this film was how menacing you are in this. You’re so likable in everything else and in interviews, so I was surprised you had that in you. How was it like tapping into that villain side for you?

Gooding: There’s an easy answer, and then there’s a tough answer. The tough answer, I would say is because Dylan creates such a comfortable environment on the set. I came in a little later, they had already been shooting some by the time I got there. I knew him prior too. I love this genre so much. So I had an inkling for what it would feel like to be a more villainous character, but it wasn’t until talking to Dylan and seeing how he operates on set in that setting that it allowed me the freedom and willingness and comfortability to take the backyard villain I had always played with my brother in elementary school and just transfix it onto in my adult physique and sensibilities.

The easy answer is, dude, I just love Jon Bernthal.

Sprouse: Don’t we all?

Gooding: A lot of this stuff, and this is not something I should admit, but there’s a scene where in The Walking Dead, every time Jon Bernthal leans down in that show, he goes like this, and he pulls his pants up. Yeah, I just did that every single time I had to move. I just pull my pants like that, and it seems very menacing. So I owe that to Jon Bernthal because I absolutely stole that from him.

Dylan, I like that your character here is more than just a generic action hero. He has the PTSD element going on, and there’s a very human side to the character with him wanting to save his sister. As an actor, what did you really dig into for the character side here rather than the action that we’ve talked about?

Sprouse: Yeah, it’s an interesting line to walk between. Trying to give credence and truth to what that actually looks like. The struggle of PTSD and also making an action movie. I didn’t want that to seem silly. I didn’t want it to seem cliche. So, I definitely wanted to make sure that that was properly represented, and I was really thankful to have… We were surrounded by former active military on set and a handful of veterans there that I asked a wealth of questions, as well as a former active medic who was serving. That was really helpful.

She was really helpful to me because I asked about obviously facial expressions and I asked about the hyperventilation aspect of it and some things in that regard that I really wanted to make look real, but also at the same time try to represent PTSD as the process of healing rather than it being the thing. Because I see this happen a lot in films and TV where like the character who was formerly serving is almost summed up by the fact that they have PTSD, right? Where they’re like, “This is the character, and he has PTSD,” whereas that’s not explaining that it’s the journey through PTSD to get you to either the end of it, which is healing, hopefully, and trying to work through it.

So that was a relief by merit of the script as well. It was a relief to know that we got to see a little bit of an arc through his journey there, trying to help himself through it. As well as his family and friends that he made in the movie try to help him through it. Then we have a very clear juxtaposition with Mason and his character, who I think he embodied remarkably well, which is another side of the trauma associated and how he’s dealing with that in his own personal way. So, it was nice to see that it wasn’t being done in a way that was a finality.