1 day Ago By Smrutisnat Jena
“The Hurt Locker was f*cking amazing.” No matter how varied Joe Rogan’s opinions are from the ‘Hollywood elite’, almost everyone agrees with that review of the 2008 Oscar winner.Directed by Kathryn Bigelow, ‘The Hurt Locker’ won six Academy Awards, including Best Picture, while competing with James Cameron’s 3D extravaganza, Avatar.
And for good reason.One of the very first Hollywood movies that moved away from the glorification of combat to instead focus on the individual experience of the armed forces battling life and death every single day for years in the Middle East.The film particularly focuses on a bomb squad during the Iraq War and its leader, Sergeant William James, hauntingly played by Jeremy Renner.
Rogan, a long-time fan of the film, finally had an opportunity to analyse it when he hosted Renner on his podcast earlier this week.“This is one of the most complex movies about a very bizarre psychological state that people acquire or people fall into when it comes to war“, Rogan said, still mesmerized by the film, 17 years after its release.Renner explained how the movie was so relevant to the times we were living in.
“Look, the narrative is that the characters that live in this very bizarre world...
and also the struggle of a soldier in civilian life“, Renner said.“Because they were civilians and now they became soldiers. You would be put in prison for life for sh*t they are getting paid for to do now”, he continued.
“And that was sort of the wonderful sort of outcome of the movie – how it bridged that sort of gap where the struggles of PTSD and coming back from this heroin, sort of existence and war“, the Oscar-nominated actor said.The JRE host also asked Renner how he prepared for the intense role and adapted to the mindset of someone who never truly returned from war.Rogan shocked by Renner’s method-actingInterestingly, Renner spent about one to one and a half years at Fort Irwin in California learning how to “build bombs or render them safe”.
“You’ve got to spend time with the guys and gals off base. I love the whole experience, you know. And then got to go shoot the movie, and that was on the Iraqi border in Jordan during the war,” he explained.
One of the biggest challenges, Renner claimed, he faced on set was the 135-degree F heat that he had to deal with while donning a 100-lb bombsuit.“It’s not even hot anymore. It’s just like, you just let that go.
You just are. It’s sort of a spiritual place you have to go in that kinda heat“, the Avengers actor shared.But as difficult as it was, Renner asserted that the real battle was mental, which was something he picked up from soldiers who had done multiple tours.
“Most of them look like school teachers. The guy I know who did three tours, he just looks like..
. he’s totally out of shape..
. This guy did three tours. This guy is no joke.
It’s all mental“, he began explaining.Explaining just how much of it had to do with keeping their composure, he added, “It’s all such a mental game because you have to be cool in those high-intense situations because you are dealing with 155 explosives that’ll blow this building off the block“.Rogan and Renner on War and PTSDInterestingly, the soldiers Renner worked with only ever got uncomfortable when they were back in civilian life- a parallel to Renner’s character from the film in the famous supermarket scene.
While it wasn’t a direct comparison by any means, it did draw a stark contrast with how deployed soldiers are so used to the hell of war that normalcy often makes them feel unsettled.“They were so comfortable around C4 and all those things..
. They got really uncomfortable when I took them to a bar in LA“, Renner noted, stating that upon asking the soldier if everything was okay, he was told, “I don’t like where we are sitting. I need my back to the wall, I need to know where my exits are”.
Interestingly, Rogan had previously hosted Mark Boal, who wrote and produced the film, back in 2023. Speaking to Boal, Rogan had specifically expressed his admiration for the supermarket scene and the juxtaposition it had provided.“You do relate to it because I think all of us are aware that you kind of get accustomed to whatever you’re around.
You get accustomed to a chaotic home life or a peaceful home life”, he had told Boal.Further elaborating on his feelings on the scene, Rogan added, “People understand that there’s like certain ways of living and existing that you can get accustomed to. And they kind of make sense when you’ve adjusted and adapted to them.
But then, to have such a clear difference between being in a warzone and being in a supermarket, it was perfect.”The Hurt Locker is currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video.The post Joe Rogan and Jeremy Renner Unpack the Psychological Spiral of War in Iconic Oscar Winner appeared first on The SportsRush.
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