Alan Ritchson has played Jack Reacher for three seasons (so far), and over the course of the series, his character has taken quite a beating. It’s basically becoming standard practice at this point that if you see Ritchson in a TV show or movie, he’s either going to beat someone up or get beaten up himself (or both), and the same is true in his new movie, War Machine.The film, available with a Netflix subscription, sees Alan Ritchson as a combat engineer known only as 81, who must fight an otherworldly threat alongside a small group of soldiers. Ritchson tells THR that the film was even more physically gruelling for him than his previous endeavors, but he was able to get through it because his experience has taught him that pain is temporary. He said…
I remind myself that you forget the pain of it all relatively quickly. Maybe there’s a life lesson in there because I think a lot of times we become so hyper-fixated on the pain that we’re experiencing in the moment. We get lost in it. We feel like it will last forever. And it never does.
Alan Ritchson may only be acting like a super tough guy in movies, but there’s only so much you can pretend to physically exert yourself. At a certain point, you have to actually do what your character needs to do on screen. This can certainly lead to pain when you push your body too far too often, which, it sounds like Alan Ritchson has certainly done. Case-in-point, he ended up with a black eye filming the next season of Reacher that wasn’t from makeup.Ritchson admits to having something of a problem because he likes to work with as few breaks between projects as possible. This causes a problem when the projects he’s doing lead to him being in pain, because it means he doesn’t get a break from that either. He continued…
For years, I shoot projects consecutively back-to-back. I take very few breaks. I love what I do, and I’m told all the time, ‘You should rest. You should take a couple of movies off and rest.’ I don’t want to, but I also don’t want to be in pain all the time.
We’ve certainly seen that Ritchson likes to work and doesn’t take breaks. Last year, he wrapped filming on the upcoming movie Runner, and then was almost immediately spotted filming a cameo for the upcoming Reacher spinoff Neagley. That rolled into the next season of Reacher in fairly short order.When Ritchson says he doesn’t remember the pain, he’s apparently being quite honest. He said that even when he sees the finished film, he doesn’t remember whatever he went through, and is instead just proud of the project. He said…
What gets me through is when a movie comes out and it’s a project I am proud of and I remember how I poured my whole soul into it. When I watch it, I never remember the pain, only that I am proud of what we made. You put rose-colored glasses on sometimes in hindsight. I know that I can do that. I often do. The pain won’t last forever but film is forever. I put my energy into that.
As a fan of Alan Ritchson, I’m certainly appreciative of his willingness to go through some pain to do some incredible stuff on film. I’m certainly looking forward to Season 4 of Reacher to see just what he does, as he’s promised the upcoming season will be one of the show’s best.