"You know, there was not much wire work for any of us actors to do because the extent of what they did was so huge. I mean, they wouldn't just throw you from this table to that wall"
About this Quote
McMahon is puncturing the fantasy of “movie magic” with a casually devastating bit of scale. The line starts like an inside-baseball anecdote about wire rigs, then swerves into a quiet flex: whatever “they” were doing was so big, so far beyond the actors’ bodies, that the usual stunt vocabulary doesn’t even apply. “Not much wire work” isn’t a complaint; it’s a recalibration of expectations. He’s reminding you that the performers weren’t the main event in those moments, and that’s kind of the point.
The specific intent feels twofold: credit the invisible labor (stunt teams, VFX, choreography, engineering) and reset the audience’s simplistic idea that action equals actors getting yanked around. The throwaway example - “from this table to that wall” - is deliberately small, almost sitcom-sized, like an old-school bar brawl. By downscaling it, he makes the real thing loom larger: whatever they built was too “huge” to be explained with a tidy, relatable image.
Subtext: he’s both impressed and slightly displaced. Actors love to be the center of the story; here, he’s admitting that the production’s ambition eclipsed individual physical heroics. It’s a humblebrag with a self-protective edge: if you didn’t see him doing Tom Cruise-level punishment, it’s because the machinery of the spectacle had moved on to something grander than a body on a wire. In an era of ever-bigger franchises, it’s also an honest snapshot of how modern action is manufactured: less bruised ribs, more industrial-scale illusion.
The specific intent feels twofold: credit the invisible labor (stunt teams, VFX, choreography, engineering) and reset the audience’s simplistic idea that action equals actors getting yanked around. The throwaway example - “from this table to that wall” - is deliberately small, almost sitcom-sized, like an old-school bar brawl. By downscaling it, he makes the real thing loom larger: whatever they built was too “huge” to be explained with a tidy, relatable image.
Subtext: he’s both impressed and slightly displaced. Actors love to be the center of the story; here, he’s admitting that the production’s ambition eclipsed individual physical heroics. It’s a humblebrag with a self-protective edge: if you didn’t see him doing Tom Cruise-level punishment, it’s because the machinery of the spectacle had moved on to something grander than a body on a wire. In an era of ever-bigger franchises, it’s also an honest snapshot of how modern action is manufactured: less bruised ribs, more industrial-scale illusion.
Quote Details
| Topic | Movie |
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