The movie that “emotionally wrecked” Jeremy Renner: “I don’t know if I’ll watch it again”
While many are aware that Avengers star Jeremy Renner was badly injured in a snowplough accident back in 2023, not many people know quite how badly he was injured.
After jumping out to help his nephew, the actor was hit by the plough, which weighed some 14,000lbs and sustained 38 broken bones, including six ribs, his cheekbone, his pelvis, his knee and ankle, his shoulder, his jaw, his wrist and his foot.
He suffered a collapsed lung, his eye was bulging out of its socket, his rib bone pierced his liver, and his head had to be stapled shut at the back. By all accounts, Renner shouldn’t really still be here.
Understandably, the Hawkeye actor took considerable time to recover before he was able to start filming again, resuming his role as Mike McLusky in the criminal drama Mayor of Kingstown late last year. He’ll also be seen in the new Knives Out instalment, Wake Up Dead Man, as part of an ensemble cast alongside Daniel Craig, and fellow MCU co-stars Glenn Close and Josh Brolin.
Renner has unsurprisingly become very reflective after the incident that should have killed him, doing a lot of charity work and writing a book detailing his survival and how the accident changed him as a person. Given that brush with death and the clarity it can bring, perhaps, it’s fitting that Renner cites an incredibly affecting movie as one of his favourite appearances from the past decade: Canadian director Denis Villeneuve’s 2016 sci-fi film Arrival.
In it, Renner plays a physicist drafted in by the US Army to establish communication with an alien race whose ships are hovering threateningly over Earth. Alongside Amy Adams, Renner works to examine the creatures and their intentions while the pair slowly begins to understand their own relationship, their futures, and that of the Earth.
It is a masterful piece of filmmaking that, if you are a parent, you may only be able to sit through on one occasion. It has a harrowing twist that asks deeply philosophical questions of the viewer and stays with you for some time afterwards. Far more than just a ‘thinking man’s science fiction film’, Arrival is visually beautiful and works as an engaging drama too.
Renner underlines this when talking about his reaction to an initial screening of the film, telling the Independent: “It emotionally wrecked me. I don’t know if I’ll watch it again”.
Arrival was nominated for eight Academy awards and took in some $200million at the box office against a budget of just $50m. The movie contained an astonishing amount of attention to detail; an entirely new alien language was devised for the film with the help of several experts, including linguists, computer scientists and phonetics consultants.
Villeneuve had dreamt of making a science fiction film since he was a teenager and had previously read the story on which the film is based, a sci-fi novella titled Story of Your Life, describing it “a gem, a masterpiece of writing”.
Although he initially felt it was unfilmable, he was later convinced and stated of his female lead: “The thing that I needed in order to make this movie a success was the main actress. There’s something about Amy Adams, a deep humanity and sincere intelligence that I thought was suitable for the movie, and the success of it totally relies on her shoulders. And I’m still deeply grateful because I would have never been able to make this movie without her.”
