On Hanna, there was a new aspect for Wright to explore; putting the actors through a detailed regimen for rigorous action scenes. This provided an ideal opportunity to bond the actors playing father and daughter. Bana recalls, “Saoirse and I did some of our training together, and she was well-prepared, with great coordination. She was better than some of the men I’ve worked with over the years. It’s often harder to fight with an actor than a stunt person, but Saoirse was committed and engaged. Our fight scenes were unique, with a father teaching a daughter and not just two people going after each other and one winning.
“Turns out that her arm’s length reach is very long, and almost the same as mine. I had to be careful in our fight-training scenes together because those fists come at a great rate and with real force. I had to be very cautious not to hurt her – and not get knocked out by her. I’ve worked with a lot of guys who are not as tough as Saoirse is.”
“I know I hurt Eric a few times,” admits Ronan. “But Joe did tell me to go for it.”
“Saoirse and I also had a good time ripping into each other because, she being Irish and me being Australian, we were kind of kindred spirits in our senses of humor; hers is wicked,” reveals Bana.
Bana had experience in the physical arena from his other movies, but on Hanna stunt coordinator and fight choreographer Jeff Imada (fight stunt coordinator on both The Bourne Ultimatum and The Bourne Supremacy) had to “teach Eric some things to fit his character – and Hanna’s, since the father is training the daughter.”
Bana points out, “This was a little different for me because of the hand-to-hand combat – which I actually hadn’t done a lot of in earlier movies. There are physically demanding scenes between Hanna and Erik that have emotional punch as well.”
Given that Hanna is someone who has been in training for as long as she can remember, Imada began work with Ronan well ahead of production, while the actress was still publicizing her film The Lovely Bones in Los Angeles. He reports, “I put her through a few tests to get a feel for her body mechanics, and to ascertain how much work we needed to do to make her look convincing as a teenager trained to a high level of skill by her father, who himself was trained by a government agency.”
Wright wanted the fight scenes to look as naturalistic as possible. Given the setting that was being established for Hanna’s upbringing, Imada introduced an element of the wild into the fighting style. He explains, “Hanna is surrounded by wildlife; she has learned a keen awareness from animals, how to survive and how to fit into and live in the landscape.”
“When she kills, to her it’s like killing in the wild, from her upbringing,” offers Ronan.
Imada comments, “Saoirse has a slight build, so she could be agile, moving quickly and with stealth. I incorporated martial-arts kicks, aerobic exercises, and basic boxing and grappling moves into our training. We adjusted Saoirse’s diet to help build muscle. We also worked with weapons, using sticks so that they would become extensions of her arm.”
The idea was to “mold all this into her, so that when it came to the fight scenes Saoirse would be able to summon all of this, immediately convincing the audience – and that she wouldn’t tire easily!”
Life began to imitate art; Imada trained with Ronan for six weeks, with the teenager working “five, six hours a day – and she never complained,” he notes. “I sometimes had to tell her when to quit. She was determined to come across as Hanna. I was really impressed with her.”
Ronan proudly notes that she ended up doing “quite a few of the stunts myself,” yet admits that the first days of training were punishing; “Joe warned me, but I thought, ‘I’ll be fine, I swim and run [regularly].’ I’ve always been quite athletic.
“Well, there was a lot more involved than I thought there would be. I got into the gym and had to start lifting weights and pushing bars over my head and running on treadmills every single day. It all paid off. I loved learning all the physical stuff; doing martial arts centers you.”
One martial arts discipline that Ronan particularly appreciated was “wing chun, which we used a lot because Hanna would be fighting people bigger and stronger than she is, and would have to use their strength against them. But Jeff would also put Hanna’s own spin on the styles.”
Imada says that he followed Wright’s mandate to eschew an over-the-top fighting style in favor of “everyday, real moves that can be used in self-defense. So although she enjoyed knife work, we also taught Saoirse to work with no weapons.”
“It’s easier if you’ve got weapons,” comments Ronan. “But to me it was more like dancing than anything else; it’s still choreography, after all.”
Bana remarks, “Joe had made it clear early on that he hates seeing a lot of editing cuts in fights – as do I – and that there would be sequences where he wasn’t going to cut away. So the fight scenes in long takes, as we were doing, had to be accurate and planned out with Jeff and Joe.”
Following up on the memorable uninterrupted sequences Wright conceived and executed in Atonement, The Soloist, and the miniseries The Last King, in one key sequence in Hanna the camera tracks Bana through a long steadicam take. In-character as Erik, he goes below ground into a train station to evade a special ops agent, only to have to fight off four at once. That sequence alone – with its elements of martial arts and street fighting – made the movie “the most physical picture I’ve ever done,” states Bana.