WARNING: Spoilers for Triple Frontier ahead. The new Netflix movie stars Oscar Isaac, Ben Affleck, Charlie Hunnam, Garrett Hedlund, Pedro Pascal and more. And fans have been left stunned as, well ahead of the end credits, Affleck’s character Redfly is brutally killed off. Now, the director has revealed it was Affleck’s own suggestion.
Film-maker JC Chandor said that, in a previous draft of the script, it was a much smaller character who took that fatal bullet to the head.
Redfly had been seen killing a number of innocent villagers who were trying to defend their land, and was ultimately shot by a man whose father was one of those fatalities.
“When I first read the script it was a secondary character [who got killed], I can’t even remember which one of the other guys it was,” Chandor told Collider.
“It was actually in meeting with Ben for the first time, he suggested it.
“He said, ‘Would you ever be willing to do that?’
“I had actually moved it to a different character than the one that I originally read [in Mark Boal’s script].”
He added: “I won’t get into who, but it was to another character and it was very secondary.
“Ben said, ‘Would you ever be willing to, if I got the studio to agree to it, to allow that to be me?'”
Chandor added that Affleck “wanted to do something like this before” but had been shut down by studios.
“I realised it was so neat that instead of it being the guy that should have died, it was the guy that shouldn’t have, in a way,” Chandor elaborated.
“Even though he’s the leader, and he should have known better.”
Triple Frontier has had reasonably good reviews from critics: its aggregated score on Rotten Tomatoes is currently 72%.
Meanwhile, Isaac’s promotional interviews for the film have thrown up some interesting teasers for Star Wars 9.
Triple Frontier is streaming now.
