Sniper training pays off for Miles Teller in ‘The Gorge’
For Miles Teller, there was only one way the “Top Gun: Maverick” star was going to play a solitary sniper in Friday’s AppleTV+ horror entry “The Gorge.”
For Miles Teller, there was only one way the “Top Gun: Maverick” star was going to play a solitary sniper in Friday’s AppleTV+ horror entry “The Gorge.”
And that was with sniper training and a sit down with an actual sniper.
“I’ve played a couple of military or characters of military backgrounds and research is very important,” Teller, 37, said in a Zoom interview. “The military — they’re not all the same. Different branches, different expertise.
“So for me, getting a technical advisor, somebody who spent a lot of time as a sniper, was important. Because there’s a certain fluidity that comes with that, with doing something for 10,000 hours practice.
“Internally, that suggests the emotional life of the character that you try and map out.”
Teller’s Levi is summoned and hired by Sigourney Weaver’s mysterious commander for a top-secret, year-long mission guarding a remote, isolated water-filled canyon in Eastern Europe.
Is this a death wish for someone with nothing better to do with his life?
Teller thinks not. “Truly, this is what these guys are trained to do. Levi is there for the mission. He assumes he’s going to be taking down some form of enemy, some sort of evil. There’s a presence there.
“His strength is that he is ‘disposable.’ That’s allowed him to pursue this profession in isolation with a sense of comfortability.
“There’s a lot of people that choose a profession similar to this, capable of going overseas, doing a certain type of work and then coming back and hopefully integrating as well as they can.
“But it’s a very tough dynamic. I have a ton of empathy for anybody who does that kind of work, whether it be a first responder or military background. It’s a very tough profession.”
As for what lies beneath the ravine’s surface? He hasn’t a clue.
Why is he there on one side and on the other one female soldier (Anya Taylor-Joy)?
Levi watches the still water with elaborate satellite tracking and monitoring machinery, binoculars and a telescope. He indulges in close-ups of his fellow guard whom he eventually decides to meet in person.
“I knew,” Teller said, “that it was important for this movie that, once these characters really find each other, that that connection between the two of us is the most important thing.
“We were all aware that if the love story didn’t work, the rest of the movie didn’t work. So our priority was making sure that you fell in love with these two people individually — and then you fell in love with the way that they fell in love.”
“The Gorge” streams Friday on AppleTV+