‘Thunderbolts,’ ‘Sinners’ stuntman reveals which was harder

Stuntman, assemble.

Stunt performer Joe Dryden can brag that he worked on two of the biggest movies now in theaters.

Dryden did stunt work on both “Thunderbolts*” and “Sinners” — and is revealing which film was more strenuous for him.

“In my particular role, ‘Thunderbolts*,’ there was just a little more pressure there from a performance standpoint,” said Dryden, who filmed Bucky’s infamous motorcycle scene for Sebastian Stan in the Marvel flick.

“I had a different challenge on ‘Sinners,’” he explained. “I am a character, a bad guy. I get shot and blown up in a truck. I play around in a utility kind of role and the prep in the beginning was a little bit nerve wracking just because I think sometimes I get intimidated a little by people like [director] Ryan Coogler, who’s incredible.”

“And when I’m shooting a previs that I have to show somebody like that, that’s a little bit nerve wracking, you know? But he’s so nice that he kind of made the process almost easy,” Dryden said of Coogler, 38.

The stuntman continued, “‘Thunderbolts*’ was more of an, ‘Okay, now I’m in the middle of the desert and everybody’s looking at me and we’ve sold this gag that has to work.’”

“I will also say Marvel is like a whole different universe,” added Dryden. “There are so many moving parts. So many. There is so many people that have involvement and every one of them has such an important role in making this whole thing come together, you know? And it’s an impressive thing to see the final product work because there really are so many hands involved in making it happen.”

As for “Sinners,” Dryden wasn’t surprised about the massive success of Michael B. Jordan’s horror film.

“Sometimes you’re on set and you can just feel that there’s a little bit of a different energy, there’s little bit a sauce happening,” he shared. “I was in very early on the prep for ‘Sinners’ just because it shot here in New Orleans and stunt coordinator Andy Gill on that had me involved pretty early and I actually shot all of the previs for the fights and the action. And then we rehearsed any rigging that we had and all of our action beats, just to make sure that we were all feeling good.”

“But I had read the script and I remember reading it thinking, ‘Wow, this is really cool,’” he recalled. “And then when I was told it was being shot 70 mm for IMAX, I was kind of like, ‘Oh, okay.’ I initially right away went with Ryan Coogler thinking ‘Black Panther,’ and then just going right into thinking this is going to have a lot of VFX in it and a lot a digital. I was kind of surprised by that choice just because it’s a different media and it’s a little more challenging to work with, right?”

Dryden went on, “So I think that was my first sort of like, ‘Oh, this has a little bit of a different feel.’ And then once we started getting into it, you can just tell. And then Michael B. Jordan as well showing up his first days of rehearsal with us and he’s such a pro. Everybody was so cool through the whole deal that it just felt special. So I had a feeling.”

“It’s, in my opinion, going to go down as a very important piece of cinema history,” Dryden stated. “I believe it will.”

“Thunderbolts*” and “Sinners” are in theaters now.