Taika Waititi Breaks Down Mountain Climb Scene from 'Next Goal Wins'

Michael has so many teeth.

I don't know if you've noticed that.

It's like one big tooth.

Hi everyone, I'm Taika Waititi,

and welcome to Notes on a Scene.

I'm doing this with my new film, Next Goal Wins.

[group clapping]

[groans] Oh, God!

Oh, God, it's beautiful.

[gasps]

[Speaker 1] You okay, Tom?

It's beautiful.

Oh my God, it looks so easy from the bottom.

I wanted to see more Pacific Islanders on screen.

I just love the idea that there was a,

that this was a true story.

It's a classic underdog story and a really uplifting one.

Kind of, you know, in the vein

of all the great sports films.

This is just before the team is flying off

to the World Cup Qualifiers.

And they've been training for two or three weeks now

to get to this point.

And this is they've finally conquered this mountain

the day before they head off.

Let's take a look.

[uplifting music begins]

[Thomas] I know you can make it to the top!

Come on, guys!

Keep going, keep going!

Don't stop, don't stop!

You can take any frame from my films

and find a great depth and meaning in them

because I think about every single moment.

And I pre-planned every shot.

We planted these trees about 17 years ago.

The grass was already there.

And of course, as always, you know,

there's the Fibonacci pattern there,

which you could see in every single frame

'cause I'm an artist

and the golden ratio is the most important thing

in all work.

Thomas Rongen, played by Michael Fassbender,

gives a motivational speech

before they head off on their journey.

This actually happened.

So in American Samoa, there's a big mountain

and it used to have like a gun turret

in World War II, up there.

And the coach took the team all the way to the top

and he gave them this big speech.

This shot, of course, was done with a drone,

little miniature helicopter flown by mice.

[Thomas gasping]

[group muttering] [group clapping]

[Thomas gasping]

Oh, God!

Oh, God, it's beautiful. [gasping for air]

We shot this whole thing with the Steadicam

and a big part of the scene was

that Thomas was trying to motivate the team

throughout the whole film.

And he's trying to get them, you know,

to go up to the top of this mountain.

And ironically, when they all run to the top,

he's the one that's the most winded.

I think we were slowly losing light

and had to really move fast.

And so a Steadicam's a great tool,

especially when you've got 15 people in your scene.

It looks so easy from the bottom.

Can't breathe.

[gasping]

This spot here, this place,

tells of how your brave brothers

fought to protect American Samoa and the rest of the world

against evil.

This mountaintop is actually not in American Samoa.

We shot the film in Hawaii.

There's a bit more infrastructure there.

They've got a lot of shows and films that shoot there.

And so getting crew and gear

would've been very hard to source

or to move into American Samoa.

So we found a lot of places within Hawaii

that matched a lot of the locations in American Samoa.

I think what's kind of cool about this scene,

especially here, if you look at this frame,

you get this nice backlit stuff,

with these streaks and streams.

And you know, I'm not a religious person,

but I am spiritual.

And I do love the, kind of, ethereal feeling

that you get from this.

And it's like, you've got this,

you know, they're on top of the mountain

as close as they can be to God.

Obviously this big giant ball of fire over there is the sun,

and, you know, you get all these streaks coming through.

And if we actually go back a little bit, you know,

you've got these nice big flares and stuff

that wrap around everyone.

And look, there's this guy playing Samson,

looks like an angel.

And so... maybe I am religious?

It's just like, you know, as I say, you know,

I do plan things religiously

and the symbolism of this is that

Thomas is amongst the angels,

a team of soccer-playing angels.

[uplifting music]

Well, tomorrow,

we set off for the greatest war of them all!

The more we talk about these flares,

the more I'm really liking them.

Fibonacci, baby.

Fibonacci right there, leading to God.

In two days' time,

we face our first enemy, Tonga.

Screw those guys!

[Group] Yeah!

There have been so many wars against those assholes.

In the war of 1825,

where they came to take,

[gasps]

they came to take our tuna.

[uplifting music]

But we handed their asses to them in a giant tuna can.

Thomas Rongen, the coach,

from my sources that who've told me,

he actually just completely made up

these facts about American Samoa

and their rivalry with Tonga,

and say that there used to be these big wars,

and that from the [indistinct] that defended the country

against Tongan invasions and stuff.

Which is complete nonsense.

That's not the case and,

but what's funny is that he was trying to tell the people

who were from the country their history.

I still have to pack.

I always leave packing for the last minute.

It's so weird.

They'll always forget to...

Get the legs.

He needs water.

[uplifting Gospel music]

That's actually Michael.

I really loved, like, overhead shots and top down shots.

It was an idea that sort of just came to us,

again, in the moment.

We had a drone on hand and we thought,

well why don't we get it up here

and see what this would look like.

You know, a lot of people

would read quite a lot into this, wouldn't they?

A lot of brown people carrying a white man down a hill.

Don't read too much into it.

We all thought it would just be a funny idea.

Some people would say, Oh, it's all about the white guy.

'Cause it's kind of like what you expect

from a movie, isn't it?

Like Dances With Wolves,

white people being saved by brown people.

And it is, and that's okay.

Like, we didn't shy away from the idea of, like, you know,

because the true story is this guy came in to the island,

taught them how to become better soccer players

and they taught him how to become a better person.

So, you know, it is a give and take thing.

And the idea of the white savior thing is something, like,

I think, you know, if you wanna run away from it,

it's, for me not as interesting as embracing it

and seeing what more you could do with that idea.

'Cause it's, you know, it's an old idea,

and, you know, we've seen it before.

And just embracing this, you know, some of the cliches

that you might see in films like this

and trying to push them even further.

That was the main idea.

So if you thought that this was really cool,

joke's on you.

[Gospel music]

[Speaker 2] And so we turn to Matthew 17,

when a man says to Jesu,

Lord have mercy on my son, for he is a lunatic

and is very ill for he often falls into the fire

and often into the water.

Very clumsy my boy.

I feel really smart when, you know,

if I get shots of my films and, like,

you start, like, obeying, like, laws

of, like, thirds and halves.

And even if you weren't planning on that, you know,

when you discover that in your shots

it makes you feel smarter than you actually are.

And, of course, you will have noticed that this shot

is also representative of a soccer field.

So it's foreshadowing the game that they're about to play.

And, although in the shot,

Thomas would seem like the center of the game,

all in a game, you know as well as I do,

because you're all soccer fans,

that all of the action,

all the real storytelling happens out here,

on the pitch with the players, not the coach.

It's the players who tell the story.

And then, look, I've done that.

And once again, what do we have?

The sun.

It all comes full circle, doesn't it?

Very well thought out moment in my film.

[Speaker 2] And Jesu said,

Bring him here to me, good old Jesu.

and Jesu rebuked him and the demon came out of him

and that boy was good at once.

[water splashing]

[all cheering]

Thomas Rongen comes out and is reborn

and is now part of the team and welcomed into the fold.

I actually feel

like that's something that actually happened,

just naturally within the filmmaking.

That, you know, I think Michael came in and, you know,

everyone here, a lot of them knew each other,

but, you know,

everyone was Samoan and Pacific Islanders,

you know, he became part of their family

and they all still keep in touch now

and they're all still really good friends.

The idea of him being baptized and and reborn, you know,

it is a big theme in the film.

This idea that someone who has,

kind of all but given up on life and has lost his way,

finds family in a new place

and has to kind of kill that old version of himself

and be reborn in the waters of this island.

You know, even though it sounds a little, kind of, cheesy,

it's still a really cool concept.

People go through baptisms all the time in their lives

and it doesn't have to be religious ones,

it's just when you go in

and you kind of wash everything away

and you emerge a new person.