When you find out that UFC Hall of Famer and current WWE superstar Ronda Rousey is going to be in an action movie, chances are you're expecting some intense fight scenes that will allow her to put her martial arts training to use. That's simply not the case in her new film, Mile 22, though.
While there is plenty of hand-to-hand combat on display in the film, most notably featuring The Walking Dead's Lauren Cohan, director Peter Berg made the decision to keep all of Rousey's action firearm-based, rather than having her mix it up and throw hands in the movie. That's a stark change from something like her appearance in Furious 7, where she had an extensive fight scene with Michelle Rodriguez.
So why have Rousey keep her hands to herself? Because it's the last thing viewers would expect. "Pete purposely didn't have me do any hand-to-hand combat because he felt like it'd be too me," she tells GameSpot. "And he wanted people to be surprised to even see that it was me [in] the movie."
Instead of fight choreography, Rousey went to gun school. After all, her character Sam is a member of a highly-cover group of operatives tasked with extracting a very dangerous asset from a foreign nation. Being proficient with guns is an important piece of the puzzle.
"We had to learn the actual concepts of gun fighting," Rousey says. "And so we spent a whole week or so in an abandoned hotel with real guns and blanks."
It wasn't just learning how to shoot that prepared her for the film, though. "We had a Navy Seal, Army Ranger, Marine, and all kinds of consultants helping us to study for this role, so we would actually learn the concept of how to you clear a room," she explains. "One of the proper things to do was [make a] checklist of things to do, depending on how many people you have with you, and things like that. So when we got thrown into a situation, we would know the right things to do."
The end result is an intense action film that lets Rousey try new things as an actress. After all, while she may be keeping her fight choreography skills honed in WWE, there's not a lot of room for tactical gun use in the wrestling ring.
Mile 22 is in theaters on August 17. Rousey's next WWE match finds her facing Alexa Bliss for the Raw Women's Championship at SummerSlam. Make sure you can check out GameSpot's SummerSlam predictions.
