Henry Cavill Explains How His And Sam Rockwell’s Dual Train Fight Sequence In Argylle Was Filmed, And It Sounds Exhausting

Henry Cavill walks out of smoke in a green velvet jacket in Argylle.
(Image credit: Apple)

Henry Cavill is becoming a spy in AppleTV+’s Argylle, which is coming to theaters this February. As we look forward to the exciting release on the 2024 movie schedule, the former Superman actor has shared the story behind a rather intense train fight sequence he worked on alongside Sam Rockwell, and it sounds like it was an overwhelming amount of work. 

Argylle takes place in two realities, one of an introverted spy novelist named Elly Conway, played by Bryce Dallas Howard, in her own life, and that of her imagined world starring her protagonist Agent Argylle (Cavill). Early in the film, there’s apparently a sequence that takes place in both of these worlds. In a scene where Elly is being saved by attackers while aboard a train by Sam Rockwell’s Aiden Wilde, she imagines Argylle in his place, which proved to be quite the technical challenge for the two actors. As Cavill shared: 

Sam and I were watching each other and just trying to make sure that we had a similarity of movements. Certain movements worked better for him, so I would mimic those, and then different movements in other places worked better for me, so he would copy those. Fight scenes are tricky and complex, especially in a cramped space like that with lots of hard edges.

While speaking to Entertainment Weekly, Cavill explained that he had to carefully watch the movements of Sam Rockwell in the dual train fight scene and pay attention to mimicking each other’s movements. They decidedly switched off on picking which ways they would do the choreography that would work for each of them. As Cavill continued: 

It’s quite nice doing these things when you have someone doing the exact same work as you. So I do my bit, or Sam does his thing, and the other one gets to rest. The camera moves on, and we get to have a nice break. It was definitely a new way of doing things, but I enjoyed it. It was a good challenge.

While the scene seems like it was not easy by any means, it sounds like Henry Cavill welcomed the challenge, and he actually enjoyed getting to work with Sam Rockwell on it. You can see a tease for the sequence in the Argylle trailer below: 

As you can see the Argylle cast is absolutely stacked between Henry Cavill, Bryce Dallas Howard and Sam Rockwell acting alongside Bryan Cranston, Dua Lipa, John Cena, Catherine O’Hara, Samuel L. Jackson and Ariana DeBose. The movie comes from director Matthew Vaughn, who made the Kingsman movies, two of the X-Men prequels, First Class and Days of Future Past along with Kick-Ass and Stardust

Vaughn has previously described this movie as “very meta” which is proved by Howard playing the author of the book Argylle, Elly Conway, which is so shrouded in mystery that many Swifties have theorized its Taylor Swift under a pseudonym.

Thankfully, we’ll be able to see the dual train fight scene that Cavill and Rockwell both worked so hard on the big screen come February 2. At a later date that has yet to be revealed, the movie will be available to those with an Apple TV+ subscription as well. 

Sarah El-Mahmoud
Staff Writer

Sarah El-Mahmoud has been with CinemaBlend since 2018 after graduating from Cal State Fullerton with a degree in Journalism. In college, she was the Managing Editor of the award-winning college paper, The Daily Titan, where she specialized in writing/editing long-form features, profiles and arts & entertainment coverage, including her first run-in with movie reporting, with a phone interview with Guillermo del Toro for Best Picture winner, The Shape of Water. Now she's into covering YA television and movies, and plenty of horror. Word webslinger. All her writing should be read in Sarah Connor’s Terminator 2 voice over.