Victoria Mahoney's approach to movie-making has been inspired by Christopher McQuarrie.
The Old Guard 2 director and Christopher - who is a frequent collaborator with Tom Cruise - are good friends, and Victoria has revealed how the filmmaker has influenced her approach to shooting action scenes.
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Victoria shared: "McQ is a very dear friend.
"I will say that I am a child of Korean action movies, so my connection to emotion and action comes from the amount of Korean films that I watch. Korean filmmakers and stunt teams do it so well and so honestly and so plausibly and so feverishly that it is just ingrained. So I actually didn’t know we shouldn’t be doing that.
"What McQ did for me — by way of our geeky spitball discussions that are endless year upon year — is [making sure] you preserve the emotionality in action as much as any other aspect of the drama surrounding the action. One of the things I enjoy most about action-drama is having a little bit of drama buck right up against action and have them both stand on their own."
Meanwhile, Victoria recently revealed that Charlize Theron dedicated "1,000 percent of herself" to The Old Guard 2.
The director praised Charlize for her whole-hearted approach to the project.
She told Deadline: "The thing about Charlize is, she comes hard, and she dedicates 1,000 percent of herself to every sequence, whether it’s trauma or action, and it’s visible.
"People know that, for many years we’ve all seen it, and we’ve witnessed it. But there is something really electrifying to see it up close in person, and she doesn’t leave anything on the field, as we say."
Victoria hailed the Oscar-winning actress as the "engine on the Old Guard franchise".
The director also suggested that Charlize actually helped to lift the performance levels of the film's cast and crew.
She explained: "I worked in pre-production for months with our fight choreographer, Georgi Manchev to make certain that the action throughout the movie had some sense of emotion.
"Obviously, and specifically the alley fight between Charlize’s Andromache character and Veronica Van’s Quynh character. It was vital that it had levels and layers and grounding in the heart, and this is why I mention this, I was excited when Georgi told me that Charlize was really moved the first time they auditioned the alley fight for her. Because, you know, it isn’t easy to make audiences feel when two people are fighting. My belief is, if audiences don’t feel anything in a fight scene, then what are we doing?
"So, what happens when someone like Charlize comes hard like that to any role is that everyone on the ground, you know, crew rises up to meet her and help make her dreams come true. And I’m really proud of what we all accomplished, and, let me tell you, Charlize is the engine on the Old Guard franchise – without a doubt."
