This article contains spoilers for “28 Years Later: The Bone Temple.”
In “28 Years Later: The Bone Temple,” the most thrilling set piece does not involve any hordes of undead. Instead, it’s the moment when Ralph Fiennes, as a mild-mannered doctor, puts on a showstopping performance to Iron Maiden’s “The Number of the Beast.”
“I wanted it to be the best ‘Lip Sync for Your Life’ that had ever happened,” the director Nia DaCosta said in a video interview, referring to the challenge from the reality competition show “RuPaul’s Drag Race.”
And indeed Fiennes’s Dr. Kelson is quite literally lip syncing for his life. He needs to convince the Jimmys, members of the cult led by the menacing Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal (Jack O’Connell), that he is indeed Old Nick, otherwise known as Satan. So against the backdrop of a memorial he constructed out of human bones, he blasts some heavy metal, puts on some leather and wields a lot of fire to make his case. He also uses some powder from his medicine cabinet to drug the Jimmys, heightening the rock concert effect.
It’s a savvy measure that is telegraphed earlier in the movie when the audience learns that Kelson has maintained his record collection despite living in postapocalyptic Britain, grooving to Duran Duran.
“I think he was a big live music person,” DaCosta said. “I think he was that dude who was the oldest guy at the concert. He just likes good music. He would have loved Olivia Rodrigo.”
For the Jimmys, however, many of whom were born into this world with few creature comforts, DaCosta wanted to capture their first time hearing projected music. While Alex Garland’s screenplay referenced the specific Iron Maiden track, DaCosta was on her own to stage it as she saw fit. To work with Fiennes, DaCosta brought on the choreographer Shelley Maxwell, with whom she also collaborated on “Hedda” (2025). Maxwell came armed with references from which to pull.
“I looked at Butoh, which is the Japanese contemporary art form, just because it’s slow and it’s expressive and it’s very kind of folding inward and outward with the body, which I thought might be good for that beginning moment,” Maxwell said in a separate video interview. She also wanted to incorporate “something that would be quite outwardly expressive” and would be perceived almost as threatening to the Jimmys.
For that sensation she turned to the Maori haka dance. She thought Fiennes would like the idea of how “fierce and challenging it is,” and he did throw his whole body into the effort of filming.
“He’s so tapped into his physicality that he’s able to give his body the freedom to move from the top of his head straight down to the bottom of his foot in such a way that he can access, in totality, his spinal structure,” Maxwell said, adding that they played with the “twisted and crooked nature of the joints of the hands.”
DaCosta also conceived the sequence alongside her production designers Gareth Pugh and Carson McColl, who had the idea of bringing the fire performer “Otto” Nicola Giacona on board. Giacona stepped in for Fiennes during the moment when Kelson is wielding a contraption with flames sparking on either side. That material required its own form of choreography, Maxwell said, to figure out how the fire would react to the environment and achieve the desired look in tandem with the music.
Fiennes did have some fire work to do himself: He had to throw a torch into a precise location to ignite the ring of fire that surrounds him.
“I don’t know if he ever missed the throw,” DaCosta said.
The special effects team was wary of pulling off the flaming ring because of the difficulty of the execution. To make it work they had to build a trench for the fire that had to be covered with grass and sod for the other sequences in that location.
In between each take involving fire, the fire department had to hose down the entire set with water, DaCosta said, explaining that the actual bone temple was made of a material that was “highly flammable.” That didn’t stop Fiennes from being eager to climb to the top of the tower of skulls.
“My stunt coordinator was like, ‘he can go high, but I need to have a wire on him,’” DaCosta said, adding, “Ralph was like, ‘I don’t want a wire,’ but he wanted to go high.’” It ended up being “fine,” she said, but she cut the ascension because it didn’t feel as “mystical” as having him just appear at the top.
And, to cap it off, Fiennes was belting Iron Maiden, which DaCosta incorporated into the sound mix. He was indefatigable, and, according to Maxwell, “150 percent in.”
“Every time we did it was so fun,” DaCosta said. “Ralph was so energetic and amazing and he did it over and over again.”
The post How Ralph Fiennes Rocks Out to Iron Maiden in ‘The Bone Temple’ appeared first on New York Times.
