Cena's faced his share of challenges in the wrestling arena and now he's poised to take on the challenge of being an 'action movie hero' in feature films. At the LA press day for Fox Atomic and WWE Films' 12 Rounds, Cena said he'd like to stick with the action genre for a while and see where it leads. "Everyone always brings up the void that there is between the marquee guys in the '80s, the Stallones, the Schwarzeneggers and what we have today. There are great action stars today, but I think the reason there isn't the great action star today is because if someone has success with an action film, they immediately go to another genre," explained Cena. "Arnold, and I'd just like to model myself after his successful career, he did action films to the point where you almost bored with it, and then he did Twins and Kindergarten Cop and all the other stuff. So I think that's why he got such a reputation for what he did. He could just put his name on the bill and people would go because they knew he was a big guy and he was going to kick ass. You knew what you were getting out of a Schwarzenegger film. I think the confusion nowadays is that Matt Damon will do Good Will Hunting and then he'll do the Bourne series and then he'll go back to doing something else. It's just a little bit of a disconnect for the audience, to be like, 'Hey, I just saw this guy in a serious movie. How is he going to go back to whipping ass again?' Or, 'I just saw him make fun of himself. How is he going to go back to whipping ass again?' So for me, at least for now, I'd like to stick with the action movie."
12 Rounds attracted Cena's attention because it had a different sort of bad guy threatens good guy dynamic. "I fell in love with it only because at 6 foot, 250 pounds it's tough to find a super villain physically capable of matching up onscreen with me. So the fact that I was essentially competing against myself for these twelve rounds or twelve challenges really appealed to me," offered Cena. "The fact that I was a normal guy rather than some super cop that was indestructible, that caught my eye, too. So I said, 'Listen, you've got to get me a script and I'll get it to the boss and I think we can make this movie.' He got me a script. I handed it to my boss Vince McMahon and I said, 'We're making this movie.' He read it through once and he shared the same enthusiasm for it that I did and before I knew it we were in New Orleans making the movie."
And Cena believes they brought on just the right director to helm the project. "They couldn't have picked anyone better," said Cena of director Renny Harlin. "He's so hungry to make great projects and was really a team captain from the word go. The first time that I ever met him I knew that he wasn't expecting much from my performance because he didn't know very much about me and who I was as a person. Whenever you Google search John Cena all you see is wrestling footage. So I'm pretty sure Renny had some preconceived notions about what to expect - very little. As I walked through the preproduction offices, literally not even setup, it's three days into the movie and people are still unpacking boxes. Renny's office is all the way down the hall. It's about three quarter's the size of this room with one window and the door. I walked in and literally every piece of sheetrock is covered with five by seven photos from movies. He turned around in his chair and said, 'I'm Renny Harlin. How do you like your movie?' If you started at one side of the door and looked to the other side of the door the movie was already shot. He'd taken it frame by frame. All the walls were covered, ceiling to floor. I just couldn't believe that someone was that prepared on the third day of shooting. This guy had obviously done his homework. He knew how he wanted the movie to look even before he met the cast and he was covering his own bases not knowing what to expect with me. If he got 'the old, stereotypical big, dumb wrestler,' he knew that he was still doing a great movie."
Getting Physical in 12 Rounds
Cena's in unbelievable shape and did most of his own stunts in 12 Rounds. "I did most everything," confirmed Cena. "This was actually the first time I learned that there's no badge of honor in doing all of your own stuff. You need to do the majority of the stuff because it certainly helps, especially in a movie like this, which is based in the realism of the action. We didn't lean heavy on CG. We didn't lean heavy on back lot stuff. We filmed all this stuff out there, so it helps a lot when you're in a real scenario to see the face of your guy doing all this stuff. So, I learned that. But I also learned that if the lead guy goes down it's a financial disaster. I was really gung-ho about it, going, 'I want to do this and I want to do this…,' but there were only a very few things where it was literally a matter of shutting the picture down. They said, 'We can't have you do this.' But I was hanging from an elevator shaft. I drove the fire truck. I surfed on the street car. I wrecked all those cop cars. I drove the Camaro. I jumped out of the helicopter and all of that stuff, jumped out of the ten story building. So there were really just a few moments that I didn't do."
