Summary

• Eric Bana returns as Federal Agent Aaron Falk in Force of Nature: The Dry 2, investigating a missing woman.
• The sequel features a female-driven story with flashbacks, exploring Falk's character in dual timelines.
• Bana is open to a third movie adaptation if the right approach is found, with author Jane Harper's support.

Eric Bana is back as the troubled Australian Federal Agent Aaron Falk in Force of Nature: The Dry 2. The past few years have seen the actor, best known for his roles in the likes of 2003's Hulk, 2009's Star Trek and 2014's Deliver Us From Evil, return to his home country of Australia for a variety of projects, namely that of the 2020 adaptation of The Dry. Based on Jane Harper's novel of the same name, the first movie followed Falk as he headed to his childhood hometown to investigate the apparent murder-suicide of one of his old friends.

With Force of Nature: The Dry 2, an adaptation of Harper's 2017 sequel book, Bana returns as Falk as he heads to a Victorian mountain range to participate in the search for a woman who went missing from a corporate hiking retreat with her four other female coworkers. Unbeknownst to the group, the woman, Alice, was acting as an informant for Falk in his investigation of the company's money laundering. As Falk tries to get the full story from the others about Alice's disappearance, he must determine if their plans were learned or if there is another motivation behind her going missing.

Alongside Bana, the ensemble Force of Nature: The Dry 2 cast includes Emmy-nominated The Last of Us star Anna Torv, Deborra-Lee Furness, Robin McLeavy, Sisi Stringer, Lucy Ansell, Jacqueline McKenzie, Tony Briggs and Richard Roxburgh. Bana is also producing the sequel with Robert Connolly, who returns as the writer/director of the mystery thriller after co-writing and directing the script for the original.

In honor of the movie's US release, Screen Rant interviewed Eric Bana to discuss Force of Nature: The Dry 2, getting to unearth new layers of Falk, the challenges of its on-location filming, and his thoughts on adapting Harper's final Falk novel, Exiles.

Bana & The Team Had One Rule For Making A Dry Sequel

Though the first two of Harper's books had been published by the time the original movie was made, Bana acknowledges that he and his producing partners never had plans to make a Dry sequel during production on the original, instead focusing on making "the greatest cinematic version" of the source material they could. When it became a hit, though, and they started having conversations about making a sequel, they kept this same rule in place:

Eric Bana: Yeah, well, when we made the first film, we never really, as producers, kind of allowed ourselves to imagine that we'd have a chance to do a second one. We just really knuckled down and tried to do the greatest cinematic version of The Dry that we could. And then the success of that film meant that we could start having a conversation about considering the second one, so yeah, we're pinching ourselves that we had the chance to do it. And we applied the same kind of rigor that we did to the first one, you know, "Does this setting, does this landscape afford itself to a cinematic experience? Let's try and do the best version we can."

Part of this guiding light played into the movie's premise and on-location filming, with Falk becoming more of a supporting player in a female-driven story and the settings showing off Australia's lush mountain greenery. Though acknowledging that the latter proved "brutal" for the cast and crew, it ultimately felt like a "beautiful" way to stay true to Harper's novel:

Eric Bana: Yeah, physically, it was brutal on the crew and the cast, but we knew that going in, we went searching for it. We always really loved the premise, we thought the premise was something that you don't see very often, or you haven't seen before. Five women on a corporate retreat, team-building exercise, go into the bush and get lost, and when they return, one of them's missing. We just always really loved that premise, and we felt like, in terms of cinematography, that, once again, Jane Harper had embedded the story in an amazing landscape. So, we felt really excited about that. I mean, it was brutal to film, but also beautiful.

I think particularly for audiences from overseas, I just hope they really enjoyed being transported. I always say if you can't be bothered flying to Australia, just check out our two films. [Laughs] It gives a really great snapshot of the Australian landscape in two very different, very true forms. This landscape I'm very comfortable in, I spend all my spare time on motorcycles in both of those landscapes, so they're very much a part of me.

And they're very Australian, and they may be quite different to the Australia that a lot of people from overseas have in their head. But this is true Australia to us, you know, so I'm really excited by the opportunity to travel these films, and The Dry traveled extremely well. So, we hope this one does as well for overseas audiences, and, opens up the perception of our country for people.

Force of Nature's Dual Timelines Allowed For A Lot More Layers Of Falk To Be Revealed

Much like the original movie and novel, Force of Nature: The Dry 2 utilizes flashbacks to explore its characters and story in a dual-timeline matter, particularly that of Falk and his own tragic past revolving around the mountain range Alice is lost in. Bana explains that this format was key to helping not only keep audiences hooked on the missing person search, but also better explore his central character:

Eric Bana: Yeah, it's interesting, because we worked really hard on the dual timelines, in terms of the backstory, and so forth. So, you sort of always know that the audience is also being informed by this concurrent storyline that's emerging from my past. So, it's a case of, "Well, how much do you layer that into your own performance? And how much of that do you let go?" And also, I obviously had the advantage that I was playing a character that I'd played before.

I hope some of the audience had seen the first film and knew him, but I wasn't assuming they knew everything about him. So, for Rob and I, it was just trying to calibrate Aaron in those scenes, and if they hadn't seen the first film, did we have enough in there between myself and my partner's character, Jacqueline McKenzie — who is just incredible — that she ekes out of him that we understand enough about him emotionally about what's going on, and how responsible he feels to Alice as a result of what happened to his mother when he was a child. So, the dual timelines really helped with that.

It's quite simple in the respect that we've done so much prep that I know exactly what we're shooting, what we've already shot, in that regard. So, it always feels to me like if it feels really true, it's a very easy thing to kind of allow yourself to imbue as an actor, and just think of it as for real. So yeah, in most cases, you're just thinking about what you've already shot, or we're planning to shoot.

Bana Is Unsure About A Third Dry Movie (Though Knows Harper Will Be Supportive If It Happens)

Given many book-to-movie adaptations take creative liberties with their source materials to translate to the screen, Bana acknowledges that there are a few changes made for Force of Nature: The Dry 2, particularly in regard to the flashbacks involving Falk's flashbacks. But despite these changes, the producer/star assures that Harper was "really supportive" of these creative choices, expressing his admiration for having the author's blessing and support of the movie:

Eric Bana: Yeah, we're pretty true, most definitely, to the premise and the core characters and the basic outline of the story. But Jane really trusts us, and really trusted us after the first experience. So, in terms of the backstory, there was a lot of things that Rob came up with when we were developing the adaptation to try and have these dual timelines that also sort of echoed what we did in The Dry, and she was very open to that, and loved the adaptation. She's been really supportive, which is great for us, because it doesn't always work that way. When you're doing book-to-film adaptations, the author isn't always thrilled and isn't always supportive, so we're very lucky to have Jane on board and as one of our partners.

Though the movie ends on a relatively closed note like its predecessor, a third book does exist in Harper's Falk-focused trilogy with 2022's Exiles, which also serves as a closure for the agent. While Bana acknowledges that he and his team are content with leaving the movie franchise where it is after Force of Nature, they are open to making the third movie if they find the right approach:

Eric Bana: We haven't yet. We're aware of the third book, Exiles. There's something about the ending of this that I actually really love for Aaron, so I think we're kind of okay both ways, whichever way we choose to go. And much like with the first film, we never thought of another film whilst we were making this one. We just knew we had to do as good a job as we could on the source material. So, it's not something we've the chance to kind of digest and get into. But I do think even if we did, I love this film as a standalone, and I also think it does work as an ending for Aaron, in many ways if we chose not to.

About Force of Nature: The Dry 2