Scott Adkins On Why His New Action Comedy Film Is The Perfect Mental Break - Exclusive

Action star Scott Adkins believes his genre-bending new movie is the perfect mental vacation from the strife of 2020 — and given the flick's high-concept premise, he may have a point. The Intergalactic Adventures of Max Cloud is an escapist sci-fi action comedy in the spirit of Flash Gordon, Galaxy Quest, or Guardians of the Galaxy, with a Jumanji-style twist.

In Max Cloud, game-obsessed Sarah (Isabelle Allen) discovers a hidden room inside of her favorite game and finds herself inside the body of spaceship chef Jake (Elliot James Langridge). That's where she meets Adkins as the hero name-checked in the title. As the British-born actor and martial artist told Looper during our exclusive interview, the whimsical spirit of the script reminded him of the 1988 Tom Hanks classic Big. "It was a cool idea with a lot of room for comedy, obviously, but action as well, which is my bread and butter," he explains. "It [checked] all the boxes that I was looking for at the time."

As the star of the Undisputed franchise and several beloved direct-to-video action vehicles, Adkins' reputation as a bona fide genre badass carries some weight. The Intergalactic Adventures of Max Cloud is comedic in tone, but the stunt work and fight sequences needed still needed to meet his exacting standards. After all, he kickstarted his career working with Hong Kong legends Sammo Hung and Jackie Chan.

"I was very fortunate that my first action movies were directed by the likes of those guys, because really they're the very best," he says. "Sammo Hung is arguably the best action director that has ever been... He's phenomenal at what he does, the way he moves the camera, the way he creates the fighting. I was able to learn from the very best, learn how it's supposed to be done in order to make it look as good as possible, and I was able to take that through for the rest of my career, with a full understanding of what it took to make a good fight sequence."

Adkins credits director Martin Owen and particularly his friend Andy Long (a.k.a. Andreas Nguyen) with the success of the action side of Max Cloud. "Andy is a member of the Jackie Chan stunt team," Adkins explains, "and he's very experienced and very clever as a filmmaker, as well as a stunt performer. So I felt like I was in real good hands. I let Andy just take over and did what he wanted to do and it looked really good."

He's also full of praise for his co-stars, including Sons of Anarchy's Tommy Flanagan (whom he calls "a force of nature") and Captain Marvel's Lashana Lynch, who will next be seen in the forthcoming James Bond adventure No Time to Die. 

"I don't think she'd done the 007 movie [when we shot Max Cloud], that came shortly afterwards," Adkins recalls of working with Lynch. "She was good in Captain Marvel. She's a fabulous actress. I didn't get that much to do with her, although I did give her a good kick in the face at the end of the movie. That's how I deal with the new 007! A nice quick jump, spin, kick to the jaw! Not a real kick. She's great. All of the actors were great." 

Adkins has his own history with the James Bond franchise — as he'll proudly tell you, he completed the classic first-person shooter game Goldeneye 007 for the Nintendo 64 "at the hardest level." While he enjoyed games like Karate Plus and Sonic the Hedgehog back in the day, Adkins confesses that he's no longer an avid gamer — certainly nowhere near the level of Sarah in Max Cloud, for example. "I used to play Sonic a lot, but then I had to tell myself to stop, because it was like the drink getting a hold of me. I wasn't getting anything [else] done. I had to force yourself to never touch a video game again. [GoldenEye] was when I took it too far. I was a lost boy at that point." 

The Intergalactic Adventures of Max Cloud is available now via Vudu, Redbox, and other digital platforms.