THE RAID Director Gareth Evans Reveals the Story He Wanted to Tell in THE RAID 3

Director Gareth Evans made a couple of the best and most badass action movies ever with The Raid and The Raid 2. There was a third film in the franchise that he plotted out, but unfortunately, he said that the third movie wouldn’t happen.

During a recent interview with Empire Spoiler Special Podcast (via Movie Web), Evans revealed the story he planned for the third movie, and it would have not focused on Iko Uwais's character Rama. The third film would have taken things in a new direction, and it would have overlapped with the second in its opening act. The third film would have spun out of one particular scene from the movie and focused on a Japanese kill squad sent to Jakarta to kill Boss Goto. He explains:

"The story was going to go back in time to the moment in The Raid 2 when the Goto Gang, the Japanese gang, are having a meeting, and Goto tells his right-hand man to take care of it, wipe out every corrupt cop and politician that they have on the books and start fresh. The Raid 3 would begin with Rama coming out of that building after having killed everybody and saying 'No, I'm done'. He walks away to [police officer] Bunawar, who'll be waiting for him in his car, he gets in and drives away.

“And you stay with the Japanese gang, who are like, 'What the fuck do we do now? Everyone's dead, we've got no-one to kill.' They get into their car, and as they're driving along all of a sudden this other car rocks up alongside them and just blitzes them, and the cars crash. Goto, his son, and his right-hand man are the only remaining survivors from that attack, and it cuts to credits and says 'The Raid 3.'

“Then it would jump back in time. The idea was that the right-hand man, after being told to kill off all the politicians and cops and wipe the clean slate, would call back to Tokyo to the big huge boss, and be like, 'Goto's going fucking nuts. This is fucing crazy, what do I do?' The call from HQ is, 'Keep him still, keep him close, we'll send people to take care of it, and if you do that for us, you can take over his turf.' The attack goes wrong, it's a kill squad from Japan who have turned up and taken out the Gotos. Goto has no idea that this right-hand man has betrayed him and set him up for the ambush.”

The director then reveals that the story would have moved out of the city and into the jungle! This was inspired by Arnold Schwarzenegger’s classic film Predator:

"They go off into hiding, all the way to the jungles of West Java. Goto arranges to meet up with this old mafia boss (played by) Christine Hakim, who has trained killers in her jungle retreat. She's providing protection for Goto because they go way back, she's the one who introduced him to Jakarta in the first place. The idea is this Japanese kill squad that's used to the streets of Tokyo suddenly have to deal with the terrain of a jungle-hunt, a bit like Predator in a way.

"Christine's militia, these guerrilla kids, would be taking care of this Japanese intrusion on their land. I didn't work out the whole thing, but at some point Goto's son would have got killed, he would have realised that it was the right-hand man who betrayed him all along, and they'd have some real gnarly tribal way of dealing with him. And Goto and this guerrilla gang of Indonesian killers would then go back to Tokyo in order to fuckingg take care of the people that ordered to kill him."

I would have loved to see this movie! I’m a huge fan of the first two Raid films, and this sounds like it would have gone to a whole new level of badassery! It’s so sad that this movie won’t get made. When asked if there was a chance, Evans said:

"I definitely think it would have pissed off an awful lot of people, so maybe now they know what I had planned, people will be like, 'You know what, don't worry about The Raid 3, we're good! Before I knew it, I was five years down the line, I'd made Apostle, we were starting to get production going on Gangs Of London. I couldn't see myself going back out to make The Raid 3. My interests had moved on to other projects.

"You work with other people, you meet other people and want to work with them again, you want to try different things, you find a story that suddenly captures your attention and that's the thing you want to do next. Things get offered to you that are hard to pass up on."

It’s a shame that we’ll probably never see this movie get made. I think that fans would have loved it!