John Hamm broke the news recently on The Ellen Show that — after breaking both of his arms on the third day of shooting their new movie Tag — Jeremy Renner had to wear CGI sleeves during filming so his casts could be edited out. (Renner himself actually talked about the stunt mishap on The Tonight Show last summer, but he didn’t say what movie it was for at the time.) This left everyone to wonder: Does this mean Jeremy Renner has crazy video game arms in this light action comedy about friends playing tag with each other?! But in a newly published interview with Entertainment Weekly, the actor — who fell while doing a stunt on a very tall stack of chairs — clarifies where you can spot his computerized appendages.
“I went back to shoot that day,†Renner says. “I didn’t take anything out of the cast and they had to put like a clean sleeve over my arm, because I didn’t want to take it off right after I just broke it; I needed it to set, I wanted the bone to set, so I think they had to CGI my arm or something in just that one scene, but the rest of it, you know, it all went on okay.†Renner also says, however, “[I] couldn’t rotate my hands but I could move my arms up and down kind of like a robot, but I would do anything that didn’t hurt essentially.†His character is the only one in the movie who has never been tagged, and in the trailers he is some sort of ninja who can evade any and all challengers who come at him. This seems like something you’d at least have to rotate your hands for, or be able to move your arms more fluidly than a rigid robot could. So while we have no proof to the contrary, it sure seems likely that Renner’s arms would be digitally enhanced in more than just one scene. Along with being a fictional master of tag, the actor may also be a real life master of lies.
Then again, in addition to searching for traces of arm CGI, an equally fun game to play while watching Tag could be Spot the Cast, since, as the Ringer pointed out, you can actually see the brace on Renner’s right arm in one scene from the trailer. It’s the same scene, in fact, that Renner told Jimmy Fallon he shot immediately after returning to set from the hospital. So get good and familiar with Renner’s arm protection via his Instagram, where the cast stuck around for about a month, and then train your eyes to catch it in Tag.