Keanu Reeves’s John Wick: Chapter 4 was released on 24 March 2023. After 3 years John Wick was seen back in action with director Chad Stahelski. Many people described the movie as the greatest action film ever made. Reeves garnered a lot of appreciation and love from fans and critics for his action thriller movie.
The 58-year-old actor delivered some extravagant crazy action scenes in all the chapters of John Wick. During an interview, Stahelski the director of the movie discussed the inspiration behind John’s wild action sequences.
John Wick director learned action stunts under Jackie Chan
Chad Stahelski is a stuntman and a director. He established the legacy of the incredible action movie series John Wick. Keanu Reeves and the 54-year-old director released the first chapter of John Wick in the year 2014. As Stahelski is a stuntman himself, whenever he is directing a movie with Reeves especially he always tries to come up with something unexpected. The stuntman revealed that for a while he trained under the legendary Jackie Chan. The director explained how he felt when he was learning under the Police Story actor, Stahelski said,
“If you can choreograph up a flight of stairs, that’s actually limiting in a lot of ways and that gives you more creative ideas It’s funny, you know, I spent a lot of time learning under Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Sammo Hung – and Jackie’s been very incredible with his philosophy about action, how to do it, whereas most choreography teams and stunt teams shy away from painting himself in a corner, or trying not to do things in tight spaces, or trying to be logistically easy by having a big room and wire.”
He further added,
“Jackie will always find literally the hardest way to do something, like ‘I’m going to do it on a snowy hill, pour oil on it, light it on fire and go upside down, and then I’ll be naked.’ He’ll just make it as hard as possible.”
One interesting fact that the 54-year-old director shared was that Chan himself didn’t know how he aced a particular stunt. But the Hong-Kong born star suggested that once you solve it on your own you will never forget it.
Keanu Reeves said that he and Chad Stahelski discuss ideas before doing any action scenes
Reeves and Stahelski both are way too much serious when it comes to coming up with ideas for any action scenes. The actor-director duo pitch ideas to each other and include those ideas in the movie. During an interview, the Knock Knock actor stated,
“Yes. It starts with ideas like, for example, I don’t know if you saw John Wick: Chapter 3, but there was a knife fight, it started with the idea of Chad saying, ‘What would it be like to have a knife fight that’s like a snowball fight?’I had the idea of like, ‘Well, what if John Wick rode a horse, you know?’ And so, we start with the idea.”
The 54-year-old filmmaker also recalled how Reeves used to work on action scenes all night to ensure precision in his work. Stahelski further stated that the Canadian actor considers himself fortunate every day to be able to do what he loves, which is acting.
Source: Comic Book Movie; The Star
