The fourth John Wick movie opened this past weekend, meaning another round of Keanu Reeves massacring entire cities full of would-be assassins in unfathomably stylish action scenes. The movie is a hit right out of the gate, earning $73 million domestically and $137 million worldwide. That’s the biggest opening weekend haul for the series yet, and it couldn’t have happened to a better franchise.
The increasing notoriety of the John Wick movies has given director Chad Stahelski some weight to throw around in Hollywood. Stahelski started his career as a stunt double for Keanu Reeves on The Matrix, and thinks it’s high time for stunt people to be acknowledged at the Oscars. “We are as relevant as any department, and I’m gonna be a little arrogant and say, I think we’d add a little something to the Oscars,” he told Deadline. “It’s a legitimate win-win situation. No great stunt person or performer I know is doing it for accolades or statues. It doesn’t mean that much to us. But it is nice to be recognized by your peers. It’s time.”
Anyone who’s watched the John Wick movies can’t fail to be impressed so the stunt work, so I’m fully behind Stahelski here.
Of course, what we all want to know now is whether he’s working on a fifth John Wick movie, which might be tricky considering the ending of John Wick: Chapter 4. Beware SPOILERS ahead!
John Wick director thinks it’s time stunt people are acknowledged at the Oscars
So at the end of John Wick: Chapter 4, John Wick is dead. He gets shot in Paris, he collapses on the steps outside the Sacré-Cœur, and then we cut to a couple of characters visiting his grave.
Now, having watched movies before, I couldn’t help but think that Stahelski and Reeves left themselves an out here. When last we see him, John Wick is wounded but conscious. If they wanted to bring him back, it’d be as simple as saying that he conspired with Winston and others to erect that gravestone and go live his life peacefully somewhere…until he needed to get back into the game, of course. It would fit with the pulpy universe Stahelski and Reeves have created with these movies.
And indeed, Stahelski does sound open to reviving John Wick, so long as he and Reeves find the right idea. “You can walk in the next room to my office and you’ll just see whiteboard after whiteboard after whiteboard of sh** we haven’t done yet,” he told SyFy Wire. “I cut an hour out of this movie already. We’ve got literally a whole notebook with ideas in it. We cut sequences from the script that were written in the beginning. We could go on for days!”
If a gun was put to my head and they said ‘you have to make three more John Wick movies, could we sustain it with action set pieces and storyline threads and could we put in some tributes or love letter Easter eggs for things?’ Yeah, we could totally do that. The real question that Keanu and I keep saying is the why? As an audience member, what would you like to see John do? How many more times can I beat him up?”
The John Wick movies are known for their spectacular action set pieces, but they work as well as they do because that’s not all they are. The story, wild though it is, is well thought-out, and Stahelski puts just as much thought into that as into the scene where Keanu Reeves falls down 222 stone steps. “Story can’t just be the thing that happens in between action sequences,” he said. “It’s got to include the action sequences. It’s got to be the overlay, it’s got to be the thread that holds everything together. If I can find a way to get all my action in a storyline with the acting scenes, I’m good. I feel we have that in John Wick 4. If I can crack that on John Wick 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, great. I just don’t have that now. I have to figure that out.”
If I can come up with a way to do that and Keanu can package that into the spectacle of action or car chases or ninjas or whatever we’re doing, great. Right now, we have ideas for days, we have set pieces. I can travel the world and put set pieces together in any great city with architecture and art… Wherever we go, I can do nightclub scenes for days. Yes, we have all that. But the why, that’s what we need to figure out, [whether] we have an interesting story that would make you guys engaged.
Personally, I’m hoping he figures it out. Until then, John Wick 4 is playing in theaters right now.
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