The Making of an Action Classic

The following submit accommodates some minor spoilers for John Wick: Chapter 4.

John Wick: Chapter 4 is the end result of an virtually nine-hour story in regards to the very unhappy and really violent life of its title character, a former hitman who simply wished to dwell a humble life together with his pet dammit, however can not appear to flee his previous as a killer for rent. And most of these 9 hours have concerned motion scenes of each possible sort: Hand-to-hand fight, shootouts, sword battles, knife fights, together with chases on bikes, vehicles, and even horseback. How do you convey all of that to an in depth and high what you’ve accomplished earlier than, suddenly?

By strolling up a flight of stairs, of course.

Ah, however that is no bizarre stroll up some steps. John Wick: Chapter 4 concludes with a blinding sequence the place John (the seemingly indefatigable Keanu Reeves) should arrive at a Parisian church by daybreak with the intention to take part in a duel together with his sworn enemy. If he doesn’t make it in time, he shall be executed. And so stated enemy sends what looks as if half of Paris after John to delay his arrival.

After making his means by way of the town, pursued on foot and by automotive, he finds himself on the backside of an huge set of stairs. There are a whole lot of steps and dozens of enemies, and he’s acquired solely a handful of minutes to make it to the highest. And as soon as he will get to the highest … he will get knocked the complete means again to the underside and should make a second climb at an even quicker tempo.

I’ve solely seen John Wick: Chapter 4 as soon as (to this point), however I am completely sure this stairwell sequence — and particularly that second the place John Wick tumbles down dozens upon dozens of stairs solely to stand up and begin to climb once more — will go down in historical past as one of the best motion sequences of the twenty first century. When I had the prospect to interview the film’s director, Chad Stahelski, I made a decision to concentrate on simply this scene: How he conceived it, what impressed it, how he shot it, and how this sure-to-be legendary scene matches into the movie as an entire.

The Concept

Stahelski, who directed or co-directed all 4 John Wick motion pictures and has spent many years in Hollywood working as a stuntman, stunt coordinator, and battle choreographer, says that there are primarily two approaches to the creation of an motion sequence: Inside out or outdoors in.

“When you choreograph martial arts, we call it ‘the maze,’” Stahelski explains. “Picture Jackie Chan. He’s always running and fighting; that’s how you suspend disbelief when he’s fighting multiple attackers. You don’t just stand a spot and let them come to you. That was more like a Bruce Lee mentality. Jackie does the running fight scene. And if he’s fighting a tall guy, he’ll go into a phone booth. There’s an environmental element to it, a set piece element to it. That’s more the school of thought I’m from.”

That strategy is throughout John Wick: Chapter 4, significantly within the jaw-dropping sequence that precedes the stairwell battle the place John fends off enemies across the Arc de Triomphe. “We had this idea,” Stahelski says, “that we wanted a movable set where you’re fighting the environment as well as you’re fighting people … an ever-changing set piece. We’re like ‘Well, how do I get the set to move?’

From that initial impulse, Stahelski and his team gradually settled on a fight involving moving cars. “But just an intersection would be boring,” he observes. “So we’re just gonna make a roundabout and we’re gonna have 200 cars keep circling. So the walls are always changing, and we’re just gonna fight in the middle of that, and the cars aren’t going to care, they’re just gonna keep moving. So now you have to worry about the set piece and you have to worry about the opponent. That’s an example of inside out; that was a concept that we had to build outward and figure out how to do it.”

The staircase sequence was an instance of the alternative strategy; the skin in technique. Rather than eager to shoot a scene on a staircase, Stahelski and his staff discovered the stairwell first and that in flip impressed the battle that they created.

Influences

The all-important French church that John Wick should attain is Sacré-Cœur, one of Paris’ most iconic landmarks. Stahelski’s want to shoot Chapter 4’s climax there got here from a considerably shocking place.

“I’m a big fan of Amélie, believe it or not,” Stahelski says. “And that film’s third act starts at Sacré-Cœur. So I put on all my location scout lists; ‘I want to see Sacré-Cœur!’ And on the second day, we saw Sacré-Cœur, and we walked up the main steps, and I‘m like ‘Oh, that’s cool, we’ll figure something out here.’”

Stahelski says the feverish race to the church additionally drew inspiration from High Noon, the 1952 Gary Cooper Western a few lone sheriff who should resolve whether or not to flee his submit or stand and battle when he learns that an outlaw he despatched to jail is coming to kill him. (Cooper’s High Noon character is known as Kane, whereas Donnie Yen’s character in John Wick: Chapter 4 simply occurs to be named Caine.) Stahelski claims he additionally thought quite a bit about Buster Keaton, the sensible silent comic and filmmaker who, like most of Stahelski’s actors, did his personal stuntwork.

“All I could think about was Buster Keaton,” Stahelski reveals, “How would Buster Keaton do it? Buster would walk all the way up, he’d fight his way up, he’d trip at the top step, he’d fall all the way back down, then look back up and go “F—.” I at all times have a look at it from a silent movie perspective. And that’s the way it all took place.”

The Location

READ MORE: Chad Stahelski Confirms a John Wick Fan Theory

Initially on that fateful location scout in Paris, Stahelski and his staff walked up Sacré-Cœur’s entrance steps. But then they started wandering across the web site in search of potential spots to shoot. That’s after they made the invention that sparked every little thing you see on display.

“We walked around, and we came to these other steps,” Stahelski continues, “and all I could think of was William Friedkin’s The Exorcist. That stair fall in that film. And I’m looking down — it was at nighttime — and I saw the fog, and I’m like ‘Oh no, dude. John Wick’s going down this.’”

“My stunt coordinator, Scott Rogers, says ‘That’d be a bitching stair fall.’ I’m like ‘No, no, no, we gotta run him up it. Because Keanu, he hates stairs. Just to make him suffer, we’re going to make him walk all the way up. And before he gets to the top step, I’m going to knock him back down and we’re going to do the biggest stair fall you’ve ever seen. And I’m going to make him climb it up again with Donnie Yen.”

Longtime John Wick followers will recall that this isn’t the primary time the character has taken a tumble down some stairs. In the center of a battle between John and Cassian (Common) in John Wick: Chapter 2, the pair threw one another down a lot smaller set of steps, then acquired up and saved combating. It’s one of a number of callbacks and homages to earlier John Wick motion pictures sprinkled all through Chapter 4, which make the entire movie a bit of a curtain name for the franchise, one thing Stahelski confirms was very a lot intentional.

“We’re very aware of that,” he says. “And that’s the silent movie gag of it all; repetition, making fun of ourselves, letting you know we’re in on the joke. I think that is important, because you can have some pretty serious thematics and emotional content, but at the end of the day, we’re audience members, too. And that makes us laugh.”

Shooting the Biggest Stair Fall Ever

Stahelski scheduled 5 days to shoot the stairwell sequence outdoors Sacré-Cœur. It ended up taking seven, partially as a result of Stahelski prefers to shoot motion scenes so as, which takes longer.

“I’m sure every other director you talk to, they all say we shoot out of order. I’m incredibly anal about shooting in order as much as I can,” he explains. “Obviously, there’s lighting, there’s environment, or it starts to rain, you have to bail, the actor’s unavailable. But as much as I can, I don’t try to abide by any schedule other than trying to make great shots happen. And if it makes people sit around for a little bit, or if. it makes the crew relight a little more … I think what f—s up action sequences sometimes is one unit’s doing this, another unit’s doing that. There needs to be an organic flow.”

Stahelski additionally notes there’s something of a false impression about how battle scenes are achieved, no less than on John Wick motion pictures. There is intricate choreography that have to be rehearsed and memorized, however that doesn‘t mean when Stahelski arrives on set he knows exactly what he’s going to do, or shoots issues precisely in accordance with the preliminary plan.

“People are always shocked when I tell them Keanu doesn’t know all the fights. He knows all the pieces,” Stahelski continues, “He can perform anything. But he comes to set going ‘Okay, what’s Chad going to change today?’ And by the second day in a fight scene, it’s flipped on its head and everybody’s like ‘What the…?’ and we’re choreographing on the spot. You can ask my choreographers, I drive them bats— crazy.”

For Stahelski, fights, like another concept, “should evolve … I thought the [stairwell] fight was going to turn out one way, and then realized that I was wrong. We had a plan, but that plan lasted two days and went out the f—ing window when we saw how cool the stairs were. So yeah, you try to stay in order and you create as you go so you don’t backend yourself. I’m a big fan of that.”

The Man Who Fell to Earth

The final second on this bravura sequence comes when John Wick lastly, after minutes of capturing and working and punching, makes it to the highest of the Sacré-Cœur stairs solely to instantly go tumbling all the best way again down in a collection of lengthy takes. It’s brutal, painful — and sort of hilarious. So I needed to know: Who took that fall?

“Vincent. We’re talking about Vincent [Bouillon], the French stuntman who was doubling Keanu most of the time,” Staheski reveals. “We had two main doubles for him. Vincent is the one that did the stair fall you see in the movie.”

It may appear to be a fragile matter to ask somebody to fall down a whole lot of stairs — or, even worse, to ask them to do it a second time so you could have a couple of take to work with within the enhancing room, however Stahelski says that doesn’t actually issue into the method.

“You’re with some of the best stunt people in the world and you’re all standing looking at a staircase. What do you think is going through their heads?” he laughs. “They’re not thinking ‘What’s the easiest way down there?’ They’re thinking “F— me, we’re about to create a legend!”

The Art of a Stunt Fall

Part of what makes Stahelski such an excellent director of stunts is that he’s been a performer of stunts himself. (He famously doubled Keanu Reeves on the unique Matrix motion pictures.) So I requested him: How do you are taking an enormous fall just like the one in John Wick: Chapter 4? Is there an artwork to falling so it seems to be good however you don’t kill your self? The secret, he advised me, is one thing known as “kinesthetic sense” or “air awareness,” together with a complete lack of concern about one’s personal welfare.

“You can’t hold back,” he provides. “You have to not worry about getting hurt. It’s a mindset more than physicality. Granted, our stunt team, our fight guys or stunt doubles, they’re some of the best in the game. As much as I spend time on casting, I’ll spend as much time casting the stunt people because I know what I’m gonna put them through. There’s got to be a genuine we-want-to-do-better-than-the-people-before-us kind of thing. So we get those kinds of mindsets. You need to have the physical ability and the mindset of ‘No, I’m going to do this. We’re going to make something special.’”

That identical mindset turns out to be useful when issues don’t fairly work out as deliberate on the primary take. As Stahelski notes, on Vincent Bouillon’s first try on the stair fall, he didn’t get very far.

“Take one: [Bouillon] did the big kick, landed, but he got hung up in the railing literally in the first ten steps. So it was a cut. He took a beat, and I’m like ‘F— dude, that was awesome. You all right?’ He’s like ‘Yeah, I’m ready to go again.’ The second take is what you see in the movie. That’s legit. He goes and he goes. That’s a hundred something steps. As far as we know, it’s the longest one we’ve seen. All in one. There’s no stitching. It’s an honest to god one-taker.”

But even after getting a terrific take, and probably the longest stair fall within the historical past of film stunts, the crew wasn’t accomplished.

“It’s funny,” Stahelski laughs, “I don’t know if I was being a jerk, but I was like [to Bouillon] ‘Look, it’s just not enough.’ Like it was fun, I get the gag, but the whole thing needs to be subversive. I want the audience to clap and go ‘What the f—?’ But at the same time, how do I get them again? And then Vincent and this guy Florian [Beaumont] who was doubling the [main villain] character, came up and said ‘We’ve got an idea for you: I’m going to go down again. And I’ll go all the way down.’ And I’m like ‘Okay, let’s see it.’

This time they wanted to add a “tabletop” to the autumn, the place earlier than Bouillon fell down the steps, he’d spin and hit a light-weight submit first.

“Dude, there’s no way,” Stahelski replied. “You’re not going to be conscious.” But the stunt staff insisted they may pull it off.

“So they do this second one,” Stahelski advised me. “First take — it was a one-taker. They threw Vincent, he wrapped around and hit so hard. If I played you the real track, you can hear half the crew groaning. Like, they turned away. And then he goes down three more sets of stairs. I never thought he’d make it past the first one. So that’s what’s in the movie. That’s people doing what they love.”

A Stairwell That Isn’t Just a Stairwell

John Wick: Chapter 4’s stairwell battle works as a terrific second of visible pleasure, pathos, and humor, however it’s greater than that. Starting from the underside of this insurmountable impediment, filmed from an angle that makes it appear to be John Wick is to this point underground he may as effectively be within the pits of hell, just for him to climb to the floor (the place, of all issues, a church awaits), lends the complete sequence some main spiritual overtones.

The stairwell “just fit with the location, the story, the theme. It all just came together,” Stahelski concurs. It sequence additionally works, in his phrases, as “a metaphor for the movie as a whole.”

It works as a metaphor for filmmaking on the whole too; each film is a bit of an unattainable journey towards lengthy odds and countless hurdles and hindrances. Once you resolve one downside, two extra crop as much as knock you all the best way again down the proverbial staircase once more. Stahelski says the John Wick staff knew the sequence was good whereas they had been capturing it. And the response from audiences to this point has confirmed that intuition.

“We’ve been doing the tour here,” he notes, “and I think it’s eight times now that we’ve screened the movie. There hasn’t been a single audience that hasn’t either cheered or gone ‘What the f—!’ We knew on the day we were gonna show people something special. I think that’s our obligation to entertainment.”