John Wick: Chapter 4 is now available everywhere on 4K Ultra HD and Blu-ray, and to celebrate the release - as well as commemorate the acclaimed action franchise crossing the $1 billion mark overall - we caught up with director Chad Stahelski, who was more than happy to break down one of the most badass and beautiful action films in cinematic history!
We get right into the film's big ending, so be forewarned that this interview does contain full spoilers from the film, as he takes me through his intimate conversations with star Keanu Reeves about bringing the story of Baba Yaga to a close. Stahelski also walks me through a number of key sequences, including that final duel between John Wick and Caine, Arc de Triomphe chase, the epic battle between Donnie Yen and Hiroyuki Sanada, and a whole lot more.
He was also more than generous enough to share a quick update on his Ghost of Tsushima film, as well as how Ballerina and The Continental will factor into the franchise, and whether we could actually ever see a John Wick: Chapter 5.
Read on for our full SPOILER interview below, and please remember to SUBSCRIBE to my channel!
ROHAN: Congratulations on the franchise reaching $1 billion! Considering John Wick's modest beginnings, has that milestone sunk in for you yet? What has this whole journey with Keanu meant to you and your development as a filmmaker?
CHAD: It's still pretty new. Look, I think that's always been our little secret weapon is, Keanu and myself, and our little in-crowd of writers and crew, we just kind of put our heads down and we love what we do. We love the action, like we're still the guys that geek out over a Western or Samurai film, you know, or like the new camera rig. We just like making movies. If you came to our offices down here, it looks like a library with movie paraphernalia. It's like geek’s dream office, I guess. I think that's always the key, right? Love what you do.
When you have Keanu leading the charge, he's such a humble and grateful individual. You spend 10 minutes around him, you're gonna know that he loves what he does, he loves his life, he loves the people that love the same things he loves, and you are just grateful for every day to be here. So, when you realize you've made not one, not two, not three, but four films that people kind of dig, and it inspires people. I love seeing people that try to take John Wick moves, whether you rip it off or pay tribute, like it's one of the most flattering things you could ever imagine when you see people that like what you do. We've had a good response from people, and it's not just the money thing, it's just like, ‘Hey, man, you're gonna do more? You're gonna do the TV show? Or something like that. You’re just kind of flattered that they want to see more of the world that you've helped create. So, it’s very flattering. We're very thankful. We're also still like, really?
ROHAN: When I spoke to you after Chapter 3, you told me exactly how this story ends, with John’s death, and I naively didn't believe you - or, well, didn't want to believe you. What was that conversation like between you and Keanu when you realized Chapter 4 was the logical ending?
CHAD: Well, I think to be honest with you, it's how it started, we kind of reverse engineered the movie. We were in Japan after John Wick 3, and we're trying to figure out what could we do better.? Did we? Did we let people down? Did we not nail #3? And, when we decided, yeah, we didn't really finish it the way we wanted. We didn't finish on the big note, we didn't stick the landing. We’re very proud of Chapter 3, but we think maybe there's more to tell and maybe we could have done it in a better way. So, at the time, we were reading all these samurai treatises, you know, we tour around a lot, and when I travel, I try to read whatever I can about the place I’m going and we had really gotten into some samurai mythology and lore, and I was reading this book called The Hagakure, a treatise on samurai etiquette, and it's like the art of the way of dying, and you can't have a good death without living a good life, and we're like, okay, we're taking that line - ‘You can’t have a good death without having a good life’ - and, we're going to write a movie around it. Let's go.
So, we kind of already decided that, look, we don't know if John's gonna die or not die, we knew we wanted a little ambiguous ending, and we knew, in his mind, the only way out was to kill either John or John Wick, both physically or emotionally, however you want to do the metaphor. The character of John Wick or the persona of John Wick is got to come to termination, it's got to come to an end point, and then we just kind of worked backwards to write the story they gave us, you know, the scenes and the inspiration. How are we going to do this? And we're like, oh, we'll do it with friends and you can't have the antagonist be one of his very good friends if we want John to sacrifice himself. So, those last five minutes, he's lived a good life, so he deserves a good death, and this is how we say goodbye. We kind of worked the story backwards just from that one little phrase, actually. So, we kind of knew before we went into it, that's where we wanted to end up, if that helps.
ROHAN: Killing John Wick is no easy task - when did you sort of realize that a duel was the perfect farewell? And, then, you followed it up with that beautifully shot moment on the stairs - was that how you and Keanu always sort of envisioned it?
CHAD: We wanted the mechanics of how do you redeem this guy that spent three and a half movies shooting people in the face, right? And, it's like, well, he can't just die. to your point, you just don't want him to die in a fight scene or suddenly. We just want to build or reverse engineer out an act that spends the whole movie trying to bond him to these people. Like he's antagonistic to Donnie to Shamir to Bill, even Ian McShane at a time, and yet in the last act, we draw them all together, so all their fates are entangled into one moment. And, if John shoots Donnie, really no one else benefits. The only way to win is by John Wick sacrificing himself. If he does that, everybody wins. Everybody with John and if you look at it, even John wins, just not John Wick.
So, that was the tricky thing of how to spin the whole duel thing. We knew we wanted to duel. We knew we wanted him to sacrifice himself. We just didn't quite understand the storytelling mechanics to back up and get us there. That probably took us a while, you know, we're writing the script back and forth for like a year before we finally landed it and it was only like, I think it was less than two months before we rolled camera that we were like, ‘Oh! That's how we want it!’ That's after I'd sent a bunch of location scouts to Paris and found Sacré Coeur. We liked the imagery of the church, what that meant and going down the stairs. I have this favorite anime Cowboy Bebop, where Spike Spiegel dies on the stairs, and Hajime Yatate is a huge influence for me, the director of Cowboy Bebop and the creator. So, that all kind of came together when I saw the location.
ROHAN: There is a very hard, almost video game-like feel to some of the fight sequences, just when you think it’s over, another even deadlier challenge presents itself. Each sequence feels more visceral than before. What were things you did to elevate the action even further this time? Was it specific things you were doing during prep or did the stunning new locations help make these action scenes so fresh and unique?
CHAD: I think you're right, at some point, it does change your approach. I guess the mechanical approach is always the same. It's hard work over everything else, the way we train people, but the conceptual heavy lifting changes quite a bit. Most people, or most stunt teams or action teams will choreograph what they've already done or what they do, just with a different weapon or something like that. When you put body armor or you have to take things away, limitations are good for us. 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. 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, and you'll ask him, ‘Well, how do you do that?,’ and he's like, ‘I have no idea, but if I solve it, you'll never forget it.’ = And, that's the approach we've taken wich all the John Wicks. I have no idea how I'm gonna pull off half this stuff, I just know I'm gonna do the longest fighting run chase in the middle of five lanes of traffic, or I'm gonna go up 300 steps, throw him down, go back up and shoot it all in one shot. I'm gonna do this top shot with Dragon's Breath and light people on fire.
We really don't know how to do it, but we know we're gonna paint ourselves into a corner, and we're gonna go like, how do we make these guys harder to kill? How do we change what John Wick does? Well, John is gonna move like Keanu, we’ll make him a little bit better. We'll give him nunchunks. We'll give him tomahawks, we'll give them other weapons. But like the guys, what do we do with the B-side? What about the bad guys? Well, let's put them in Knights of the Round Table, you know, in the old days, when they used to fight with the swords and armor, they'd look for the weak spots in the armor, the neckline, the armpit, the groin, so we're gonna put our guys in armor, and you'll have to find those holes with a gun and shoot under the chin and shield the armpit. Well, sometimes they'll shoot him 10 times. We'll make Keanu run out of bullets, so we kind of paint ourselves into a corner, hoping that we'll find our way out in choreography, and if we do, it'll be memorable. It'll be something you haven't seen before, and that's how we be subversive in choreography. So, yeah, our approach did have to evolve, if nothing else, otherwise it'd be the same stuff you saw in John Wick 1.
ROHAN: There are so many amazing action sequences in the film - was there one in particular that you remember being considerably more difficult to pull off from concept to realization?
CHAD: The Arc de Triomphe, by far, I mean, you can't just go to the studio and ask, well, I need two hundred cars and two hundred stunt drivers for five months to rehearse this, like it's not gonna happen. So, you do your best. You get a few stunt guys, a few stunt drivers out on a runway or a parking lot, you start putting the pieces together of how we want to do the car hits, and how do we want to work the timing, so that when you get to the actual location, we get all our people on set with the crews, we can spend half the day rehearsing, the other half shooting what we rehearsed, and start blocking through the massive sequences. But, that took about five months to conceive from start to finish, and then, you know, less than, I think it was six, seven days, seven days to shoot the whole sequence, but that's because we've been rehearsing for five months.
ROHAN: There's a very deliberate shot at the end with John Wick's dog looking over to the side, and while we don't see what he's looking at, it's hard not to wonder whether John made it out alive. Was that left in to leave the door open for a future story? What are your thoughts on a potential Chapter 5 now that this film has been out a few months?
CHAD: Yeah, I think, to be honest with you, it’s both. I'm just not smart enough, or creative enough right now to crack that code. So, to both your questions, one, yes, that is a very deliberate shot with the dog. That's meant, in my little mind, to [frick] with you a little bit, because ambiguity, like is he still or not? Because again, the whole thing is a myth. It's a campfire story, all four movies. So, in my mind, John Wick, is he real? Is he not real? It's a story about fate and consequence. So, either way, John Wick died at the end of that movie. Now, is John still alive? Maybe, but the persona of the assassin, has had to pass away so that John can move forward. Take that metaphorically, take that physically, whatever you want to do. Is there a body in the ground? Is there not a body in the ground? Right?
To your second question, look, if Keanu and I can't come up with something else, if that's the limit of our creativity in the John Wick world, I agree with you, I think it's a fine ending. I think it's a good farewell and a tribute to something that we loved and we'd love to work with, but if I woke up tomorrow and I was like, I got it! I got the perfect way, and we really believe in it, I’d go make that movie tomorrow. I just haven't come up with that thought yet.
ROHAN: The post-credits sequence focuses on Caine walking toward his daughter and being hunted by Akira - was that intended to tease a future story or was the intention more to show that no one in this line of work really gets a happy ending?
CHAD: I think if you ask Keanu and I, we’re a little bit more hardboiled than most. You'd have to talk to Keanu, but I would bet that he feels the same as me that, in this world, I'm kind of with what you said, no one gets a happy ending. Take that for what it may. But, I think, in another world, there's another way to look at it, like, you know, don't look at it like does Donnie Yen's character Kaine die? Does he not? Does Akira kill him? I think it's what what are the ramifications? Or what are the consequences of what just happened with more Rina’s character, Akira. Did we create another assassin? Or is she going to make the choice not to? That's the real question. Did we pass on fate? Or did we pass on a choice? And, that's how we look at it, but again, for me personally, as an audience member, everybody died. *laughs* I like it a little dark like that.
ROHAN: Were there ever any plans to bring back familiar faces from the past like Halle Berry or Common or John Leguizamo? Or, even potentially introduce new faces like Ana de Armas' Ballerina?
CHAD: Yeah, no, like there's always talk about that. Look, and I love Halle Berry, I love John Leguizamo, I loved Common, Mark Dacascos, Jason Mantzoukas, all these other characters that you've seen the other movies, I've loved all of them. Asia Kate Dillon, I've loved all these characters. It's just I felt this because there's so many other franchises that do do that, it was more of a little bit of a challenge to myself. Can I come up with something new?
And I didn't want to fall into - I'm like a compulsive obsessive personality - I'm scared of bringing back someone to create or recreate a formula. Like, I didn’t want to be like, ‘well they really, really liked Halle Berry, we should bring her back, you know, we don't want to risk bringing someone new, we should bring Halle back to guarantee success in this one.’ I will work with Halle Berry till the day I die, I love her. I think she's an amazing performer. She's a great human being. I loved it. I loved Common. I loved all these people. It's just can we continue to create cool characters? Can I continue to show something new?
And yeah, if we expand this franchise out to its like TV show counterpart, or all our ancillary projects or satellite movies based on characters that you see in it, I would love to see a Halle Berry movie, I'd love to see a Tracker movie, I'd love to see a Rina Sawayama as Akira movie, I'd love to see a Bowery King movie, I'd love to see all these things happen. I just want to challenge myself on the property to keep growing and not just keep using the same focus and character lines as you see in some of the superhero movies.
ROHAN: I read that there was initially a longer cut of this film - will that ever see the light of day, possibly as an extended cut or even as deleted scenes?
CHAD: Yeah, I've been working on the Director's Cut, the extended cut, which we've almost finished. There's about another, I think, 10 to 15 minutes we put back in. We cut out a big chunk of Berlin, a whole character called The Frau, which is a pretty funny scene with John, and another scene between him and Tracker, a few other little action beats that we put back in. I mean, yeah, there's always stuff we take out because it doesn't fit the pacing. I think the stuff is all super quality, I love the choreo, I love the characters. It just didn't - as a whole, it changed the pace of the film, and I didn't think I could get, you know, two hour and 38 minute film in therei f it felt slow. I think we got away with it because it felt driven, it felt like it was very purposeful, and I didn't want to upset that pace. And, if it has to go, it has to go.
ROHAN: You pulled off one of the most badass showdowns in recent memory, pitting Donnie Yen and Hiroyuki Sanada against each other - can you break down casting those two legends and what it was like having them on set together with Keanu, and ultimately shooting that sword fight?
CHAD: Sure, I wanted to work with Hiro for a long time. Hiroyuki was actually, we actually hired him to be a character on the third John Wick, but he had, unfortunately, torn his Achilles tendon, and had to go in for surgery and couldn't do anything. So, unfortunately, we had to rewrite the script and change the casting choices. And literally, as soon as we knew we were doing John Wick 4, and we had the green light, I called him and said, look, you got to play a part. You’re going to play one of John Wick’s best friends, you're going to be the guy, you're gonna do a sword fight and Hiro didn’t miss a beat, he was in.
Then, when we went through all the processes, I didn't know if I had Donnie yet, but our schedules worked out and I managed to get Donnie Yen. I called Hiroyuki back up and told him, ‘Hey, guess who you’re going to fight?’ And, he's a Donnie Yen fan and Donnie is a Hiroyuki fan. I mean, I can't tell you the first time you go into that stunt training center, and you've got Keanu, you've got Rina, you've got Marko and Scott Adkins, and you walk in, you've got, you know, Hiroyuki Sanada and Donnie Yen, and they're all rehearsing together, and you just kind of go, ‘Oh my God, what have I done?’ It's pretty electric. You walk in there, you can feel the spark and everybody's just a big fan of everybody else's.
There's no weird ego, there's no competition, they're just coming in ready to work, like, the level of ideas is on another level, and even on the day, you're changing and making it better. They're learning their characters as they go, and they speak through martial arts and choreography. It's a pretty intense scene when you see that the two guys do get out and talk about their daughters, but it's also a bonding scene because they are friends. The funny thing is, we're all of the same generation, and, you know, a lot of inspiration I get is from me and my personal relationships with the stunt teams that I've come up with. I mean, we've spent more time than we ever should have together on some of the craziest locations, risking life and limb with these people that you bond with very quickly and you might never know the stunt team but you bond very quickly when you're putting your own ass on the line.
So, when you see these same people 20 years later, there's a history, there's a bond, you remember their names and their family and their sons or daughters or the wives’ names and you go down memory lane, so we wanted to create that kind of longing or love or loss or that kind of bonding between them, and then, you get this intense scene where they start talking about their daughters, and I don't want to do this, but I do, but I have to, and this is a little trilogy of friendship that's going on. Then, you yell cut, and they'll give each other a big hug, and they're smiling. They're laughing. They're telling jokes. And literally, they're doing off-camera, what we're trying to do on-camera, is the two of them are catching up. ‘Oh, you work with this guy, and remember, this stunt team? I love this team.’ They're geeking out, talking about each other's movies, and then, okay, guys get ready, and they go right back into character, achieving the same thing they’re doing, you know, and you've got Keanu sitting by the monitors with us just geeking out with me going, ‘Oh, my God, what have we done? We have Donnie Yen and Hiroyuki Sanada in a movie!’ It's just one of those things as a filmmaker, you go like, I'll never forget those two weeks of having those guys in that scene, and then, all the other weeks we spent together, it was pretty, pretty magical.
ROHAN: With John Wick and Mission: Impossible elevating the action genre to a level we've never seen it before - what are your thoughts on a Stunts category at the Oscars or on why it hasn't happened yet? And/or when it could theoretically happen?
CHAD: No, actually, I think why hasn't it happened has been, again, it's all like urban legend of why there's not a category or anything like that. In truth, from what research I've done, is that the conversation hasn't happened. No one from the Academy has sat down at a big table with a contingent from the stunt world and sorted it out. I mean, we're not just talking about an American stunt team, we're talking about a global network of stunt performers, and international films from all over the world. That's a lot of people. I don't know, if you or anyone is really familiar with how big the Academy really is, but it's hundreds of members. It's a lot of mechanisms to get these things done, and I just don't think anyone's ever sat down at the table and figured it out.
So, in the last couple of months, we've been meeting with members of the Academy and actually having these conversations, and, to be honest, it's been nothing but incredibly positive, incredibly instructional. I think, for the first time, we've made real movement forward to making this happen. I think it's something that can happen as soon as, you know, the next Oscars, or at least the one after that, at the latest, the next three or four years. I think there's a lot of working parts, but there's also, when you say that, I ask you a question back. - ‘Okay, so I'm the Academy, you've come to me and said we should have stunts in the Oscars, and I go, I agree with you. Great. How do we do it? How do we select the best stunt? Who do we give it to? Quick, what are your answers?
ROHAN: Oh, um, I guess the stunt coordinator? Or, well, there are a lot of people involved, so maybe each individual department? I don't know, I know how detail-oriented you guys are at 87eleven, so it could be a variety of people. I honestly don't have a definitive answer.
CHAD: See, that’s it! And, you've just answered the question of why hasn't there been a stunt category yet. The question is, we haven't had the real talks about how do you even determine what to award, like is it for best stunt? Is it best choreography? Best action sequence? Best stunt ensemble? Does the stunt coordinator get it? The guy doing the gag get it? The martial arts choreographer? The fight choreography? The stunt double? The second unit director? The editor? Who gets the award? All these are great questions that just need to be talked about by smart individuals on both sides of it, the stunt community and the Academy to figure out okay, well, do we do it as an individual thing? Do we do it as best overall ensemble? Or, do we do it in a category that says, whichever stunt sequence best modifies or enhances the film, in a storytelling device, is that what is? How do you select it? Is it just the most badass fire burn ever? Or is it the stunt sequence that helps develop the film best?
These are all things to consider, they seem subtle, but it's also, you know, how many people - if you're doing something like John Wick, like, okay, I had seven stunt coordinators, I had three fight choreographers, and more. Okay, so who gets that award? You can only give it to three people, five people, ten people, like these are all things that are all good and can be sorted out, they just need to be talked about.
So, for the last three months, we've been talking to members of the Academy, getting this mechanisation, this huge machine up and running to have these discussions and again, to be open and fair about both sides. Both sides have been incredibly positive. There is no one that we've met so far that thinks antagonistically to this, like everybody on both sides wants this to happen. They want stunts at the Oscars. It's going to happen. It's just how do we do it as fair and as thought out as possible, like we don't want to do it willy nilly, we want this to be impactful on the industry and on the world, we want to do this classy, we want to do it right, we want to do it smart, and that just takes a little bit of time and the right people in the room talking.
ROHAN: I'm a big fan of Ghost of Tsushima and wanted to ask you about how development on that is coming along?
CHAD: That's something we're in heavy development on. I love the property, like, look, the game story of Jin Sakai, and it being what I would say is, quote, the most anti-samurai samurai movie out there because of the storylines. thematics in it, and the journey that Jin Sakai goes through from his transition to or his choices of who to become and what the people need him to become and what he honorbound should and is what needs to become is so interesting to me, like the story is definitely, the characters in the story are definitely something I don't want to lose in any way.
It's just the visuals I want to keep. It's just how do I pack that much information into a feature that can go on to other features or a TV project or platform for that. The trick is not do we have great material, we know we have great material. It's how to make it palpable in any platform, you know, how do we make a great two, two and a half hour movie out of this? Make it satisfying and leave it open to expand further from there, like that's the real challenge is how to take so much great and get it down to a watchable level.
ROHAN: While John Wick’s story may be over, it feels like the John Wick universe has never had more life - what should we expect from Ballerina and The Continental in terms of exploring a new corner of the universe?
CHAD: Again, we've been a little outside of that, because I was finishing up John Wick: Chapter 4 - The Continental, we've had a little contact with it in its early stages, that's kind of separate from the world of the features. It's its own version of that, so that I don't know as much about. I've talked quite extensively with Len Wiseman about Ballerina and his development process, and I've seen a lot of the footage that he shot. It's a great looking movie, it's got a really interesting take on how his lead character interacts with John Wick and how it punches to a different side of our world. It's a great little addition into the stuff we've already done. It's got a different perspective on it. It's got a really interesting vibe to it, which I think is fantastic, and Len is still really early in post, but everything I've seen and heard so far has been incredibly cool. So, that's really fun.
As far as the main John Wick franchise and stuff, I think Ballerina is going to make a great addition to the world, and I also think that, in the meantime, Lionsgate has been incredibly supportive about coming up with an actual John Wick TV show that's in the same theme and the same tone, the same vibe as the features and that's what we're really into, because then we could get our Akiras, our Trackers, really all of our ancillary, cool characters that we've come up with over the years, and we can get them their own special moments, as well as I mean, I can't tell you the notebooks I have here of all the characters we didn't use yet. So, I'd be really excited about seeing a John Wick TV show, that would really excite me, and we're currently, you know, trying to figure out ways to carry this into the anime world as well. I’m a huge anime fan, so that would excite me literally more than anything
John Wick: Chapter 4 is now available on 4K Ultra HD and Blu-ray!
John Wick (Keanu Reeves) uncovers a path to defeating the High Table. But before he can earn his freedom, Wick must face off against a new enemy with powerful alliances across the globe and forces that turn old friends into foes.