John Wick: Chapter 4 follows the titular anti-hero after he has healed from the events of Parabellum and is ready to target the High Table. John Wick goes after the High Table leadership, becoming a bigger threat than ever, causing them to send the Marquis Vincent de Gramont to stop him by whatever means necessary. As his allies become targets, old friends become foes, and John Wick makes his final stand.
Chad Stahelski has directed all four John Wick movies and has been the backbone of crafting this universe along with star Keanu Reeves. Along with Reeves, returning John Wick stars include Lance Reddick, Laurence Fishburne, and Ian McShane. John Wick: Chapter 4 introduces Donnie Yen, Bill Skarsgård, Hiroyuki Sanada, Shamier Anderson, Rina Sawayama, Scott Adkins, and Clancy Brown to the universe. John Wick: Chapter 4 is available to purchase on digital platforms now and will be available on Blu-ray, DVD, 4K Ultra HD, and on-demand starting June 13.
Related: John Wick 4 Clues Can Explain Caine’s Missing Backstory
Screen Rant spoke with director Chad Stahelski about John Wick: Chapter 4. He explained how he and Reeves knew this was the right way and time to end John Wick’s story and which characters he wants to explore further. Stahelski also discussed returning to the John Wick universe as a director, a new John Wick television series, and the inspiration behind the world he has built.
Chad Stahelski on John Wick: Chapter 4
Screen Rant: John Wick: Chapter 4 is amazing! I binged the first three the night before I saw John Wick: Chapter 4 and it’s so good!
Chad Stahelski: Why did you do that to yourself?
I wanted the full experience.
Chad Stahelski: That’s a pretty full experience.
It was super fun. I have no regrets.
Chad Stahelski: That’s a lot of headshots Caitlin.
Yeah. I feel like I was just used to it by the time I got to the second one though, so it worked.
Chad Stahelski: That’s good. That’s interesting.
I love John Wick: Chapter 4 I thought the entire story arc was amazing the action was phenomenal, and I love the world-building you do. But I was curious, how did you know this was the right time and way to kind of end John Wick’s quest?
Chad Stahelski: Good question. Every director I’ve worked for, worked with, or talk to you they all have their thing, how they develop how they do things. I’m a very much, you got to feel it and you got to see it in your head before I commit to something. I’m kind of notoriously slow in the industry for developing and getting there. I take a lot of time to develop. We do it a little different on John Wick, we just don’t get a script and think “Oh, we gotta go make this and this is gonna be great.”
We sit and we we write set pieces. Then we’ll write a sequence. We’ll write all these bits and pieces and see if they start fitting like Legos. We’ll start fitting them together. Sometimes it makes something good. Sometimes it doesn’t. Keanu and I since the very beginning, I’m sure you’ve heard the stories, after we finished the first one my co director at the time, Dave Leitch, we thought we’d never work again. It was at the time of all the Bourne movies had come out .Taken and come out. It was a big time for shakey cam and fast editing. We wanted to try something different. We had finished the first John Wick and in comparison to all the fast cutting and shakey cam are action seemed very, very slow because it was a long takes or what you see now.
We got a lot of pushback from other people within our circle going, “It’s a slow. Can you cut out so many headshots? Why does he have to reload? This is really slow. It’s not a lot of energy. The world’s too weird.” Basically everything that we like about it now was kind of different at this time. Cut to much later. When you’re directing you try to see the movie in your head, you try to get, “Okay, I have this much money, I have this much time.” And then you get greedy, right? All directors are greedy by nature, they want to get as much stuff as they can in that movie. By the third one, it was supposed to be this little thing and it grew and it grew.
Then I gotta go here and I want to go to Morocco and I want to do… and it kind of grew. So it ended up getting to the point where we couldn’t fit all the story in one. We had some of the ideas from John Wick four in that. It just felt like where we ended that movie was a good time to end it. Keanu and I had figured, “Well, John Wick three was our last one. We got lucky. People like the movie.” We felt that we had done pretty good. When the movie came out, we’re like, “Thank god everybody liked it. That took a lot of work to get done. We’re just happy that people enjoyed the movie.” So we’re like, “That’s it, we’re done.” Cut to a couple months later, we opened John Wick three in Japan. We were there, and we’re sitting at the Imperial Hotel, they have a great little whiskey bar there.
We’re sitting, and we’re talking about how fun the movie was. We hadn’t seen each other in a while. So it’s good to see each other again. We started thinking and we just, again, it’s one of those human things you’re like, I really wish we would have, could have, should have done this. Look, we really love the character. I love making the movies, I love Keanu, I love my crew. I’d make John Wicks for the rest of my life if I knew they’d be good. It’s just a fun experience. It’s challenging. It’s fun. It’s the kind of movies I’d want to see. Keanu and I both felt like we didn’t do our best. We didn’t send John Wick off to our best and we felt a little broken up about that. We felt like we could have done better.
So we started thinking about well, there’s only one way we go back and do a fourth one because in film history lucky enough to get three good ones, you get four is almost unheard of no one’s ever really done it. So we’re like, “Okay, the only way to do it is we want to say goodbye. What’s the best way to say goodbye? Well, we got to redeem him. We got to kind of make him a good guy. We got to have his friends. We got to tie up all. How do we…” We just started thinking about that and it literally took about because of the pandemic which actually, unfortunately worked in our favor, we had about a year and a half to get the story down before we started shooting. The first year hadn’t gone so well. We had like three or four different versions of the script and they weren’t they weren’t nailing it.
We’d read them and go, “I’m bored. I don’t like it.” We had done a bunch of scouts. We knew the pieces in the cities we wanted to go to, but it didn’t quite click. It wasn’t until really about Christmas of that year where we took a brea. We brought in a friend to help you one more pass on it, and it kind of clicked. It kind of made me sad at the end, and we could hear the music and we knew what we were gonna do and that’s when it kind of made sense.
So in a very long winded answer to your question, it really wasn’t until it landed in that version of the script, literally, less than five months before we started shooting, it felt right. That’s all I can say. I wish I could tell you I thought it was amazing. All this was our plan, but nothing really felt right til you read it, and you could see it. Me and Keanu both looked up and smiled. You could feel yourself getting choked up. We’re like, “Yeah, we’re gonna send this guy. And that’s when it needs.”
I love the ending. It feels like a samurai movie ending.
Chad Stahelski: That’s kind of what we were going for. Yeah, so that’s good. Thank you for that.
I think John Wick is one of the best examples of world-building, because it’s not overly explained. You drop us in and we get to learn these pieces. What was the inspiration for this criminal underworld that you created in the first place?
Chad Stahelski: It’s a couple different things. Caitlin, actually, thank you. That’s a very nice compliment. That’s very nice of you. Personal experience, one. As a stunt performer, I spent almost 15 years on the road. In different cities living in hotels four or five months at a time. Different cities, different hotels. So concierges and hotels, you’re just into that hotel world for a long time. We’d always joke, what if there is a hidden world within a hidden world? That was one thing. Two, I’m a huge Tolkien fan. I love fantasy, I think sci-fi and fantasy, whether it’s Blade Runner by Philip K Dick, or whether it’s Tolkien with Lord of the Rings, or the Hobbit. There’s all these great mythologies.
You’ve probably heard, I’m super big into Asians, especially Japanese mythology, and Greek or Roman mythology, depending on how you look at it. I’m big into the tales of, of Odysseus and the Iliad, and all Homer stuff. I’m big into all the Greek gods and they’re great stories. Whether it’s Orpheus or Odysseus or obviously Sisyphus. We kind of take themes from that and go. At no point if you read the Odyssey or anything like that, they’re not overly explaining, they’re just taking you on a journey. That kind of comes through the next thing, which I think does it even better than Hollywood is the video game world. I don’t mean in the actual playing of it, or the action. They drop in the middle of the game with very little instructions, right? It’s just how to move the paddle. They land you in it and part of the experience why everybody loves the game so much, especially the fantasy games, is you have to go through and discover it yourself.
If I took you right now and dropped you in a city, which has happened to me hundreds of times, dropped into a city I’ve never been before. Now you got the weekend off going, “Okay, what do we do?” You can either stay in your hotel room and watch Netflix or you get out and you just start walking and then you discover stuff. But once you discover it’s yours. I’m not forcing it on you and it’s the same thing. If you figure out what’s on John’s back for a tattoo. If you go back in John Wick 4 there’s a whole nother story being told and graffiti. If you go back and actually read and decipher all the Latin, Italian, French, and Arabic graffiti on the walls behind them. There’s a whole nother story going on. But if you discover it’s yours.
If you figure out what those symbols are behind Laurence Fishburne, or you figure out what the tattoos mean, or when he’s walking up the steps where all those little Latin phrases are, that’s you to discover. When I slowly take you up, I want you to figure out the hierarchy I want you to see what it is,. When you’re in the Louvre there’s a reason we shot there with those paintings in front and behind of the Marquis, they all say something very, very important to the story. I was a big fan of that, of exploring of learning and and figuring things out and doing my research. So the movie should exist on two level.
There’s the, “Hey it’s Keanu Reeves acting with the Ian McShane trying to fight Donnie Yen and if you just don’t want to think there’s cool Kung Fu and guns. And if you want to think. If you want to go find where where’s Waldo or do the mythic quest dive into it, there’s plenty for you to dive into. That’s where the real fun is. So how we kind of did that was just take that mentality and go, “ook, there’s the movie with all the depth that we want to like and see and then there’s something for everybody.” So hopefully people watch it in five years and still discover stuff and make it their own. That’s all.
You do such a good job of introducing these little corners and other characters without info dumping. Are there any that you really would want to explore more? Because we have it expanding with The Continental and Ballerina.
Chad Stahelski: Yeah, look, there’s no one we put into these things that don’t interest me. I know, they’re all whether you want to call them supporting cast or ancillary characters. There’s nobody I tried to put in, especially a number four… Again, just for your your people out there, a director is not a director is not director. It would be hard for me to be the same guy who directed one, two, three, and four. One was my first one. Four is literally nine years later, and I’ve been doing everything I can to be better. Just like yourself, we try to get better every day. So you have to build into the factor that you’re trying to expand.
So, first movie was my first one. Little rough. I look back and go, I’m very proud of it, but at the same time, oof, geez, won’t do that again. You learn a lot about how to tell story and build character. So you try to get better as you go. Obviously, the first one we never thought was going to be more than the first movie. So not a lot of thought went into the depth. By the third movie now my head is completely John Wick. I’m thinking about every person I see in the street, every restaurant I go to, every Masaryk I meet that’s a story. You [grow] as a storyteller. So I tried in number four to do what I should have probably done all along, was every single character and it should be interesting enough that… I take it from Sergio Leone.
If you look at the opening of Once Upon a Time in the West, there isn’t one little cowboy, because of the faces and the looks, that you didn’t want to know the backstory. You want to know who everybody was like, “That would be an interesting story.” I took that and the fourth one went, no matter who you meet, you’d want to know more about them. And that’s kind of the attitude we took.
Rina’s character, Akira, I would love to see. I would love the Bowery King to see what goes on more in that world. I’m fascinated by the Homeless World there. I love Donnie Yen’s character I would like to see what made him. I even would love to see Shamir, the tracker with the dog. I miss Halle Berry’s character. I want to see if Common survived the second movie. Did he come back out of retirement for that? I’d like to see The Adjudicator Asia Kate Dillon again. Tick tock. All these great people I would love to see again. That’s just me, though.
I’m very excited for Ballerina because we get to meet an entirely new character, which is very exciting. But we also get to learn more about John because she’s someone that’s going through similar training as him. I’m assuming we’re going to see him from a different character’s perspective. What should the audience be excited about learning about John from this new approach?
Chad Stahelski: That’s a good question. I’m involved obtusely from Len Wiseman doing Ballerina. Len’s has been gracious enough to share a lot of the footage and where he’s headed. He’s still very early in the post process of that. So what I’ve seen is very interesting. It’s about Ana de Armas’ character, obviously that’s doing her thing, and John Wick, they their roads intersect. The timeline is kind of in between three and four, obviously.
As far as what you get from John Wick, it’s kind of almost an inside joke between the audience and John Wick. We all know where he’s going. We all know the route he’s been. So when they have their scenes, you kind of get the inside joke, even if Ballerina character doesn’t understand. It’s a little bit of meta conversation when you go, which is kind of interesting, because we’re all in on what John’s up to and where he’s going. So his philosophy or his point of view, is when someone gives you advice, it’s good, but because you haven’t lived through the event, yet, you don’t have the experience to accept the advice.
I think that’s the way to look at it. John’s giving advice and tutelage. Maybe even a little bit of advice on how to choose and choose wisely. But until that choice is really put to you that advice doesn’t really mean much. So, it’s an interesting little dilemma that they’ve created in it.
And I love Donnie Yen in John Wick 4. Caine was such a cool character. I was curious if you took any inspiration from Rogue One, where he also played a blind character that did a decent amount of action.
Chad Stahelski: Actually, I didn’t, but we did discuss it afterwards because Donnie said look, I kind of played that. I was like, “Look, I get that you’ve done that.” I didn’t want to tread on what they had done in that because I thought that was a good character. I didn’t want to reach out on Zatoichi or anything that had already been done before. Obviously, we got inspiration from that of what we wanted with the character. My description of Donnie was play him like you’re not blind. Just be the blind guy that’s not blind. And we’re going to be… if Chow Yun-fat was blind, he wouldn’t give a shit. He wouldn’t even hint. He’d just be good.
Once we took that attitue that helped with the the acting, the performance. Then we reverse engineered the choreography to explain how we could do the things he did. Again, unfair advantage, when you have Donnie Yen, because he’s so fast and because he’s got like a bird like twitch to him. He’s very quick in his motions. You believe that the way he cocks his head, you believe that he’s hearing. Not a lot of people could pull it off playing a blind guy that possess that level of talent, but he’s got that almost extraordinary or extra ordinary level of perception that you kind of buy it.
In the original version, when you got the blind guy tapping around with the cane or something like that. That would almost diminished Donnie and what his capabilities would be. So I didn’t want to do that and slow him down and take him down. So we kind of went the exact opposite direction. And went can you imagine what this guy would be like if he could see? He’d be unstoppable! So we just kind of took it from that. I know, it’s a little hyper rational, a little extreme, but we thought we’d have more fun and be able to utilize Donnie better that way.
Are there any stories that you think you would like to return as director for? The Continental and Ballerina you’re involved more as a producer.
Chad Stahelski: You never know. I’m massively in love with the characters and the world that we’ve built. I really love it. Do I want to try other things? Yes, but to be brutally honest with you, if I was smart enough and good enough to come up with a way to continue the story, I would. It just felt right to end where Keanu and I both just in our hearts and our souls, felt it was good to do what we did. To end it and put a good cap on this and feel satisfied and not go out on a down, but go out on a high. It felt right to end the series like that.
If there’s a way to do a five the we figured out. If there’s a way to do a Bowery King, if there’s a way to do and Akira, or Tracker, or Donnie Yen verions that felt really right. I have no problem. I don’t think I’d ever be the guy, “Oh, no, I’ve already done that.” I would love to try to do something new because everyone’s a challenge. I’m not trying to do an episodic feature thing where they’re all the same. I would try to do different lighting, I would try to do different worlds. You keep trying and I think I’d find great interest and satisfaction in that. I just haven’t thought of it yet. So to answer your question, yes. If something pops in and it works, yeah, I’d love to do it.
If I could crack any of those stories that we mentioned, I’d love to. If I can’t, there’s other worlds that I’d like to try my hand at which I think would be fun. Also, we’re trying to get going, Lionsgate has been incredibly supportive on this, and we’re really trying to get a John Wick TV show going. And that would allow me to tell a lot of stories that maybe wouldn’t sustain another ginormous feature, but great characters and great stories that we could do in the in the short form on TV. Which would be fantastic.
Oh, I would love that. That sounds like a dream. I hope that happens.
Chad Stahelski: That would be great. We’re still working out, there’s a lot of things to sort out and think about. Do we have enough stories? Do people want to see that? But I’m very open to that format as well. So we’ll see.
You’re gonna be working on some movies outside of John. What are you excited to bring from your experience with John Wick into those new worlds?
Chad Stahelski: It’s always the same thing, right? Again, directors in general, very greedy. We want to get as much stuff. We want to do the three part trilogy all in one movie. I think what John Wick has taught is patients and respect the audience. My job is to do something cool enough, interesting enough, provocative enough to get the audience to want to stand up, leave their homes, go experienced the theater with other people. Put up with all the good and the bad that comes with that and feel satisfied at the end of two to three hours. Drive home and talk about it for the next couple of days.
That’s my job. To inspire, to get you to talk about it. Whether you love it or hate it. Whether you like John Wick or hate John Wick. I don’t think anyone can argue that, they’re beautifully made. My crew is fantastic. They’re colorful, the sound is great, the music is great, the framing is great. The art form behind it has been done with love and care. Now, whether you like the movies or you think it’s all kooky or bullshit, I get that. That’s opinion. I know that in the stuff to come and what John Wick is taught is love the craft, put your heart and soul into it, be patient, really respect the audience, meaning just like we had talked about, leave room for them to think.
When I read a book, I see it. But how I see the book is very different than how you would see it. But that’s why we read books because we want our own personal stamp on it. When you have films that are over expositional, or they’re forcing a theme down your throat, they’re not giving you a chance to have that internal debate, or that internal conversation of projecting yourself and your own ideas or theories into the project. I think in any art form, whether you look at art, or whether you read it, whether you experience a live performance, you have to be able to project some thought into it. Some level of love, some level of debate, some level of interest that makes it personal to you.
I think by being patient and allowing the audience to inject themselves into the project of going, “Wow, that’s me or a little something for everybody, or I get that that’s Latin, or I get that, hey, they’re speaking Japanese, or hey I love samurai films.” I just try to give you options. So I’d like to continue those kinds of thematics within future projects. Let the audience try to sort out a few things. Don’t force them in a direction, don’t lead them, let them experience the movie a little bit more. That and always, always, always, always just never be the smartest guy in the room.
Try to surround yourself with people that are clever and creative. Don’t shy away from that and don’t be intimidated by it. Learn from everybody and just get the best, best of the best people you can. Trust me great things will always come out. Keanu and any of the cast we have on John Wick. We’ve been very fortunate that by the fourth film we had lots of incoming phone calls of, “Hey, love your stuff. I’d love to be in a movie with you.” So everybody on the fourth one, and on most of the other ones, there isn’t a cast member or crew member that didn’t want to be on that movie. That’s probably the most touching thing. If you get people that want to develop stuff with you. Always come in with love and you’re gonna have a good ride.
About John Wick: Chapter 4
Following the events of Parabellum, John Wick has found a new path to defeating the High Table and is taking the fight to them. But before he can try to earn his freedom, a powerful new enemy will turn even more people against Wick, including one of his oldest and most dangerous friends.
Check out our other John Wick: Chapter 4 interviews here:
- Keanu Reeves
- Laurence Fishburne
- Scott Adkins
- Ian McShane & Lance Reddick
- Hiroyuki Sanada & Shamier Anderson
- Costume Designer Paco Delgado
- Writers Shay Hatten and Michael Finch
- Stunt Coordinators Scott Rogers & Stephen Dunlevy
John Wick: Chapter 4 is on Digital now. It will be available on 4K Ultra HD™ Combo Pack, Blu-ray™ Combo Pack, DVD, & On Demand on June 13 from Lionsgate.
