John Wick Director On John Wick 5 And Wick Is Pain Documentary [Exclusive]

Chad, I want to end with this. There’s a bit in the film about how the Jason Statham movie “Safe” potentially could have been the world’s introduction to the kind of gun-fu style that you ended up bringing to the “Wick” movies, and I think it was David who says in the documentary that, as soon as you got a little pushback from Statham about his preference for some of the action, I think you were the one who was basically like, “Screw this, we’re going to save this style for our own project one day.” What do you remember about how that went down?

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Chad Stahelski: It’s not quite how it was [laughs].

Okay.

Chad Stahelski: We do a lot of work with Jason. He’s a very good friend of ours, I love him, love his movies, our team has done “Beekeeper,” we’re still working with him. As choreographers, whether we’re on a job or not, we’re always f***ing about in the gym trying to come up with other s***. At the time, there was a lot of “Taken,” and it was a lot of “Bourne,” it was a lot of the swishy cam with the fast edits and stuff, and I come from a pretty heavy martial art background with grappling in Judo, Jiu-Jitsu, Aikido, Aiki-jitsu, all this. I was really getting into Three Gun at the time. This was way before the before “John Wicks.” We were exploring that whole world, and we thought it’d be kind of … we were just screwing about when you see our early rehearsal tapes, but we kind of really liked it.

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And every time we do a movie with Jason or Stallone — we were doing a lot of “Expendables” at the time — we were trying to experiment as choreographers as well. So, we were doing some pretty wacky stuff. That was just the gun-fu tapes, you should have seen all the … it’s not like there was one or the other. We had 10 other ideas we’re pitching to Jason, too, and all kinds of stuff. You know what I mean? And like I said, in a previous interview, it was like, “All right, well, when you’re designing a character…” — I don’t know if you ever saw “Safe” or what it was about –

I did.

Chad Stahelski: It’s an ex-special forces guy who’s now a homeless guy, who’s not allowed to talk or interact with the human race, and he’s got to save a little girl. So, Boaz [Yakin], as the director, he was designing it a certain way. So Jason’s a homeless guy, he’s kind of out of shape, but he’s got a [military] background, and grappling at the time didn’t seem like, if you’ve been living on the street and you’re not eating right and you’re kind of out of shape, you’d be like, “Well, why is this guy so good? He’s eating cheeseburgers, he’s sleeping in the street…” It didn’t fit the character. It wasn’t like we hated it. Everybody was like, “Oh, this is f***ing great, it just doesn’t fit the character. Why is he shooting guys in [the face]?” It’s not about body count. It was a very specific, grounded, real world emotional thing of someone who’s lost, trying to find a family, a little girl.

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I can choreograph a fight scene with you and I, and no one has to die, you get beaten up — there’s a lot of variables. But you do a gun fight? Somebody’s dying. And it usually only takes one bullet, especially the way we shoot, right? Pow, pow, pow, pow … f***, you got shot four times in half a second. So, it changes the tune of the movie. You can’t have a gun-fu movie with only two bad guys. It’d be very boring. You see the way we go through body counts — it’s close, I have to throw the guy, then shoot him. It just didn’t fit.

Go back and do the body count, it’s 350 people on “John Wick 4.” You know what budget I had for stunts in that? You could have made the movie “Safe” from our stunt budget. It was crazy. And it gets a little ridiculous. It is a bit Wile E. Coyote, right? It has to be, with bulletproof suits. It just, when you really go back and think about it, it’s not about anybody saying they didn’t like the style of gun-fu. You’ve got to remember what gun-fu is, and in “John Wick,” it’s like, “Oh, f***, that’s great, it’s obvious. Great!” But put that in a “Bourne” movie, or put that in a f***ing realistic movie — put that in “Heat” — or put that in “Mission: Impossible,” it’ll become ludicrous.

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Yeah.

Chad Stahelski: I spent 10 years building a franchise to be Bugs Bunny, to have a world where I can kill 300 — dude, say it: 350 bad guys. That’s f***ing insane! And you wonder why people didn’t … no one hated it, everybody watched it and laughs their ass off. It’s great. But logistically, that would be so odd for that movie. Tonally, logistically, financially, it was never going to work. We were the goofy ones who were pitching it, knowing that there’s no way it was a great character choice for him. Some of the Aikido, and the individual moves, sure. But myself, Jason, and Boaz the director, were like, “Yeah, it’s cool, but…” 

And there’s a little hint of it in there, when Jason’s doing the disarms in the restaurant and stuff. It was in there. And Jason could do it all, no problem, and f***ing Jason’s awesome, man. I love watching his s***. It’s just, it wasn’t the right character, tone, and movie for that. I use the example of, you saw “Matrix,” right? Okay, picture Neo doing gun-fu. The movie changes dramatically, doesn’t it?

It does.

Chad Stahelski: All right. If I change nothing else, imagine “John Wick” with wire work. Changes the movie, doesn’t it?

It does.

Chad Stahelski: Do you hate wire work?

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No.

Chad Stahelski: No. Do you hate gun-fu? No. Do you hate black jackets? No. Do you hate running? No. It’s [like] wardrobe, it fits the character. Sometimes it works, sometimes it does not. But you’re only hearing that story, you’re not hearing the 50 other things we had going on. We were great at sword work. No one tells the story about how, “They didn’t use saber fighting in ‘Safe!'” We didn’t do broadsword in “John Wick.” Yet. But in “Highlander,” guess what I’m doing a lot of?

Oh, man.

Chad Stahelski: So, the style is part of the character thing. So, again, it wasn’t quite like that.

“Wick is Pain” is available on Digital now.