The action sequence montage that was “John Wick: Chapter 4” has cemented the series’ status as a serious blockbuster franchise (even though the movie has only slightly outdone the third entry’s domestic box office). Director Chad Stahelski’s approach recalls that of George Lucas when he conceived of “Raiders of the Lost Ark” as a series of adventure set pieces, then hired writer Lawrence Kasdan to connect them all together narratively. But in Stahelski’s case, his John Wick movies are basically a series of insane gun-fu action scenes threaded together with a much more loose narrative and bolstered by multi-layered lore.
And with the latest entry, those action scenes took even more precedence, as Stahelski and his team pushed themselves to outdo previous entries. With a final act that is basically a full hour of non-stop combat and stunt choreography, the director and his team certainly managed to fill the runtime with as much action as possible. And while that hour, which contains the fiery top-down sequence or the Arc De Triomphe fight, has been getting a lot of attention in the wake of the “John Wick: Chapter 4” release, that doesn’t mean the rest of the film isn’t packed with similarly impressive set-pieces.
The club scene was originally twice as long
LionsgateChad Stahelski delivered a three-hour-long action fest with “John Wick: Chapter 4” — the longest in the entire series. And believe it or not, the original cut was somewhere closer to four hours, which is crazy, considering how long some of the action scenes in the film are. And for the club scene, Stahelski had John Wick face off against Killa Harkan across multiple dance floors, ending with a brutal fight beneath an indoor waterfall, all witnessed by clubbers who don’t seem at all fazed by all the murder and brutality. It goes on for a while, as Harkan seems to get the best of Wick, but ultimately, our ruthless assassin comes out on top. And believe it or not, it was originally going to be a lot longer.
According to Stahelski, Wick was supposed to also go up against Shamier Anderson’s Tracker — more specifically his dog. Speaking to the AV Club, the former stunt performer said:
“Oh, [the club scene] was at least twice as long as you see in the movie. My lack of directing skills, the way I had written it, choreographed it, and shot it, it was a little too ‘stop and go.’ Once John chases Killa, it felt better to just push that through and get to John’s goal and get him out of there. I had it as ‘chase Killa and get interrupted.’ ‘Chase Killa and get interrupted.’ ‘Chase Killa and get interrupted.’ It gave me whiplash watching that thing. We also had some cool choreography for Shamir. And John Wick actually fought the dog. It was super-cool. For no fault of any of the performances, it was just bad conceit on behalf of the director and not understanding pacing well enough in his own sequence.”
