The video game that inspired the shooting in ‘John Wick: Chapter 4’
Although sequels often face the ominous threat of permanently tarnishing the legacy of a franchise, John Wick: Chapter 4 has had the exact opposite effect. Keanu Reeves can do nothing wrong, delivering yet another engaging performance as the titular ex-hitman who embarks on an emotional journey filled with high-octane action. Garnering praise for its stylised action sequences and the acting, Chapter 4 has lived up to the hype.
Although video games and cinema are fundamentally incompatible mediums, many filmmakers regularly draw inspiration from games. That has been the case for director Chad Stahelski as well, who incorporated the interesting top-down shooting approach after seeing it down in a video game. While many fans pointed toward the popular Hotline Miami series, Stahelski revealed that he had a different source in mind.
During a conversation with Slash Film, Stahelski opened up about the action sequences: “If you’re ever lacking creativity, handcuff yourself and then figure it out because then you’ll do something you haven’t done before. So top shots were never very cool with us, with lighting or choreography, because it gets old quick.”
The filmmaker added: “But I had seen this video game, and I’ll throw a shout-out — I think it was called Hong Kong Massacre — they did this top shot, and we had been doing so much with the big muzzle flashes and it just kind of clicked like, ‘Well, if I’m above, we shoot like this, and we shoot like this, and it draws these cool lines with the muzzle flash, and if I get the right flicker effect, it’s like Etch A Sketch. It looks really cool’. And it was a different way to amp up the action and keep you in that video game mode that John Wick’s kind of known for, that first-person shooter kind of thing.”
Check out the comparison below.
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