Chad Stahelski, Keanu Reeves, and the rest of the cast and crew of the “John Wick” franchise take pride in delivering hard-hitting stunts working in perfect concert with the vigorous filmmaking challenges of setting up and pulling off every ambitious set piece. So when it came time to throw ninjas into the action, well, everyone involved wanted to make it as “real” as possible. That meant playing up their almost supernatural abilities to fade away into the darkness at will and reappear almost out of nowhere to gain the upper hand on Wick.
While being interviewed on the set of the movie, Reeves had this to say:
“So, we’ve got Ninjas. Chad loves ninjas, so we’ve got some ninjas. They’ve been really doing some cool stuff with characters, assassins that are blending into backgrounds. Because it’s ‘John Wick,’ there’s no cheating, so they’re really in a shot and you don’t see them until they come running up. Were you watching the monitors on the last sequence? That was one of the easier ones. Just someone running out of the darkness.”
Talk about committing to the bit! We heard plenty of stories at the time about the training required for the dog-centric scenes with Halle Berry or Reeves riding an actual horse for real through the streets of New York City. It’s simply par for the course that actors Cecep Arif Rahman and Yayan Ruhian had to do their best ninja impression to shoot one of the most impressive sequences in “Chapter 3.”
“John Wick: Chapter 4” will smash its way into theaters on March 24, 2023.