John Wick Chapter 4 Director Guides Us Through the Assassin World’s Mythology
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The post John Wick Chapter 4 Director Guides Us Through the Assassin World’s Mythology appeared first on Consequence.
The world of John Wick is far more than just a playground through which star Keanu Reeves runs with guns: As established over four films (and soon to be expanded with additional spinoffs), the criminal underworld which the titular assassin navigates is rich with its own mythology and history, from the gold coins which serve as both currency and passport to the Continental hotels which populate major cities around the world. This means that when you ask the director of John Wick: Chapter 4 if John Wick, in his international travels, flies commercial… Stahelski has an answer.
“No, there’s actually Continental Airlines,” Chad Stahelski tells Consequence. “We actually wrote it into John Wick 2 — we actually had a cool way, with these shipping containers that are all tricked out, that are put on either on a boat or plane — they’re self-contained little condos. So we ended up cutting it out, but that’s how he travels. We’ve thought about that.”
It’s just one of thousands of details that Stahelski and his collaborators have been adding to Wick’s world since the beginning… Well, not technically since the beginning. When Stahelski began working on the first John Wick movie, how much of all this complicated world-building did he already have in his head? “Let me think… Absolutely none. Really, none,” he says.
The reason for that is simple: “The way my co-director at the time, Dave Leitch, and Keanu addressed it is like, ‘This is a one-off,'” he says. “We had a script that had an interesting idea. So we sat down with Derek Kolstad [writer of the first John Wick], and I gave him my Greek mythological overlay idea — we took this hotel idea and expanded it to be like, ‘We want a concierge, we want a manager and this is going to be like Mount Olympus and Ian’s going to be Zeus. And we’re going to have this guy named Chiron.’ We had that overlay.”
At the time, though, did he have any idea they were laying the groundwork for future installments? “Brutally honest, no,” Stahelski says. “We thought we were done. Dave and I were both like ‘Well, we’re never gonna direct again, so that was our one shot. Oops, we kind of blew it. We’re gonna go back to the second unit.’ We actually couldn’t afford to finish the edit so we went back to do some second-unit jobs. That’s where we were trying to finish the movie and then Basil Iwanyk from Thunder Road, our producer, managed to find enough money and to get us into Fantastic Fest down in Texas, where we actually screened the movie and the rest is history.”
Once the first film “did enough business that they said, ‘Hey, do you have any ideas for a second one?’ — that’s really when we went, ‘Okay.’ They told Keanu first and then he called us and went, ‘Hey, I’m really into this and I would like you guys to be into it with us,’ because again, we didn’t know we were going to do the second one.”
So Stahelski talked to Reeves about a “goofy idea” he had for a sequel, and the director says that Reeves “didn’t miss a beat. He’s like ‘It’s awesome. Let’s do it. Let’s start figuring it out.’ Through the development process of number two, we really started building out backstories and worlds — and that’s when it really kicked into gear.”
Stahelski’s “goofy idea” came down to “that whole idea of mythology, like ‘Look, let’s tell a campfire tale. Let’s build this world.’ Basically, it was like you’ve seen the sci-fi opera, like Dune, Blade Runner. Then you’ve seen the fantasy, you’ve seen Harry Potter. You’ve seen Lord of the Rings, right? Our big idea was, how do we do a modern-day fantasy? Like, what’s that? I can’t have trolls, I can’t have elves. But I can have ninjas. I can have cars.”
The next point of inspiration came from “the old Bonds” — specifically, traveling to other locations. “‘Let’s go to Rome. These Continentals can be everywhere.’ That was a big thing that cracked it for us, like, ‘Well, there’s not just one, every city has one. Every city is controlled by a manager and the manager reports to these guys.'”
Then came the question of whether everyone in the world of John Wick operates at the same tier, leading to the realization that “not everybody should be in the Wick world, there should be regular criminals. Then there’s the Wick world, which has gold coins. And then there’s a sub-world where like if you couldn’t make it, you went into the Bowery King’s world and we came up with this character of the Bowery King [and his people] as if the CIA were in our world… They’re the information gatherers.”
For the second film, Stahelski says, “Once that clicked with the Bowery King world and the Continentals being in different cities, it was just a matter of how much time, how much money do we have, and how much can we could create… That’s where it really blew out. That’s what really the trigger was for John Wick 3 and 4, was John Wick 2. That’s when we really decided we’re going to build this out.”
It’s something Chapter 4 star Shamier Anderson observes to Consequence as well. “There’s a mythology to this piece,” he says. “Even though none of it’s technically real, there’s just so much realism to it, with these characters and relationships and history. Their objectives, their needs, their wants.”
John Wick: Chapter 4 (Lionsgate)
Anderson joins the John Wick universe as the Tracker, an outside figure who has his own reasons for wanting to capture the titular assassin on the run. “When I spoke to Chad about [the Tracker’s bacsktory], I said, ‘Yo man, what if the Tracker looked at every John Wick film as if it were a documentary,'” he says. “Like, he actually was watching these documentaries of John Wick and said, I want to immerse myself into that world. So that’s why you see the Tracker doesn’t take anything seriously. The whole thing was just different to him.”
The Tracker is never seen without two things on screen: His loyal canine companion, and a beat-up notebook packed with scribblings and observations about John Wick’s world. That notebook, Anderson says, was a precious document to him, and he says that he understands “one hundred percent” of what’s written inside. “They added something with CGI that Chad told me [about afterwards], and I almost got jarred. I was like, ‘You can’t just do that. That was my notebook. I needed to be a part of that conversation,'” Anderson laughs. “But yeah, a hundred percent. I knew everything in that notebook, every page, front and back.”
The notebook has additional meaning, though, according to Stahelski: “Honestly, the Tracker’s notebook is actually a gag, because people make fun of how many notebooks I have all the time. So we were like, ‘Well, let’s give the character a notebook.’ The Tracker’s notebook is literally a representation of the John Wick notebook. If you go through any of our notebooks, it is that random.”
For while the John Wick universe has now become a pretty complicated one, mythology-wise, Stahelski says there’s no story bible or document that compiles all of the details. “There’s not even one that explains half [of it],” he says. “If you walk into my office, you’ll see stacks of Moleskin notebooks with ideas. One will be labeled ‘stunt pieces,’ one will be labeled ‘underwater,’ one will be like ‘snow,’ and one will be ‘characters.’ We have a million pieces of interest or inspiration or visuals or characters. That’s what defines what the world is, the things we love, and how we work them into a cohesive story and we build off that.”
So let’s talk about more of those “things we love” — like, for example, the gold coins that are established in the first film as John Wick’s primary currency. “The gold coins were simply because it was a currency that you couldn’t track,” Stahelski says. “It was good in any country, it had a solid weight. One gold coin was one life, equal to about $1,000… It meant you’re a member of the club. Like it is a secret handshake, it didn’t matter if it costs $100 or $1,000. The coin simply proved you’re of the world and it had a whole different kind of monetary system to it — more of a business card, an entry kind of thing.”
Stahelski also explains the High Table’s unique approach to technology — largely rooted in analog machinery — as something that originally was rooted in “Cold War-y” tropes. “Why do you see so many analog computers and phones as you can, they’re almost air-gapped, right? You can’t crack them. So that was our original thing that we wanted to show.”
John Wick: Chapter 4 (Lionsgate)
In addition, he says, “through production design, we wanted to feel more analog than just digital because so many times you see him in a modern action movie, they whip out an iPhone, and there’s a solution. We wanted the characters to figure it out themselves.”
There’s also an element of homage in it, because Stahelski is “a gigantic Archer fan.” (Yes, the FX animated series.) “I actually got to meet [Archer creator] Adam Reed very early on — I asked him about how Cheryl/Carol was always on the old IBM computer, and for him, it was a tribute back to the old Bonds and old spy movies. [In John Wick], it’s a nod nod, wink wink, to Archer and my love of that series.”
Stahelski also ties the inspiration for the mysterious telephone operators who serve as the information nexus for the High Table to an aesthetic popularized in the early 2000s by the Suicide Girls. In fact, Stahelski literally says “we call them Suicide Girls.”
The overall inspiration began with a Google image search: “I saw this old black and white photo of old switchboards, because I think I was looking up a cool analog phone that we needed for this one shot, and I went down this whole rabbit hole. I wanted to figure out how to do this battle royale idea we had. How does this world communicate? Like, they can’t use regular cell phones. So like, ‘Oh, we’ll do a switchboard. Everybody’s cell phones are connected to one switchboard.’ It’s a completely independent cell service for our world.”
And then, he says, “At the same time, I was researching tattoos,” which led him to the Suicide Girls. “They are all tatted up with these interesting looks, so I took the idea of a 1940s or 1930s switchboard operator with the idea of a really badass, Hollywood-esque roller derby team and just stuck them together.”
For the general inspiration behind the society which surrounds the High Table, things get a little more personal. “Our whole rationale behind analog versus digital and how a secret society could persevere through hundreds of years is mostly based on etiquette,” Stahelski says. “Etiquette and ceremony and ritual are big, big themes in Wick. That’s why you tattoo, or why you have a brand with the crest. They’re very ritualistic, very ceremonial things that bond people together.”
John Wick: Chapter 4 (Lionsgate)
The source of that, he says, came from family. “[Derek Kolstad]’s grandfather is actually named John Wick, and his grandfather was very big on — and my mom’s dad was very big on — etiquette. Which color suit jacket to wear at the table, what fork to use, what makes a good toast? It was drilled into our heads to be polite, when to stand up, when to give a toast, and whose responsibility it is to carve the turkey. Etiquette was a very big thing.”
You see that reflected, Stahelski says, in the way John Wick’s name is said throughout the series. “John, Johnny, Jonathan, Mr. Wick, Jonathan Wick — every character will say his name in a different way. That was from both our grandfathers stressing that the most important thing you can learn is someone’s name, and how you use someone’s name.”
All of these details end up creating a world that can support more than just one action movie: Anderson tells Consequence that he’s ready for his Tracker spin-off, and there are many characters who could easily support their own stories — as we’ll see in the future, with the upcoming Peacock prequel series The Continental and Ana de Armas-starring spinoff film Ballerina.
“That’s part of the gag, right?” Stahelski says. “Coming from the Wachowski school of things, there’s no character, no prop, no scene, no shot too small, too big. They all matter. Like, have no fat on the bone. Everything’s got to mean something. Try to say something with everything, right? Try to influence everything or try to at least interest your audience in things.”
That’s why, he continues, “Every character, every extra’s every moment, every dancer you see in the club, we selected because of a look, of vibe, a feel, a movement, some kind of interesting thing about them. Sergio Leone, I read a lot and studied a lot of his films, and if you watch The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, you could have done a movie about any one of those three characters. The trick is to get them all together and make it all connect.”
Says Stahelski, “I could watch a Common one, I could watch a Halle Berry one, I could watch a Shamier Anderson one, I could watch a Hiroyuki Sanada one, I could watch a Donnie Yen spin-off. I could watch any of those movies. The really fun part is, how do I get them all in the same storyline and connect them, so that not only do you love the good guys, you love the bad guys, you love everybody? I think that’s probably one of the most inspirational goals to try and achieve. It’s also the biggest compliment, if you do achieve it.”
John Wick: Chapter 4 arrives in theaters (via Continental Airlines, no doubt) on March 24th.
John Wick Chapter 4 Director Guides Us Through the Assassin World’s Mythology
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