The Gun-Fu Fighting Style in JOHN WICK Was Chosen to Accommodate the Film's Short Shooting Schedule

John Wick is a film series that seems to have exploded onto the scene with its unique badass style. The film’s star, Keanu Reeves, brings an unrelenting fighting technique, yet a relatable persona to the stories. He just feels like a guy you’d follow into a fight because it seems like the right thing to do.

While the method of fighting used in the movies isn’t completely unique to the films, they certainly made it their own. Legendary Hong Kong filmmaker John Woo pioneered the fighting style of gun-fu in the '80s by taking movie gun fights from sequences of static shots to highly-choreographed, kinetic experiences.

/Film explains that in a 2019 interview, former stuntman and director of the John Wick films, Chad Stahelski, spoke about the philosophy behind shooting the John Wick action scenes, where he said:

"I love live performances. I love sitting and watching a stage. So all the action [in 'John Wick'] was kind of choreographed so you can sit and watch. Again everybody gives us the long takes, the limited editing stuff. That's not like the overall goal, our goal is immersion and the more you see Keanu doing stuff the more you buy into that John Wick is a badass because you're seeing Keanu Reeves be a badass. It just goes with the immersion into the character."

Essentially, Stahelski and David Leitch, who produced the John Wick films and helped direct the first movie, were using long takes not for the sake of it, but because they felt the less they cut, the more viewers would believe they were watching an actual fight take place. But that brought about its own issues.

Stahelski elaborated on the genesis of the John Wick action style in a Forbes interview in 2017. In it, he revealed that, with just 47 days for filming, he and Leitch were forced to come up with a way of saving as much time as they could. And when you're trying to sell the idea of realism, the last thing you want to worry about is making obviously fake punches look real with clever editing techniques — especially if you're trying to keep the audience immersed with long takes. As Stahelski explained:

"The more you do punches and kicks, the more you gotta miss, because you gotta sell the hit, you gotta change the angle. So okay, we're gonna get rid of punches and kicks. We're gonna do judo, jiu-jitsu, and tactical gun work, so we can hold all the shots, no cuts. So we developed a style and reverse-engineered from there."

It’s such a cool way of shooting a movie, and it added to the reasons why people loved the first film, and felt compelled to return for everything made within the franchise.

John Wick: Chapter 4 hits theaters next month on March 24, 2023.