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JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 4 www.postmagazine.com 15 POST MAR/APR 2023 T he un-retired hitman is back, with the goal of finally defeating The High Table of crime lords, who've put a multi-million dollar bounty on his head. Keanu Reeves returns as the franchise's namesake — a role he's held since its initial release in 2014, and subsequently in John Wick: Chapter 2 (2017) and John Wick: Chapter 3 — Parabellum (2019). Laurence Fishburne resumes his role as The Bowery King, the head of an underground intelli- gence network, as does Ian McShane, who plays Winston, the owner of the New York Continental Hotel, which is frequented by the world's most accomplished killers. Lance Reddick, also a regular in the John Wick storylines, is the Continental's distinguished concierge, Charon. 87Eleven Entertainment's Chad Stahelski is both a producer and the director of John Wick: Chapter 4. He, too, has been an integral part of the series' success, initially co-directing the 2014 film, and act- ing as sole director on the follow-ups. His relation- ship with Reeves dates back to The Matrix series, for which he worked as a stunt double for the star, and continued with the Reloaded and Revolutions releases, as well as with Constantine. But it's the world of John Wick that keeps him so interested in this franchise, including its highly-stylized lighting, nighttime city environments, and the fact that the sky's the limit when it comes to what Wick is capable of. Here, Chad Stahelski shares insight into the chal- lenges he faced while making the Lionsgate feature, which runs just short of three hours, including its editing style, original soundtrack, color treatment and most challenging visual effects sequences. What is it about the John Wick series that keeps you coming back? "Good question, We did the first one, my partner — Dave Leitch and Keanu — we had all been friends from The Matrix (films), and Keanu knew that I was trying to direct. You can imagine the kind of scripts we were getting — a lot of special forces blowing stuff up, or car chase/assassin things. But we were looking for something that was a little bit of differ- ent — something you could put a different spin on. "We always had this mythological idea about, 'How do you do a modern day fantasy kind of thing?' So when Keanu sent us the script on the first John Wick, we're like, 'Oh, we have a take on this. Can we do it more like this hidden world within a world thing?' And he kind of dug it, and that became the first film. But we thought that was a one-and-done, and we were happy with what we did. We had no money, no time, but we're pretty happy with the result. "Surprisingly to us, the movie was a bit of a suc- cess, and the studio came back and asked us to do another one. And that's really when the work start- ed. Then we got to come up with our own stuff. We hadn't built a really-massive backstory for the world. We didn't have like a diagram or a flowchart about every city having a Continental, where all these assassins were coming from. So that's really where we went to work. "It wasn't far into the second Wick, we kind of realized, 'Oh, we can go as big, as broad — aspi- rationally speaking — like a good fantasy film, like Tolkien or anything like that, where you can really build worlds, and the sky's the limit as long as we kept it hyper real…And once that hit us, that became very attractive because now we're not beholden to any original IP. (There's) no former superhero powers or a fan base that put limitations on us. "That's the fun thing in a way. Wicks allow us to be as creative or uncreative, I guess, as we want. And on top of that, John Wick uses nunchucks. He can ride a horse. He can do anything. So from an action standpoint, the sky's the limit. My imagina- tion and Keanu's physical abilities…that's the only limit we have." How long was the shoot, and what did it mean to have director of photography Dan Lausten come onboard again? "I think 103 days, and I think 100 of them were nights. So even when I saw interiors, I was on a night schedule. And when you have 100 of those, that wears out anybody. I love nights personally, but I don't know if my crew loved me for loving nights. "One thing about Dan and I, we've always talked about 'world creation.' If you look at Dan's work, for Guillermo del Toro (Nightmare Alley, The Shape of Water), or Brotherhood of the Wolf, or some of the other things he's done, it's always got this 'neo noir' (look). It's heavy shading. It's the use of blacks. But we do it with neon. We try to carve it out, and a big part of world creation is the look of the film. Hopefully you saw we put a lot more time and money and love into the cinematography in this one than anybody else that's out there in the action game? We want that to take you out of the world you're in and put you in the world that we want you to be in. And that's why we push color so much. And the easiest way to do that, I think, is night. Cities take on a whole different look at night — New York, Paris, Osaka — they're what we would consider 'lit cities' — cities with a night vibe. Dan and I both believe at night, you can carve light. You can shape light. You can shape the world where we want it to be, as opposed to daytime." Nathan Orloff was your editor on this film. How was he working in relation to your shooting schedule and locations? "Wicks, being my main directorial experience, it's like I'm trying to change the process every time and learn more of it. You're always trying to get better. Nate, I think, was my youngest editor ever. I think he had like one credit behind him — Ghostbusters: Afterlife. But when Nate and I origi- nally met, all the same things — between Japanese animation, old Westerns — Nate got both. The aes- thetic of editing the Wick (films) is very symmetri- cal — wide, medium, tight, stay on the tight, push out — very, very symmetrical to make you feel like it's a live performance...That's why we're shooting anamorphic, and the colors. You [get] the aesthetic for the technical side, but you've also got that it's a character-based thing. This time I was trying to get Most of the production took place at night.