Well-executed choreography, interesting characters,
and an engrossing world made of John Wick one of most entertaining original movies
last year had to offer, and with a sequel on the way, the question becomes where
to take the character?
Speaking to Collider about his latest starring vehicle the horror movie Knock Knock, Keanu Reeves teased what will push Wick back into
the underworld.
"I think we have a really good premise, and it’s
an organic premise" Reeves said of the work returning screenwriter Dew
Kolstad did on the sequel. "It’s basically — to me there’s John Wick and
then there’s John. You know, John is the married guy whose wife just died, and
that five years of his life. Then there’s John Wick, who’s the mythical
assassin. In this, John Wick’s past comes and infiltrates John’s life and John
Wick, in a way, has to fight for John."
Often time's sequels feel like they are retreading the
same bits of the first movie, and for the actor that was something they desperately
tried to avoid.
"‘Why tell the story? Why do we need to do this
again? How do we do that without doing another dog?’ So we speak about John Wick, the next
chapter, and what is that emotional hook? What is that? So I think we have a
good idea of that."
As for the thing most fans are eager to see being
developed in the sequel, Reeves says that the director, Chad Stahelski, and the
writer have paid an extra close attention to it.
"Chad and the
writer, Derek Kolstad, they’ve really listened to what people have enjoyed
about the work and how they speak about it. So there’s definitely that
influence of the other world, the Continental world, the look, the feel, what
it is about the movie, what made people like it; is definitely being
paid attention to and the world opens up in this chapter."
The set-pieces in
John Wick were great partially because they weren't just an assemble of quick
cuts like many movies of the same genre tend to be nowadays, and for the sequel
Reeves reveals that they will maintain that aspect of it while adding some new and
exciting elements.
"We’re gonna do
the same kind of thing in the sense of — what are the guiding principles? So
it’s longer takes, know where you are on the space, who’s doing what, action
with consequence. And then going to other levels of what the gun-Fu was, which
was Jujitsu and Judo mixed with weapons and different styles of weapon
training. So we’ve been opening up, I’ve been learning some other tools and
different styles of that, and trying to develop some more techniques in terms
of Judo and Jujitsu and bring those elements into the work. And then we have
some other things that might be a little different…But it’s all organic. It’s
not like all of a sudden John Wick has superpowers, it’s got to be connected to
the character."
As for further
developing the franchise with more sequels, Reeves doesn't know if it will
happen or not.
"I’m interested
in what happens to the guy and in this world. So when we were speaking about
it, obviously it did well enough for the investors to want to do another one,
which is cool, and it’s great to have the opportunity to further the story. But
we had to come up with a reason why, and we came up with a reason that was good
enough, that didn’t suck, and we’re just trying to make it better and better.
In terms of a franchise, I don’t know, until you do it and it’s done, you don’t
know, because it’s not source material, this is original goodness."
John Wick 2 begins production this Fall.
Source - Collider
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