Keanu Reeves really wished that the stuntmen in “John Wick: Chapter 4” would never forget how many times they lost their lives while filming the blockbuster action film. Reeves gave the film’s stunt team t-shirts that bore the number of fatalities each stunt performer experienced in the movie, according to a recent article from The New York Times on the development of the sequel’s iconic action sequences. That figure was more than 20 for several members of the stunt team.
Why do you need a stunt guy for so many death scenes? It’s because many sequences in “John Wick: Chapter 4” used the same stunt actors. The production used 35 stunt performers, many of whom had repeated deaths in the scene, for the instantly iconic staircase fight in which Reeves’ John Wick fights bad guys as he races up the 222 steps leading to the Sacré-Coeur Basilica (only to be pushed back down to the bottom and have to do it all over again).
When director Chad Stahelski first informed fight coordinator Jeremy Marinas about the staircase scene, Marinas said, “It’s like, of course that’s what you want.” “You want me to alter each of the 100 men’ falls and reactions as they down the stairs. You do, of course. It seemed as if it were simply another workday.
To think about how well Keanu — not John Wick — was able to perform shooting upwards while walking, Marinas said, “simply to think about how hard it is to go up stairs when we don’t want to. On level terrain, it’s challenging enough to be a marksman.
The New York Times said that it took seven night sessions to complete the stair fight video. The average stunt worker was “killed” four to five times during the course of the film, and “at the end of the shoot Reeves made T-shirts for the stunt performers emblazoned with the number of times they were slain over the course of the entire movie.”
Reeves did each stunt that had John Wick climbing the stairs, according to Stahelski. Stunt duplicate Vincent Bouillon came in useful for the 44-second tumble down the stairs.
When shooting the sequence, Stahelski commented, “I think that look John Wick gives when he looks at his watch and actually looks up the staircase is maybe 50 percent John Wick and 50 percent Keanu Reeves going, ‘Ugh, Stahelski did it to me again’.” “You must endure pain. That’s what makes John Wick entertaining. He endures pain and perseveres.
Reeves gave his stunt squad for “John Wick: Chapter 4” more than just T-shirts. People magazine claimed in 2021 that Reeves gave his four-man stunt squad personalised Rolex Submariner watches to celebrate the completion of filming as a token of appreciation for their dedication to the next action tentpole. On the movie, Reeves’ stunt performers were Li Qiang, Bruce Concepcion, Jeremy Marinas, and Dave Camarillo.
According to People magazine, “the actor personally etched unique notes to each individual on the inside of each watch. In his Instagram Stories, Marinas showed off the watches, calling them the “greatest wrap present ever” and revealed that his watch said “The John Wick Five” and with the phrase, “Jeremy Thank you Keanu JW4 2021.
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