Keanu Reeves opened up about the physical difficulties he faced while filming John Wick: Chapter 4.
In an interview with Total Film, which was published on Monday, Reeves, 58, detailed how it was tough for him to keep up with the training and stunts he performed for the fourth installment of the action-packed movie franchise.
“John Wick: Chapter 4 was the hardest physical role I’ve ever had in my career so far,” Reeves said. “They really trained me up to be able to have what we call the toolbox.”
In addition to the martial arts and fitness training he had to endure since filming for the previous John Wick movie that came out in 2019, he revealed the upcoming film will feature car-fu (when a character uses their car as a moving weapon, a mix between “car” and “kung fu”), which involves many elusive driving techniques that Keanu performed himself.
“We took the car-driving to the next level, which I really enjoy,” he said. “There’s 180s, forward-into-reverse 180s, reverse into-forward 270s, drifting…So it was really fun to get a chance to learn those skills, and to play.”
For JW4, Reeves, who is known to perform his own stunts, was joined by Hong Kong martial arts film actor, Donnie Yen. The film’s stunt coordinator, Scott Rogers, discussed the “master level fighting abilities” brought to the set by Yen, showing the dedication and chemistry between him and Reeves’ martial arts training and how that will translate to the big screen.
“[Yen] is not an actor that you have to train for each specific fight. He is a great actor who is also a trained fighter. His ability to enhance the choreography through his own creativity is world class.
“When you add that to the many years of John Wick training that Keanu Reeves has invested,” Rogers continued, “you end up with something very special.”
Nearing 60 years old, Keanu has seen his fair share of action-packed movies that involved him training and performing his own stunts, including Constantine, Point Break, and The Matrix movie series. But from the looks of it, age is but a number to the Canadian-raised actor.
Just last year, in an interview with Jimmy Kimmel, Reeves talked about which Marvel superhero he’d want to play in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. He confessed that he was a “nerdy” kid who obsessed over comic books and would be ecstatic to see his future self play one of the characters he read so much about and idolized.
“10-year-old Reeves would want to…I think he’d probably want to be Ghost Rider,” he told Kimmel.
Ghost Rider, aka Johnny Blaze, is a Marvel character who sells his soul to the demon, Mephisto, in exchange for a cure to his foster father’s illness. You might recognize his fiery skull, leather jacket, and black motorbike from the 2007 adaptation, Ghost Rider, starring Nicolas Cage as Mr. Blaze himself. That movie was made outside of the MCU, which is a collection of Marvel movies whose stories are interconnected and work together to build a greater cinematic universe.
Kevin Feige, President of Marvel Studios, said, “We talk to [Reeves] for almost every film we make. I don’t know when, if, or ever he’ll join the MCU, but we very much want to figure out the right way to do it.”
For sure, Keanu would be performing his stunts as a superhero in the MCU. Not to mention, he’s quite familiar with motorbikes, having a collection of his own. At 58, there are no signs of him slowing down anytime soon.
Sources:
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/keanu-reeves-marvel-superhero_n_6346e9d0e4b08e0e607f2ff3
