Any of his Jason Concepcion and on Roseay Night and welcome back to X ray Vision, the podcast where we dive you to your favorite shows, movies, comics and pop culture. Coming to you from iHeart Podcast, where we're bringing you three huge episodes a week every Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday plus news plus news.
On today's episode, we are talking about the upcoming new John Wick movie.
Have you heard of it?
It's called Ballerina, which is interesting. Ballerina. That's because it's a spinoff. Yes, exactly, So it's a spin off.
It starts on a damas. We haven't seen it.
So we're gonna use this as a chance to talk about the Drunk franchise, talk about gun Fu, one of my favorite sub genres that takes the close quarters of martial arts and a kung fu film and adds a shit kind of crazy guns being used in completely illogical but fantastic ways. And I'll also talk about what Ballerina needs to do to be a hit.
Okay John Wick. John Wick's Ballerina starring on an armis coming out this week, directed by our favor one of our one of our werewolf in Vampire Phaves Len Wizman. The film takes place during the events I Love the Love the People, I Love It, I Love Timeline Shifting,
UH spinoffs, Fast and the Furious style chronology. So this film takes place during the events of John Wick Chapter three Parabellum, which is an interesting note for the apparent john Wick cameo, or maybe it's more than a cameo, or maybe it's less that takes place in the film and it follows Eve maccarl out of Diarmis, who is beginning her training in the assassin traditions of the Ruska Roma, which is apparently a subgroup that is then involved in
the overall assassin culture of the John Wick films.
We saw them training in the kind of theater in the Fust movie, I.
Believe, and according to Variety, Lionsgate which is at this point like much the same way that New Line was the House Built by Freddy, this is like the House Built by John Wick is targeting a so SO start of about twenty eight to thirty million from thirty four hundred North American locations in the first weekend of release. Vallerine is looking to add another thirty million from international
markets after that. SO we're gonna get a chance that we're going to talk about the film after we see it, but this is our conversation to get you ready for it. We talk about various things related to john Wick, Anody Armis, and Len Wizman. First of all, Rosie, what does this movie need to do to be a quote unquote successful entrance into the john Wick franchise.
I think the reason that the john Wick movies are so beloved is because they are inventive, stunt focused, something just totally different than we'd seen before. Obviously, you have a great omnibus this episode coming up about Gunfu, but we hadn't really seen a Western Gunfu movie in the same way that we've you know, someone like john Wick John Wu deals with them, or even the way that the Matrix in the late nineties early Zeros kind of played with it a little bit. John Wick felt completely
different and it gave Keanu Reeves a new franchise. It reintroduced him to audiences. It had a really easy, you know, original but completely classic revenge motif, but it was about
a dog and the emotional connection to a dog. It gave us different kinds of villains by making the Mafia Russian mafia focused kind of villains, which often these kind of movies where somebody takes revenge after their family die, like a death Wish or the Notorious Peppermint, often come across as very racist because they're just about killing a bunch of black and brown people. So this really was a complete shot to the system for action and I think the dream version of this is that this can
be that for Anadames for female action movies. But will it deliver on that, I don't know, because so far they're already heavily connecting it to John Wick.
I think this comes from an era where they wanted.
To do a lot of John Wick sequels without Keanu, including The Continental, which was a very belagued series a beleagued network, and it ended up not hitting in the same way. So I'm interested to see I hope this goes well. We have seen this is the thing that I'm most interested about. We've seen Anada Armis in one of the best action sequences of the last I know ten years in the Last James Bond movie with Daniel Craig, where the pem.
Meet up No time to die.
It's so good they meet up, they're kind of immediately thrown into this fun, crazy action sequence. She totally holds her own. She's absolutely incredible, and I'm hoping that they get to channel that into this movie, because she really was a star. But the trailers are don't show a lot. We haven't seen the movie yet. The movie comes out in a few days. The embargo is not up, so it doesn't always bode well, but I'm hoping that this.
Could be great.
Also, I will say, as we mentioned then Wiseman, this is a man who has directed many female led action movies in the shape of the Underwhelmed franchise.
So there's a version where it could be good. But I don't know.
We're gonna have to do by the way, so let's let's briefly talk all things. Len. Here's my thing with Lynn. I love It's a guilty pleasure, but I love all the Underworld movies.
Of course, they're not enjoyable.
Quote unquote good really, but they are. The casts are almost uniformly wonderful. The action is and the story and setup is just wildly over the top, and they get, like I mean, they get incredible performances from some really really talented actors in these films. And the action is this kind of Matrix inspired horror action that is wonderful, in your face, over the top. It's just very watchable, like Saturday Afternoon like fair for me.
It's very It's very Pool w s Anderson on Yes, with an evil franchise like him and Lenn with their wives that were starring in the movies, were very, very clearly excited to make action againaws out of that wife and I who can blame him?
Yes, and again, the talent is fantastic. I get Kate beckhamsale like, don't get it twisted because of the kind of B movie framing of the underworlds. Here, She's a legitimately very talented actor. And Bill Nihey, is it these films? Michael Sheen? Is it these films? Mike chewing up scenery? Yeah, shirt off Michael Sheen, full like werewolf mode. Now Here's
so love love Len. Here's the issue. I don't want to see him doing anything other than vampire wearwalth movies, which gives me some pause about Ballerina because two thousand and sevens Live for Your die Hard. I think the you know, a much forgotten and rightfully sow entrant into the long running Diehard series Awful twenty twelve, the if you haven't seen it, don't see it remake of the nineteen eighties Arnold Schwarzeneger hit Total Recall. The twenty twelve
when we've been directed, Total Recall is awful. Get just none of that, Dems and go watch you please watch the Paul Verehoven version, which is weird. It is campy, practical, wonderful, practical effects. This kind of sly subversiveness that for Hoven is known for. The Weizman thing is just like when he's not doing the werewolves in the Vampires. It's like a straight action movie and it's so straight that I'm I don't know, it doesn't have any charge for me.
They don't even go to Mars.
They don't go they don't even go to Mars, which is what are we doing?
That?
Crazy?
Crazy? And so that part of it, I'm a little I'm a little worried Rosie.
So so I will say, I think the thing that lem Weiseman does well is hard genre right. He yes was the executive producer on Sleepy Hollo. He was an executive producer on Lucifer The Great Tea.
Under Wonderful underrated Lucifer Yeah.
Gifted the early X Men TV show that we've got in twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen, also surprisingly good swamp thing. We all know how I feel about that TV shs philosophy, But like, I think that he has a good eye for weird, hard genre stories.
I hope that what this can do is lean into.
The magical realism of the High Table as the Ruscaroma and which essentially from what we've seen so far in the franchise, is like a black Widow program or a redwom program, or the Jennifer Lawrence movie Blackbird. There's many different kind of versions of this, like Russian children, especially women being trained from you know, we love to become a sac.
I love Russian mobster baddies ever like it.
I know America can't get enough, and I just I'm very interested to see where it goes. I think that the pair of the I think that Len Wiseman and Ana Damas could be a great She has got kind of a similar vibe to Beckham Sale, where she takes unexchecuted roles. She can be in a rom com, but she can also be in an action movie.
Okay, So let's see.
I'm interested because the story of this movie is that there was bad test screenings, there was reshoots, there was a lot of money put into it. You know me, I'm always like I would probably rather see whatever that version was like two years ago when it was probably a super low budget, weird movie. But the big question I think out of all of it, as with any and this is not to put anything unfair onto Anna.
This is to ask the question that we ask of any movie like this, like we asked of Gladiator too with Paul.
Mescal Does Ana Damas have the juice?
Jason, I am a little concerned that she doesn't have the juice simply because I think if she had the juice, it would have been juicing by now.
It would have already been selling the juice.
I mean, it's been several years since. You know, when was the I think it was like PLoP p probably war Dogs or Blade Runner twenty forty nine, when you when you first started hearing oh Anadharmas is coming, knives out, oh Anna Dharmas is coming, so yeah, and then certainly no time to die, and then the starring role. It's not that she hasn't starred in stuff. But the most notable stuff you know her in is stuff where she was a co star and I don't know, I don't
know that she has to do. She's done a lot of kind of romantic type roles, including a absolutely weird, weird Adrian lined erotic and no one loves an erotic thriller more than Adrian, but like weird, weird erotic thriller in which she co starred across from Ben Affleck, who she's dating.
It's such a weird movie.
Yeah, it is a weird movie.
Sexy snail movie. She was already in three movies with.
Keanna Reeves, including the movie that I was talking about, not of a Drome Wake episode, the wonderfullly cheesy and terrible Eli Roth movie Knock Knock, which I love but is absolutely terrible.
And I've seen a lot of her films, I honestly can't say that there's one time, including the deep Water directed by everybody's favorite erotic thriller King Adrian Lyon, that were I thought, Wow, Annie Armis's chemistry with the cast, with her co star with whoever really pot whoa really pops off the screen, and I think that's something. It's that kind of X factor thing where maybe she just doesn't have it, or maybe there's something holding back the juice.
I also think that it's a lot of action roles at this point, Like it's a lot of these kind of roles, and I wonder if there's she does take weird stuff, but I wonder if the choices are not necessarily there kind of a big movie for any Armis like this is this is.
A hard set off a new era.
Because this is a hard genre film where the franchise is as big as of a star, arguably as the star of the film, and expectations are medium, not high, and so if it doesn't go it, I think it's it. It's not great for both the john Wick franchise, who trying to expand past Keanu Reeves who is sixty, and for Andy Armis, who we've been waiting to kind of, you know, break big into a different level and it hasn't happened yet. Your thoughts.
I would love for this to surprise us. I will say, like, as.
We know, john Wick was not some when it started. It was not some like hugely surprising. It was not some expected hit, you know, it was very much like a slow burn smash that ended up launching a franchise. I think with everything with franchise movies, this does sadly seem like it has the in the world of John Wick, like, let's connect it to this thing, and it's like, is are you making something that was as original as John Wick? Are you making something that was as interesting as John Wick?
Do you have people like Chad Stileski behind the scenes. But I will say I have read a lot of interviews with lem Wiseman about this because I do find this movie to be in a very interesting place.
If you look at the success of the John.
Wick movies, this should be one of the blockbusters. They should have been doing fans screenings. They should already have the reviews out like this should be like and it feels unusual that they are not in that space. So I've been reading to kind of try and find out. Definitely, I think sees this movie as a He is calling it a spin on instead of a spin off, which I kind of like because I'm like, Okay, well, if you're just doing John Wick again but with a woman, I'm kind of fine with that.
Yes, But I think what he really means.
Is it happens in the chronologue in the chronology of the movies, whereas spinoffs often don't. But the thing I have been interested. He has talked a lot about wanting to explore the folkloric elements and the weird kind of realities of the rest.
Of the simmar and that's kind so I agree.
Hopefully, maybe the reason that it's not getting greater views is because it's kind of weird and it can find its own place.
But I do think it's.
Tough because all these movies, you know, it has one of those blooming posters that makes it look like they see get a bunch of people's faces into it. I don't think currently it looks like showing enough individual Yes, it looks like the bloody end Game post and it's like, I just don't I don't know that it's gonna I want it to be more original than it currently seems. So let's hope this is a marketing issue rather than an actual issue.
How here's a question that I think anyone who's closely watched the trailer will have. How much is Keanu Reeves actually in this film? And will he and Anna actually be in the not in the same scene, in the same shot where they were clearly in the same space at the same time.
Post credit sequence.
Yes, I mean they have worked together three times, so I'm kinda hoping that it gets to be something a bit realer than that. But it does look like from the trailer that it's very much like shooting from behind a brunette woman's head who's in the same rim as Keanu Reeves, and then shooting from a brunette man said, who's in the same room as added armis, So yeah, he He's probably gonna be in it for like three minutes.
I would love if it was longer, because I do think that john Wick mostly stands on the really great weird relationships that Keanu makes throughout with his cast members and the characters, like the stuff with him and Laurence Fishburn or well on the Ferne. Like, there's so many good weird moments that don't have to go on that long.
So I would love that.
But I also think that sadly, the original John Wick movie was super weird. Nobody thought it was gonna make any money, and I think that probably allowed them to do a lot more weird stuff with it. I don't know if we're going to get you know, twenty minutes silent action sequences in this.
Movie, which is kind of what made john Wick great. So I don't know.
Hopefully they're in the same room, but realistically I'm saying under five minutes, probably not in the same you know in really.
You know what, this movie makes me kind of pine for the uh john Wick mainstay. Director David Lych project Atomic Blonde twenty seventeen staring Charlie's That is kind of like pre john Wick Joan Wick, Like it's yeah, and it just kind of got forgotten. I hope that doesn't happen with this film. And I hope that that was a weird movie also, like There Were every One is.
A deeply weird movie, I believe, also in a good way to be that person.
It's also based on a comic book. Guy, Yes, that's true, based on a.
Comic book, and uh yeah, I think that's a really weird fun movie. Also, you know what, maybe this can be that movie for Ana Damas. Maybe that's the best case scenario because truthfully, it was not like some huge smash it for Charlie's.
But then she was in Fantastic, then.
She was in you know, the MCU, then she was in most no, I think the Fast and Furious movies as like an action star. So maybe this is gonna hit in that way that has Anna recognized as an action star and see where she could where she could hopefully go What are I mean?
This is kind of like the larger question, right what are what are hit movies anymore? Outside of we outside of having.
This conversation like what does that even look like?
I think it's move outside of IP, like what is a hit?
Okay, I'll tell you.
We do have a fantastic We have a fantastic situation going on right now. We have a perfect example and this is gonna change Hollywood for the next couple of years. Currently, a successful movie is looks like sinnots. It's an original IP movie that you give ninety million dollars to, but that makes four hundred million dollars. That is a huge smash hit that becomes this kind of new mental zeitgeist, churning, scene stealing film that makes every other movie around it
look bad. But that again is a lightning in a bottle situation. I also think that we're still in a world where successful movies are and Sinners is part of this. They are genre movies often because the budget is lower. You know, we're gonna have Megan two coming out soon. I'm sure that that is gonna probably make a lot more money than it costs. And I think that you make a good point though, because what does a huge franchise movie.
How does it have success?
Because I'm sure this movie costs a lot of money, It's had reshoots, it's a John Wick movie. Those movies budgets have ballooned. So what does a successful movie look like? And how would Ballerina become successful? I mean, I'm gonna tell you one thing. Look, I'm sorry Lionsgate because this is definitely a Lionsgate issue.
I'm gonna tell you number.
One reason that this movie proble will not be massively successful. Why did they put From the World of John Wick Colon before the name?
Just trust the name.
We've met the Ballerinas, we understand the notion like that kind of stuff. I think, like no movie really has ever done with a catchy name like From the World of John Wick Colon balle You just trust.
The people John Wicks, John Wick's by John Wick. Ballerina He's and then you're gonna be like, okay, but he's only in it. Actually I'm never in the same places. But who cares? Like you're just trying to you know, like who who cares?
Okay, Ballerina did cost they're saying around eighty to ninety millions, So let's see what it happens that Steward ball I'm yes. I mean the fact this movie does kind of have a banger cast, like Angelica Houston, who we've seen before as the leader of the director of the Resciroma, gabrielle Bert Burne. I love him, He's in so many different great movies. Lance Reddick, he reprised his role before he passed away as Karen. Also Norman Readers, who I also love, and Ian McShane also in this before.
And Keanu Reeves.
So I do feel like I'm like, there is something here that could be special.
Let me ask you something about Oh, Norman Readers hair dependent, Right, He's like the Orlando Bloom He's somehow made a career out of always have long hair exactly, never cut it.
Never cut that hair, bro don't do it.
Okay, So let me tell you this, this is one of the most deranged things I've maybe ever heard. Okay, in twenty seventeen, Lionsgate Films acquired Shay Hatton's action thriller Ballerina, which itself was inspired when Hatton viewed the trailer to John Wick Chapter two, and they decided to produce used the film with him rewriting it to be part of
the John Wick franchise. Already a problem, I'll tell you that that's that's where the notion of taking a script and as we call it, like you know, uh, filing off the the IP or inserting the IP, filing off the serial numbers or inserting the serial numbers. I feel like that's always This movie has been in production for so long that in May twenty twenty they were looking at like Chloe Grace moretts, Wow, this is like how long ago this has been going on? I just I'm
very interested. I want to know what happened. I mean, at one point, Emerald Fennel, who most famous now for Saltburn, but who at the time was very much in the conversation about Phoebe waller Bridge because she had written the next season of Killing Eve. She was involved in this.
Like there feels like there has been a whole world man.
The Phoebe, the Phoebe post mm hmmm post flea Bag. It's not. It's really stalled out on trying to write for movies and start and stuff.
Yeah, the whole thing is interesting.
I also I am learning a lot here because I guess Keanu was originally.
Supposed to be Jedi Master Soul in.
The Acolyte makes a lot of sense. That would have been very interesting. But Yeah, basically this movie has been through a lot, been through let's say, I'm not gonna say hell, but it's been through a production struggle.
It's come from an unusual kind of space.
Of being a movie that was its own original movie that was then rewritten into the franchise.
So yeah, let's we're gonna see.
This is a very big I mean, I feel like I don't know, which is very rare for me.
I literally have a theory or or a guess, but I feel like there's.
A positive note up in the air. It's been fun to go to the movies this.
This spring and something we had much good movies.
Yeah, even the ones that are bad are kind of fun. Like I'm gonna I'm gonna continue to enjoying going to the movies and seeing from the world of john Wick Ballerina.
Yes, from the lot of john Wick Ballerina.
Let's take a quick break and we'll be right back with the Omnibus on Gunfu. Yeah, and we're back. Welcome to another edition of the Omnibus where lore and analysis and understanding come together. Today we are discussing the cinematic subgenre gun fu, a bullet ballet through the lens of the John Wick franchise, perhaps its most famous exponent. Yes, gunfu is exactly what it sounds like, folks. It's a style of modern action that combines martial arts style, choreography
and gunplay. The results, at their best, as in the John Wick series, brings shape to the chaos of combat,
creates a deadly dance. The roots of the subgenre go all the way back to the Hong Kong action films of the sixties and seventies, the Kung fu films, the Wusha epics, and its branches reached through the decades and across the ocean to Hollywood's adopt adoption of the style in films like Desperado the Matrix, which is perhaps the most famous and popular combination of Wusha and Hollywood style gunplay.
The Wanted, the kind of criminally underrated wanted film, and it's book based on a comic book by who, let's forget who wrote, and of course and of course the John Wick film series. This is a wild ride, So go ahead and grab two release the doves. Let's dive in slow motion. In slow motion, even if you're not a fan of Shaw Brothers films or you know classic kung fu and Wusha films, Wusha being a style of Chinese storytelling involving adventure, martial arts, medieval weaponry, and kind
of like righteous justice. You know the tropes involved with these kinds of things, most notably perhaps the image of a lone hero, perhaps armed with a sword or spirit, but perhaps unarmed, taking on a horde of enemies, dozens of enemies.
All alone, with lots of wirework.
Yes, these films dominated the Hong Kong based cinema of the sixties and seventies, and the style eventually trickled through to the US with nineteen seventy one's kind of martial arts landmark Billy Jackow a forgotten film at this point, and of course with the superstar star comet that was Bruce Lee. But by the mid eighties, Bruce had passed, and martial arts films, even in Hong Kong entered a
kind of transition period. In the US, these kind of films which were so associated with Lee, almost alone with him, had retreated to the realm of b movies. I See you, Jim Katta, I see you. You know, the Ninja franchise also as well.
You know, this is an omnibus for another day, but it was so connected to Bruce Lee that we entered into an era of what we call Bruce ploitation, which.
Was movie they got the fake people.
Who were fake Bruce Lee's. So it really was that connected to him.
And then yeah, those American stories like Jim Cotton, like American Ninja three, American you know.
I love I love the American American Ninja three. I believe is the one where she's possessed by the spirit of the ninja. Right, Yeah, I love that one. Okay. So by the eighties, Hollywood action had become dominant, and the action of this period was much more heavily armed, much more heavily muscled. We're talking, you know, Arnold Schwarzenegger, sly stallone, and they were still taking on masses and
masses and massive bad guys. It's just that they were gunning them down with like M sixty machine guns and with you know, assault rifles with grenade launchers under the barrel.
Jackie Chan's landmark police story from nineteen eighty five took these action oriented Hollywood influences like car chases, gunplay, etc. And blended it with Jackie's trademark kung fu choreography and his iconic daredevil stuntwork to create this kind of modern day cops and criminal story that provided the energy of a kung fu brawl, but in a contemporary action setting. Here were the stirrings of a new kind of action language.
The Hong Kong tours were essentially asking, how can we take what we were good at, what we know, the wushu, the martial arts, and combine it with this new world of firearm driven action, and so enter jhn Wu. Wu came up through the kind of Hong Kong kung fu, wusha and romantic films of the period, but by the nineteen eighties, influenced by American action films, he began to create something new. He took the elegant, the precise choreography of kung fu and then honestly simply added guns, usually
two nine millimeter barettas, one in each hand. This genre in Hong Kong and in Asia was called heroic bloodshed, and it's probably it's the closest analog that we have to the style that we call gunfu.
Here.
Wu launched his cinematic fuselage with a Better Tomorrow nineteen eighty six. He followed up with my personal favorite film of his, The Killer in nineteen eighty nine, So many doves, so many exploding cars, so much action, so much romance, and then followed those up with what many consider his masterpiece nineteen ninety twos, Hard Boiled. These films almost alone really created an entirely new language of action cinema, as Anthony Leong wrote in the Films of John Wu in
the Art of Heroic Bloodshed quote. Before nineteen eighty six, Hong Kong cinem was firmly rooted in two genres, the martial arts film and the comedy. Gunplay was not terribly popular because audiences had considered it boring compared to fancy kung fu moves or graceful swordplay of Wusha epics. What movie grulers needed was a new way to present gunplay to show it as a skill that could be honed, integrating the acrobatics and the grace of the traditional martial arts.
And that's exactly what John Wu did. Wu did that by shooting action scenes with incredible deliberation and precision and style, using every tool he had tracking shots. It's kind of sweeping Dolly moves, all of it, often drenched in languorous slow motion. Incredible amount.
If you have said mission impossible too, Yeah, how much this man loves slow.
Motion love, And perhaps most importantly and subtly, he shrunk the range of a gun. No, your hero can shoot a guy from across the street, from across you know, a football field, but that's not fun to look at. That's what the traditional Asian audiences were considering pouring. And so the idea was to shrink the effective range so that a gun is more like a knife or a sword. And the results were both incredibly violent and style but
also intimate. And I think this is incredibly well exemplified by The Killer, where your hero the anti hero assassin gone rogue. He does gun down like dozens and dozens and dozens of suit wearing hit men who are trying to kill him Hollywood style, but also when he confronts his foil, the heroic cop, who is the also the only person who who's he's both pursuing the assassin the killer, but he's also the only person who really understands him.
Yes, it's very lame his robs.
Yeah, there's all of these. There's one extended standoff around the blind love interest that they both kind of share, where they both have their guns out and they're holding their guns against each other, you know, against the other person's header, against the other person's side, while having this normal casual conversation pretending to be old friends in front of this woman who can't see what's going on, and the results are so unique and again so intimate for
an action movie. Nineteen ninety two's Hard Boiled Again. Woo's what many consider his masterpiece has probably his crowning achievement in film, a nearly three minute long take gun battle which takes place inside of a hospital that is just getting blown apart, and it is fantastic. The camera willet you will never forget it, and the camera prowls alongside Chaalian fat as he blasts his way through corridors of goons, both up close and medium distance, the mayhem unfolding in
real time. It's a jaw dropping sequence that you will not forget. The long take not only shows the virtuosity of Wu, his skill is technique, and his stunt team, but it also exemplifies Gunfu's core idea treating gun play with the same discipline, staging, and spatial awareness as a kumfu sparring match, and Hollywood noticed that this stuff was happening.
Nineteen eighty nine is Teguin Cash starring so Uster Salona in a shockingly buff off liberally stole from Chan's nineteen eighty five police Story, including its crowning stunt in which Chan like slides down a pole that is surrounded by these kind of Christmas light type wire lights and the lights all pop as he slides down. By the mid nineties, Wu had come to La been lured over, where he arguably became the go to Iraq action director of the period. I think that's fair to.
Say, wouldn't you.
Releasing a string of hits, including nineteen nine seven's Face Off, which I think contains some of the most pure gun fu sequses in in Wu's oof and is also one of the weirdest movies ever made. It's so weird, so strange.
I went to see it at videots for my birthday a couple of years ago, and it was so funny to watch it in a sold out theater with a ton of people and a lot of them definitely hadn't watched it before, and like every single time they're like.
We're gonna take the face everyone was like cheering.
Like. I also think that something that Face Off has and why I think John Wick ended up becoming so popular and so perfectly suited to the era that came out, and is Face Off is very silly.
It's Nick Cage, It's John Travolta, It's John Wu.
There is like very silly. There's a lot of laughs, there's a lot of unintentional loves. There's a lot of like real melodrama, which which we love. Think, yes, John Weary very read a serious and I think that the combination of gun fu and then like a kind of grim, gritty American action aesthetic that really brought those two things together.
Yeah. Quentin Tarantino praised John Wu as quote a sheer genius who reinvented the crime action genre, liking likening Wu's influence to that of Sergiolioni on westerns or Jean Pierre Melville on crime thrillers. I Love John Pierre Melville. Robert Riguez gleefully stole from John Wu or borrowed from John Wu's influence in his nineteen ninety film ultra low budget,
ultra indie action masterpiece Desperado. That film's hero and Tanner benderis is a mariachi with a gun, dives in dual wields like Chowian Fat in John Wu film blowing away bad guys in a dusty Mexican bar to the tune of an electric guitar. Rodriguez openly acknowledged that Hong Kong cinema was a major inspiration. In an interview at ascreenwriting dot Com from twenty fifteen, Rodriguez said, quote Luke Skywalker, Luke Skywalker and Indiana Jones could have been any color.
That's what I learned from the John Wu movies. When you see a John Wu movie, you want to be Chinese. You want to be one of those guys. I knew it wasn't because they were Chinese, it was how he presented his heroes. I think a hero can be of any color or any race, if the filmmaker treats him with a lot of respect and of course a lot of style too make them look cool. All of this evolution and cross cultural pollination paved the way for a movie like john Wick to explode kind of surprisingly onto
the scene with copious headshots. John Wick, directed by former stuntman Chad's Dahelski and uncredited co director David Leach, is the culmination of decades of gun fu refinement and also a little bit of like UFC Brazilian jiu jitsu influence as well, which is kind of amped up the genre. It distilled the genre to its its pure essence, a highly trained assad mowing through wave after wave of guys in a series of beautifully choreographed combat scenes that mixes judo,
jiu jitsu, and glocks in equal measure. Stahelski approached the project with a reverence for Hong Kong action cinema techniques. He said that the key to grade action is training the performers relentlessly and shooting the fights clearly, with the crew and camera operators all working in unison with the stunt team, a philosophy explicitly learned from the feet of Hong Kong masters like You and Wuping. While working on the Matrix with Keanu Reeves in Hong Kong, Stahelski has
noted the action team operates holistically. Quote. The cameramen were ex stunt guys, The editors were stunt trained. From the editor to the director to the performers, all on the same page. They were all at the rehearsals. Adopting this approach, Stahelski ensured Keanu Reeves was not just memorizing moves, but actually trained intensively in gun handling and martial arts and even in tactical driving, essentially turning the actor into a
stunt professional. And that's why the action in Wick looks so good, looks so fluid, looks so authentically brutal. You can feel how real it is. The fights are executed and filmed in these long, kind of flowing takes as much as possible, with wide angles that let you see everything that's happening, all the exchange of blows, all the gunshots, all the cartridges expended from the gun. This is a deliberate break from the kind of Jason Bourne driven quick cut,
shaky hand heldcam style of the two thousands. As Stahelski points out, too often the American approach to action is overly edited to quote hide imperfections, whereas the Hong Kong approach, which he seeks to emulate, is to train and shoot in the way that there's nothing to hide. The camera in John Wick doesn't wobble around just to create fake energy. Instead, it tracks smoothly. It lets you see everything. It lets the physicality and the action speak for itself, and the
effect is what it is. It's exhilarating, it's shocking, it's surprising. The influence of gunfu extends, of course, well beyond the movies.
It's permeated all of the pop culture landscape. For when it revolutionized how video games portray combat, the most obvious example being Max Pain, the hit two thousand and one video game and the ensuing sequels that is essentially a love letter to John Wu, in which it's hero Max, that kind of grizzled cop dual wields nine millimeter burrettas and dives over things in slow motion bullet time, you know, blazing away like Chili un fat. The developers even filled
that game with levels. The developers even filled the game levels with Fluttering Doves as an easter egg to John Wu's films. And so here we are in twenty twenty five, waiting for the opening of from the world of John Wick Ballerina, from Hong Kong to Hollywood, from video games to the big screen to you know, Ballerina and beyond. Gunfu has proven to be one of action cinema's most exhilarating evolutions.
That's true.
And this couldn't be better timed because we recently got some very exciting news which is straight from Can that Hard Boiled has been restored.
From the original.
Thirty five millimeter camera negative it premiered it Can and it's going to be available in North America through Shout Factory Studios, and they have actually started a new entertainment label that we've all been really excited about called Hong Kong Cinema Classics, and yeah, I cannot wait for this. It's also going to have the restoration of the original Cantonese theatrical mono track.
Like it's gonna be great. And so if you've never seen Hard Boiled, you're gonna be able to shit in beautiful four K very soon.
On the next episode of X Ray Vision we are bringing you a roundup of the biggest nerd news of the week, along with my interview with the incredible Philipope Brothers, the directors of the new A twenty four chiller Bring Her Back, which is in theaters on wide release this week. And if you've been saying, oh, I wish I could see.
You guys on the screen more, well, guess what. That's also going to be on YouTube. So go to YouTube.
People watch it there and yeah, it's gonna be It's gonna be.
A lot of fun.
X ray Vision is hosted by Jason Concepcion and Rosie Knight and is a production of iHeart Podcast.
Our executive producers are Joel Monique and Aaron Korfman.
Our supervising producer is Abuzafar.
Our producers are Carmen Laurent, Dean Jonathan and Bay wack.
A theme song is by Brian Vasquez, with alternate theme songs by Aaron Kaufman.
Special thanks to Soul Rubin, Chris Lord, Kenny Goodman and Heidi our discord moderator