168澳洲幸运5开奖网:John Wick 4 goes heavy on the stunt sequences, but no one goes quite as 'heavy' as Scott Adkins. The experienced martial artist plays Killa in the film, with the help of a fat suit to give the character an impressive stature, and the role sees him step into the spotlight both as a stunt performer and an actor. However, one person who noticed Adkins even from the background was Wick star Keanu Reeves, who was asked in a previous interview what it was like to work with two martial arts legends, Donnie Yen and Hiroyuki Sanada. Quick as a flash, Reeves replied "Three legends, Scott Adkins." The praise was not lost on Adkins himself.
"Of course I saw it," Adkins smiles. "It meant a lot. Keanu is a great guy, he's such a nice gentleman. And so for him to do that, that's him. That's who he is. It's not a surprise. He's a gracious dude. But also, it meant a hell of a lot. And to work on a John Wick movie is a dream come true. I've been bugging the director since the first one to give me a role."
Another crucial part of bringing Wick's stunt work to life is director Chad Stahelski, who started his career as a stuntman and then moved into stunt coordination, before making his directorial debut with the original John Wick. "It's a pleasure because in some films you work on, the director might not necessarily understand how to shoot action," he says. "When you're working with Chad, he gets it, and he gets you on a level of the best of the best.
"I've always looked at the Hong Kong martial arts movies and said, 'that's the best, if we can even get close to that we're doing well'. But I think we're at a place now where Hollywood can legitimately compete with the best of the Hong Kong martial arts movies this year. That was the case with The Matrix, but that was Yuen Woo-ping as far as I understand it, directing those action sequences. But now with Chad and other directors like David Leitch and JJ Perry, we’re able to compete. You've got Donnie Yen in John Wick, and normally Don is gonna look better in his Hong Kong movies. But Donnie looks as good in this movie as he does in his movies because of Chad."
John Wick originally sent shockwaves through the film industry, with Adkins comparing it to the impact of John Woo's filmmaking or Michael Mann's hyper-realistic, incredibly loud action stylings in Heat - it created a new type of genre that Adkins feels helped shape the action industry to drag it into a modern revival. "It feels like action is back," he tells me. "You have the superhero movies, and they're very visual effects driven. Of course, they have to be, they can't do it any other way. Action is like being swallowed up into that genre, and now it feels like authentic action films are coming back, and I'm very excited about that, because that's what I grew up with in the '80s. You know, watching Stallone and Schwarzenegger types of action films, that archetype."
It's because of Stahelski's respect for the art of stunt work and action sequences that Adkins believes he was also able to play Killa to the fullest. While, like most things in John Wick, there are high-octane fight sequences to Adkins' role, he also gets a tense and intimate scene at a card table, sat across from Reeves, Donnie Yen, and Shamier Anderson that allows him to show his acting skills as much as his stunt work. It's not an opportunity he has often been given.
"Whenever I've done a big film before, I've not necessarily been given an opportunity to shine," Adkins says. "Henchman says a few lines, has a fight with the main guy, gets his ass kicked. I've done that loads. It's like, you're going to do it or you're not going to do it. Well, I'm not going to do it anymore. Especially since somebody like Chad has given me the opportunity to show what I can do as an actor. I'm known for martial arts films. But, you know, I'm an actor. It takes someone like Chad, I think because he comes from stunts, because he comes from martial arts. He doesn't have the snobbishness of 'he's just some guy from martial arts films'. He doesn't have that about him because you could say that, you could say that about him as a director, 'oh, he's just some stunt guy'. We can do this but you need someone like Chad who gives the opportunity to shine. So I hope I get the opportunity to do it again."
Of course, Adkins is having to do all of that while wearing a fat suit. He says it didn't feel too restrictive, thanks to a complex system of harnesses and an internal cooling system he could plug into between shots, but sequences set in a nightclub's waterfall were initially bliss but quickly became oppressive as the suit soaked up the water. Given that fat suits have typically been reserved for comedic, slapstick roles, but we've just seen Brendan Fraser win an Oscar for a fat-suited role, I asked Adkins what he made of watching that discussion unfold knowing Killa was about to hit our screens.
"I haven't seen [The Whale] and need to watch it. I've got kids, they're always watching things," he laughs. "I remember so the Penguin [from 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Batman] came out, and that was being shot before John Wick, so we knew about that. But then Tom Hanks came out in Elvis wearing a fat suit. Gary Oldman, not that long ago with Darkest Hour. It's amazing what they can do now. Did I think it took the shine off my performance? Like 'damn, too many people are wearing fat suits, I wanted to be the only one'. It was a little bit of that, to be fair. But no, just look at where we've come with the prosthetics, you can't even tell. It's incredible. It's great, it's another tool for an actor to be able to create a character. And it's very freeing, being behind all that, you feel like the less you can see of yourself. It almost makes you braver and bolder, in some ways. It was fun."
John Wick 4 is in cinemas now.