John Wick franchise director Chad Stahelski explains how all four films are indebted to The Matrix and directors Lilly and Lana Wachowski. First released in 2014, John Wick introduced audiences to Keanu Reeves' titular assassin, who is next slated to appear in a highly-anticipated fourth installment next month. Outside of their collaboration on this new action franchise, however, Reeves and Stahelski previously worked together on 1999's The Matrix, in which Stahelski served as Reeves' stunt double.
Ahead of the John Wick: Chapter 4 release, Stahelski explains in a recent interview with Wired why the entire franchise owes a debt of gratitude to The Matrix and the Wachowskis. The director explains how, after The Matrix, he and former stunt performer David Leitch, who served as an uncredited co-director on the first John Wick, got to become frequent collaborators with the Wachowskis, which in turn shaped their entire approach to filmmaking. Check out Stahelski's full comment below:
"No one was under any delusion that Matrix wasn’t going to be pretty awesome. Then David Leitch [codirector of the first Wick film] and I stayed on for V for Vendetta and Speed Racer, so we pretty much got a decade of Wachowski film school. The John Wicks are definitely children of The Matrix."
The John Wick Franchise Is Full Of Matrix References
Aside from the fact that both hit franchises star Reeves in the leading role, all three John Wick movies also feature a number of references, Easter eggs, and callbacks to The Matrix. Notably, the assassin franchise sees Reeves act opposite Laurence Fishburne again after the pair previously starred as Neo and Morpheus, respectively, in the Matrix movies. Another fun cast reunion comes in John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum with the inclusion of Randall Duk Kim as The Doctor, an actor who previously aided Neo in the Wachowskis' franchise as The Keymaker.
In addition to cast reunions, John Wick: Chapter 2 also features a more subtle callback to The Matrix. The end of the film features Wick meeting Winston (Ian McShane) in a busy location in Central Park when Winston makes a phone call and the large crowd around them stops moving. This scene echoes a moment in The Matrix when Morpheus is walking Neo through a crowd simulation to show him how dangerous agents can be, freezing the crowd after Reeves' character becomes distracted by a woman in a red dress.
Of course, John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum features a fun dialogue callback as well. When the Continental hotel is under siege and Wick is gearing up to defend it, Reeves says he needs "guns, lots of guns," a line he previously uttered in The Matrix when preparing to rescue Morpheus from Agent Smith. With a fourth John Wick movie on the way and potentially a fifth coming later down the line, it's likely that audiences haven't seen the last of Stahelski's callbacks to the Wachowskis' hit franchise.
Source: Wired
