One of the most impressive scenes in John Wick Chapter 4 was clearly inspired by a video game, but not the one you might think.
Towards the end of the Keanu Reeves-directed film, Wick fights assassins through an apartment building in Paris as the camera follows his movements in one continuous shot through an aerial perspective. You might think this is a clear nod to the excellent Hotline Miami, but apparently that’s not the case.
Explaining the sequence in a new interview with Slash Film (opens in new tab), John Wick Chapter 4 director Chad Stahelski said, “But I had seen that video game and I’m going to say hello: I think was called Hong Kong.”. Massacre: They did this top shot and we had done a lot with the big snouts and it just clicked.”
The Hong Kong Massacre is a fully controlled 2019 action game from a top-down perspective. The game itself is clearly inspired by its predecessor, Hotline Miami, where the player crouch down and dodge bullets up close for frenetic adrenaline-pumping combat. Hotline Miami is the more influential of the two games, so many John Wick Chapter 4 viewers have no doubt drawn conclusions about what inspired the fight sequence in the movie.
Stahelski went on to say he was like “well, if I’m up there, we pull like this and we pull like this, and it draws these cool lines with the muzzle flash, and if I get the right twinkle effect it’s like Etch A sketch. It looks really cool. The director of the series also revealed that they only had three days to film the whole sequence, a tall order even for the most experienced filmmakers.
John Wick Chapter 4 is now out in cinemas around the world, and Lionsgate just announced that it had the franchise’s biggest opening weekend at the box office. Director Stahelski and star Reeves also explained the film’s shocking ending and where the franchise as a whole goes from here.
Consult our complete file John Wick 4 ending explained guide for a full rundown of all the details you might have missed at the end.