Martial Artist Scott Adkins Breaks Down 'John Wick' Fight Scenes | GQ

so what I like about this moment here is Keanu stabs him in the neck straight up into the brain and just watches him die I mean it's brutal but that's why we love it hi GQ this is Scott Adkins I am a martial arts actor and today I'll be breaking down fights from the John Wick franchise [Music] okay to start with we have John Wick one and it's the home invasion scene Keanu Reeves he's so well trained for this part that's really what makes the difference that's what separates him as an action star from many others the chats to halski David Leach 8711 stunt team they trained Keanu so well with the Jujitsu and the Judo and the gun work of course that's what part of what makes it special for me the films are quite over the top but the martial arts is very realistic and reality based you're seeing Real Techniques supplied and real gun scenarios oh that looks like a tomonegie as he's thrown the guy through the window that's a judo move and again it's got this Scrappy vibe to it real martial arts techniques he's using a lot of karate chops this is the best part for me I mean showing it all in one long take Keanu Reeves is doing legitimate martial arts a nice Oso tagari take down there and it's the battle over the knife you know working with the stunt guys it's more in line with dancing than it is with real fighting you are cooperating together it's a violent dance where you've got to work together to make it look like you're trying to take each other's heads off but actually it's a partnership John Wick chapter 2 Subway fight scene with common let's have a look love that bit just knees the knife in keanu's reaction is great it's hot class assassins coming out of each other in it's uh Close Quarters combat scene done in a very realistic way it looks like a drop scene I get cross arm dropsy and Aggie there when he throws him over he's probably landing on a pad of course and why not this Frame down it's a low angle low angle to accentuate the movement so that the body is coming towards the camera to make it look even more impressive I mean what you want to try and do is fill the frame with beautiful action as much as you can I hate it when you just see two people stacked together like that because they want to make a punch work and the punch comes through here and it goes all the way out the other side if you open it up in the frame like that fill the frame with the action he's going to throw him over the top category so get a nice low angle get the legs to come close to the camera it just makes it look much better yeah what makes it so good is that like common for instance I don't know how much martial arts training he had previously but I do know that if you're going to make a John Wick movie you're gonna do six six months of training for this and that's non-negotiable and it shows that way you can have those shots where you see the two performers in the frame working with each other you don't have to shake the camera to hide the misgivings of the performers you can just put it back and show them and let them do their thing so well done comma John Wick chapter two again the pencil kill scene [Music] do we have Heidi Money Maker amazing stuntwoman nice kick by Heidi there oh she got him and he takes her out with a curry Ashi barrier I believe throws her down hard [Music] when you get thrown through a tempered glass window you're probably gonna get cut it will be a superficial cut hopefully they'll put two charges at least just before you hit the window they'll blow the charge but if one of the charges doesn't blow then at least you got a backup of a second one they'll blow it just before you hit it and you're going to go through now there have been instances where you've either hit before it's blown or it hasn't blown and you've hit gone through the window but then you've lost your momentum and then all that glass is going to come down it's going to land on you it actually happened to me in a Jackie Chan film The Medallion I punch a window they shattered it and all the glass came down and the glass landed on my hand and cut it open this is my particular favorite fight from John Wick chapter three Parabellum The Knife Fight now I was amazed when I found out the glass is not real every time they're smashing the glass it's all CG and I couldn't believe that this is such an inventive fight scene and I like John Wick 3. well I like German for the most but John week three I like the most to this point because they're adding more martial arts now it's a mixture of different martial arts with Aikido and Jiu Jitsu and Judo and karate John Wick does a lot of karate strikes which I really appreciate because I haven't seen those since Roger Moore was James Bond and it just suits the character so well I love that bit there if you just rewind that bit when he swings the arm around and breaks the arm on the other shoulder I love that okay the stable fight get control of the weapon that's the most important thing great martial arts it's Scrappy some sort of a Ponce and Aggie there and again you can't have too much of a good thing with horses kicking people in the face sending for a ride attach him to the horse and this bit here mounting the horse like that I mean that's not easy the amount of training that he does just for that simple small throw away shot they must have trained for ages to get that move down incredible John Wick chapter three Parabellum again this time the fight with my favorite Mark de cuscus [Music] is such an amazing martial artist such a great guy he plays a brilliant part in this film that is a turn and cook or round kick I would call it followed by a spinning back kick again John Wick with the karate Chomps I love that I love the fact that he does karate chops and again Chad is just so inventive the way he's using the windows and the reflections the shadows and there's no other place that a fight scene can exist at this level than in a movie because so many techniques of filmmaking come into play right you've got the shots the angles You've Got the Music you've got the sound effects every sort of filmmaking technique that you can think of is needed in order to create a fight sequence so for me filming a fight sequence it is pure Cinema okay the movie we've all been waiting for John Wick chapter four let's meet killer all right here I come dispose it I'm in a fat suit okay so you've got to understand I've been bugging the director since John Wick wanted to put me in the movies eventually gives me a call he says right we're doing John Wick 4 Scott I've got I think I've got a role for you do you want to do it I'm like my course I do mate come on what's the role he says it's probably not what you think but it was important to us to actually sell the weight we didn't want to be doing a load of light jump in the spinning kicks and all the rest of it so we keep the techniques simple and grounded and we decided that this guy would probably fight like a kickboxer he's got a bit of a Mike Tyson style bobbin and weaving and throwing hard punches heavy kicks let's see I come straight out of the gates here with a step through side kick and this was with John Wick's stunt double Vincent bullion the first shot of that we did I actually clotheslined him and his legs came down and hit me on the back of the head and I was a bit bit like whoa I didn't expect that so we needed to do it again I just said to Vincent I'm just going to smack you hard with this mate because I knew the movement the weight of him needs to go back anyway to do the Gainer neither said to him I'm just going to smack you with this mate and he's like yeah good but that's what it's all about do it once hard and then you don't have to do it a bunch of times but what's funny is we didn't actually rehearse this I didn't rehearse anything with Keanu but he's at a level now where he's so well trained that we could just come up with all of this on the spot and he's able to just do it this was very difficult actually because it's a wall of water coming down right into my face Keanu Reeves is behind that wall of water so I'm seeing the punches come through the the wall of water at the last minute and I've got all the water going into my eyes so I can't really see anyway and I'm having to react to the punch at just the right moment it wasn't easy it looks really cool but at the end of the day you're in a fat suit you're soaking wet and you've got Keanu Reeves punching you in the face here we have a clip from John Wick chapter four my character killer talking to the main actors let's go you want to kill him I want to kill him what about you Mr Vic I'm going to kill you so the accent was the first thing that I came up with listening to a lot of German accents authentic German accents but it was this guy Ronald Lacy from the Raiders of the Lost Ark the Gestapo guy his voice if I took it down a few octaves but he was like uh yes for our line oh what shall we talk about and we wanted this whole thing with my character where he's asthmatic as well and the laugh would bring on the cough so I would say using his voice and to find this to call it tonight laugh a little bit laughs I thought we'd play a game one hand I was very happy with the card trick here I was working on my card skills all the time in the run-up to this movie every take I was able to flick the card and not even look at the card I was looking straight at Reeves and I catch it without even looking at the card I was very impressed with myself when I did that yes didn't even look at the card that skill that's martial arts right there thanks GQ for watching with me I hope you enjoyed I'll see you again soon

Channel: GQ

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Id: dKmKjnDaN6U

Length: 11min 14sec (674 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 27 2023