Donnie Yen is set to co-star John Wick: Chapter 4 and fans are very excited about the fight scenes he shares with Keanu Ribs. Just the fact that Yen is in this movie makes me think this is going to be the best movie in the franchise! I just don’t see how it can’t be with the increased action that Yen’s involvement is going to bring.
During a recent interview with GQ magazine, Yen talked about his character in the film, who is named Kane, and explained that as he pointed out the Asian stereotypes in the original script, he was able to redesign the character as he wanted, and designed the character after Bruce Lee. Yen said:
“The name was Shang or Chang. Why does he always have to be called Shang or Chang? Why can’t it have a normal name? Why do you have to be so general? Then again the wardrobe — oh, tangerine collars. Why is everything so generic? This is a ‘John Wick’ movie. Everyone is supposed to be cool and trendy. Why can’t he look cool and trendy?’
It is explained that John Wick: Chapter 4 director Chad Stahelski he was open to the gen and listened to his criticisms and agreed to modify the character. The modifications made ended up paying tribute to Bruce Lee, and Yen claimed that he had “a very respectable work experience John Wick“, and added, “Overall, I enjoyed making the film.”
This was not the first time the yen had to deal with Asian stereotypes. When he jumped into that of Disney and Lucasfilm Rogue One to play the blind warrior Chirrut Îmwe, he fought against some of the original details about that character as well. He said: “One thing I pointed out is that it was a stereotype. So the script was changed to make the character more fun and have some comedic beats. Yen even had the opportunity to improvise jokes during filming.
Chad Stahelski recently teased a sequence between Reeves and Yen saying they wanted to do something we haven’t seen before:
“So it always comes down to, I can do the Donnie Yen triple kick. I can do all that, but you want to do something different too. So you start sitting down, you get it in character, and you have a lot of conversations with the guys, going, “Okay, Donnie’s amazing at this. Keanu is amazing in this. They’re both great actors, so let’s build on that and do something we’ve never seen before.
“So now, that Donnie Yen with a sword and a pistol and Keanu with a samurai sword and some pistols and throwing an AR-15 and a glass room of mirrors with Japanese artifacts. And yeah, throw in some dogs and let’s see what happens.”
And we will see what happens soon when the movie releases on March 24, 2023.