I’m the director of “John Wick 3 —

Parabellum.” So the scene we’re seeing here is after

John Wick comes back from seeing someone called

the Elder in Morocco.

In Casablanca, actually.

And he’s come back, and he’s entered

into this battle in the Continental with High Table

emissaries and a character named Zero’s students,

or in this case, we call them Ninja or Shinobi.

The two best of Zero’s guys are

what we see on screen right now, which is —

they’re just Shinobi 1 and 2 in the character list,

but it’s actually Yayan and Cecep.

Yayan and Cecep, you might recognize from Gareth

Evans” “The Raid” and “The Raid 2.”

Both incredible practitioners, both of martial art

choreography and of Pencak Silat,

which is an Indonesian martial art made famous again

in “The Raid.”

And then when we went to the choreography,

John Wick’s style is more of a grappling art, judo,

jujitsu kind of thing, and theirs” is more of a duel,

punching, kicking, flipping, flying,

very kinetic kind of martial art choreography.

And they knock him through this big pile of glass.

And then you see Keanu on the background as the two —

Cecep and Yayan having a dialogue.

You’ll see John Wick in the background trying to get up

and falling back down.

The story behind the actual take

I used is, Keanu was just supposed to get up and ignore

the handshake, but that’s actually Keanu falling back

down and getting back up.

We go long days on “John Wick.”

It’s like 12, 13 hours of just fighting.

So I think by the time we get that sequence,

we had to knock Keanu down, he got back up,

he fell on some of the glass.

Choreography is much more like dance than martial arts.

Any good choreographer or stunt coordinator

will tell you that when you fight competitively,

you’re trying to disrupt the other person,

trying to hurt the other person.

Stunt choreography or stunt fighting,

is the exact opposite.

You’re trying to make space.

It’s like dance.

You’re trying not to step on the partner’s toes,

help them to look good, and try not to get punched

in the face in the process.

Also, in Pencak Silat, they used the curved blade knife

that you see on the screen called a karambit.

And Keanu at least attempted to start

to fight with a small katana, a Japanese sword.

And then Cecep and Yayan obviously

are much, much faster and much more full of alacrity

than our John Wick, because he’s already

been beaten up for almost two hours of the film.

So we had this idea that John Wick just continually gets

beat up but reverts back to just ear-slapping

and groin-kicking and biting, and trying to —

what it’s like to actually grapple

with two little feral animals.

And that’s kind of where we got.

The glass house you see is part of the Continental.

It’s Winston’s, which is the manager

and owner of the Continental.

And we just always thought it’d

be cool to have ninjas in the movie.

And where can ninjas have the hardest amount

of time hiding?

In a glass house.

So we used that to highlight.

When we do action, a lot of what we do

is try to put in a great set piece.

We thought a really great idea was something I’d seen

in “Architectural Digest,” which was a guy built a house

out of glass, and I thought that was —

as far as the architectural art goes, very,

very inspirational.

But how do you hide cameras?

How do you hide reflections?

Where do I hide the crew?

How I can shoot through the floors,

look through the ceilings.

How do you have a gun fight, sword fight,

fist fight in a glass house?

And that’s kind of where we got our inspiration.

So after much debating and arguing

with certain money people, we finally

got it O.K.’d to build a $4 million glass structure.

Which, for “John Wick,” is a very big expense.”

- [groaning]

[glass shatters]