Fine, yes, we'd watch a Star Wars movie from John Wick's Chad Stahelski
The John Wick director, only half joking, issued a challenge to the Mouse: "Hit me in a couple of years, and I have a couple of takes for Star Wars.”
At the risk of getting absolutely pilloried for Bad Star Wars Opinions On The Internet—a capital offense in the world of social media—we’d like to venture a position: The Star Wars films are not, by and large, exceptionally good action movies.
Yes, there are exceptions! Fun dog-fights, well-choreographed lightsaber duels, eye-catching battle sequences like the Hoth fight in Empire Strikes Back. There are good action moments in the Star Wars canon, undeniably. But the franchise’s strengths typically run more to world-building, character, and spectacle than sheer action acumen. Which is why we’re absolutely fascinated to hear John Wick director Chad Stahelski, one of the best action directors working at the moment, basically dare Disney to let him make a Star Wars movie of his very own one of these days
This was part of a conversation with Happy Sad Confused’s Josh Horowitz, occurring while the pair were doing a patron-aimed commentary-filled Watch-A-Long of Stahelski’s John Wick: Chapter 4, large excerpts of which have now gone up on Youtube. (It’s an absolute blast to listen to, by the way, full of interesting tidbits—as when Stahelski talks about trying to cast Jackie Chan in the part that eventually went to Donnie Yen in Chapter 4, or revealing that star Keanu Reeves buys T-shirts for the films’ stunt performers celebrating how many times he’s killed them across the franchise.) But there’s also a long chunk focused on the fact that Stahelski has never ventured, as a director, into other people’s IP, and what it might take to get him there, culminating in a moment where he half-jokes, “Disney, if you’re listening, hit me in a couple of years, and I have a couple of takes for Star Wars.”
As Stahelski and Horowitz both note, it would make for a potentially contentious pairing: Part of the reason the John Wick movies don’t look like anything else in theaters is because Stahelski maintains an unusually heavy amount of control over almost every aspect of filming, with the studio largely giving him and his crew free reign to unleash cinematic chaos, provided they can keep budgets low and box office high. Disney, meanwhile, has been notoriously iffy about letting directors get too individualistic with its space-based cash cow, especially in films, so it’s not hard to imagine the independent-minded Stahelski running into conflict with the corporate machine. (That being said, it’s also not hard to imagine the end result kicking absolute ass; no modern action director is as focused on mixing inventiveness and clarity in his fight sequences, and Star Wars combat could generally benefit from both.)
(It would also involve Disney actually making a Star Wars movie, which the company has gotten weirdly reticent to do over the last four years.)
Interestingly, along with the hypotheticals, Stahelski did get a bit more concrete—noting that he had, at the very least, had some conversations with Marvel about its long-in-the-works Blade movie. Speaking warmly of Kevin Feige, Stahelski made it clear that those initial conversations didn’t work out, but also that he’d still love to take another stab at the character down the line, once he’s (someday) done with John Wick for good, and has finished his commitments to his upcoming Highlander movie with Henry Cavill.