- Director Chad Stahelski told Insider that Scott Adkins' villain is a huge Easter egg for action fans.
- Adkins plays big boss Killa in "John Wick: Chapter 4," and goes up against Keanu Reeves.
"John Wick: Chapter 4" pits Keanu Reeves' titular hitman against armies of other assassins in a globetrotting adventure that also features a number of impressive faces along the way. Franchise newcomers Hiroyuki Sanada, Rina Sawayama, Donnie Yen, and Bill Skarsgård join the likes of the late Lance Reddick, Ian McShane, and Laurence Fishburne.
"The Expendables" and "Day Shift" star Scott Adkins also has a pretty prominent role as German crime lord, Killa, in one of the film's most memorable sequences.
The character required Adkins to wear a fat suit, facial prosthetics, and a big purple suit to pull off the intimidating look.
Director Chad Stahelski told Insider that Killa is a reference to a movie that he loves — which coincidentally features "John Wick: Chapter 4" star Donnie Yen.
Stahelski said: "I was always a big fan of the Donnie Yen/Sammo Hung movie, 'SPL,' and in it, Sammo Hung's got the big purple suit in the end fight scene."
Stahelski also clarified that each film in the franchise is a love letter to a handful of classic filmmakers and movies that everyone involved in the "John Wick" franchise grew up watching.
"'John Wick' [movies] are all love letters from Keanu, myself, our stunt team, and our creative team to everybody out there from Wong Kar-wai to Sammo Hung, to Sergio Leone, Kurosawa, to Alain Delon and 'The Samurai,' to Spielberg, Tarantino… To all these people that we grew up loving," the director said.
Stahelski also namechecked director Walter Hill, adding: "'The Warriors,' you know. I love these guys."
Action movie fans will know that the 1979 movie follows a gang who have to travel from the Bronx back to southern Brooklyn after they're framed for murder, and they have to fend off attacks from a number of other gangs.
That's definitely similar to Wick's predicament in "Chapter 3" and "Chapter 4."
But when it comes to making the violence stand out from other movies, Stahelski said the team at his and coproducer David Leitch's action design production company "try to be creative" when choreographing longer scenes like the Killa fight.
He said: "We have a full-time stunt team that in their downtime... like, I swear to you if you came to 87eleven in LA. that's what my whole team is — they spend all day coming up with cool stuff. That's their job!"
"John Wick: Chapter 4" is in theaters now.