A closer look
Keanu Reeves trained for months to perform his own tactical firearms stunts in the 2014 action hit John Wick, primarily because the directors could not actually afford the budget required to constantly switch out their lead actor with a professional stunt double. The production was so financially strapped that they almost shut down entirely before filming the famous nightclub shootout, forcing the crew to rely on hyper-efficient, long-take camera setups that inadvertently created a beautifully brutal visual aesthetic. Audiences were absolutely mesmerized by the sheer competency of the violence, completely exhausted by the shaky-cam editing trend that had dominated Hollywood action movies for the preceding decade. A desperate financial limitation accidentally birthed a billion-dollar franchise and revitalized the career of a heavily meme-ified 90s movie star, proving once again that dumping excessive money into a production often ruins the very creativity needed to make it truly entertaining
