John Wick, Donnie Yen, and Bruce Lee: The Art of Realistic Movie Combat

Is John Wick “realistic?” The John Wick fight scenes and action are swift and brutal, largely captured without the aid of shaky-cam. Theatrics and monologuing are kept to a minimum, and every blow has the potential to be fatal. If an elite cabal of S-tier assassins did fight in the real world, it would probably go down like this, right?
The thing is, we know what hand-to-hand slugfests between the world’s greatest fighters look like, and in reality, Keanu Reeves as John Wick probably wouldn’t last long in the octagon. But on the screen, his marriage of MMA moves and Tom Clancy tactics was unlike anything action fans had seen before his 2014 debut. 
Some folks call it authenticity, or believability. Film majors call it verisimilitude. I call it “making you believe that Keanu Reeves can kill three dudes with a bleeping pencil.” 
And one way to do that is to put some of cinema’s greatest martial artists directly in his path of vengeance. Artists like Donnie Yen. This international superstar earned his room at the Continental through years of training and study. Drawing on his MMA expertise and the philosophy of Bruce Lee, Yen revolutionized action cinema and set the High Table for John Wick and other films that followed.
The bottom line is Donnie Yen fight scenes and a famous Bruce Lee real fight and even the John Wick pencil kill scene all converge at a certain point.
So with John Wick: Chapter 4 now out, let’s dig in on the art of realistic movie combat, where Wick, Donnie Yen and Bruce Lee all converge…