The new movie ‘John Wick: Chapter 4’ (2023), by Derek Kolstad featuring Keanu Reeves and Donnie Yen, was released worldwide on Friday, March 24, 2023. Movie legend Donnie Yen is a very sharp guy who supports the small “Friday” media group.
In a recent interview, Movie legend Donnie Yen Ji-dan, a Hong Kong actor, martial artist, and action director, said that when he saw John Wick’s script, he called for the changes first, and the directors agreed with him too.
Yen is entirely campaigning well to bring complexity to Asian characters who are always the people doing good at fighting but are humourless and inscrutable.
Every actor dreams of being in the most successful movie franchises like John Wick and Star Wars, but when Donnie sees the scripts of these movies, he breathes out. It’s probably an awkward attempt to guess what he tends to see, even in big-budget productions with the highest-paid writers and producers on board.
Donnie’s Yen character in the new John Wick movie chapter 4 was a Chinese martial arts expert named “Chang” who wore a mandarin collar. Initially, he denied the offer, wanting the mandarin collar ditched and the generic name changed.
He said that this character first had to be made rounder and highly complex so that the audience would see Keanu Reeves as a battling villain ‘Caine’ who wears a sharp dark Western suit with a super-thin tie instead.
The revision reminded Donnie Yen of when he was given the script for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Unsurprisingly, they asked him to play a role of a wise monk who could do outstanding martial arts despite being blind. The character’s personality is dry, without a sense of humour.
Also, he had a certain stoic quality (Exocoetus, an ability to leap into the air and fight). When asked, Yen said, “I expressed this to Disney and everybody on the set, and he listened; if you want him to do this movie, firstly, as this character needs to be a bit more.”
The character needed to have a sense of humour, and he told the film-makers. He then went on to fight to change the lines of the script, which resulted in his character in the show as a richer and more complex personality which was very popular with Star Wars fans.
Also, For instance, there’s a moment in the movie when the bad guys capture the heroes and put hoods over their heads. “Are you kidding me? I’m blind,” his character deadpans.
Also, he’s been doing this in every film he appears in – gently training as the world’s most successful filmmakers want to see Chinese people as complex human beings, not just mysterious kung fu fighters.
He said, “He has been doing it in every film, and the whole Hollywood industry knows that if they want him in the film, firstly, they should have to be respectful to their Chinese culture. They have to understand their Chinese culture.”
