Donnie Yen redesigned his JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 4 character after Bruce Lee and fought against Asian stereotypes

Donnie Yen is set to star in John Wick: Chapter 4 and fans are super excited about the fight scenes he shares with Keanu Reeves. Just the fact that Yen is in this movie makes me believe that this will be the best movie in the series! I just don’t see how it can’t be with the high action that the Yen involvement will bring.

During a recent interview with GQ magazine, Yen talked about his character in the film, who is called Caine, and explained that while he recalled Asian stereotypes in the original script, he was able to redraw the character however he wanted, and modeled the character after Bruce Lee. Yenne said:

“The name was Shang or Chang. Why does he always have to be called Shang or Chang? Why can’t it have a normal name? Why do you have to be so generic? Then the wardrobe again – oh, stand collars. Why is everything so generic? This is a “John Wick” movie. Everyone should be cool and stylish. Why can’t it look cool and trendy?

It is explained that John Wick: Chapter 4 director Chad Stahelski was open to Yen and listened to his criticism and agreed to alter the character. The changes made ended up paying homage to Bruce Lee, and Yen said he had a “very respectful experience working on John Wickand added, “Overall, I enjoyed making the film.”

It wasn’t the first time Yen had to deal with Asian stereotypes. When he came on board Disney and Lucasfilm A rogue one to play the blind warrior Chirrut Îmwe, he also fought against some of the original details regarding that character. He said: “One thing I pointed out was that he was a stereotype. Then, the script was changed to make the character funnier and have comedic beats. Yen was even given the opportunity to improvise lines during filming.

Chad Stahelski recently teased a sequence between Reeves and Yen saying they wanted to do something we’ve never seen before:

“So, it always boils down to, I can do the Donnie Yen triple kick. I can do all of that, but you also want to do something different. So, you start sitting down, you come in character, and you have a lot of discussions with guys who are like, ‘Okay, Donnie’s great at this.’ Keanu is great at this. They’re both great actors, so let’s lean on that and do something we’ve never seen before.

“So now, that Donnie Yen with a sword and a gun and Keanu with a samurai sword and a couple of guns and throwing an AR-15 and a glass mirror room with Japanese artifacts. And yes, add a couple of dogs and see what happens.

And we’ll soon see what happens when the film is released on March 24, 2023.