John Wick is doubtlessly a genre-defining action movie, but might not have been as influential if another project had beaten it to the punch just a few years earlier. Spearheaded by director Chad Stahelski and starring established action legend Keanu Reeves, John Wick set out with what is seemingly a basic plot but astounded the entertainment industry with its style. As Reeves’ John Wick ruthlessly pursues a crime lord’s son to avenge his murdered dog, a final gift from his late wife, Stahelski and the rest of the crew miss no opportunities to push the envelope on cinematography and choreography.

Stahelski notably started his career in stunt work, often serving as Reeves’ stunt double and acting as a coordinator for movies including the original Matrix trilogy, The Hunger Games, The Expendables, and Safe. Stahleski’s pivot to direction, with his directorial debut being the first John Wick, might have come across as a gamble, but one that paid off. Certainly, a previous project where Stahelski didn’t have directorial control might have demonstrated more of John Wick‘s technicality, but this allowed the latter movie to have a bigger legacy.

John Wick Wouldn’t Have Felt As Fresh If Jason Statham’s Safe Had Debuted Its Style 2 Years Earlier

John Wick Might Not Have Been As Big Of A Success If It Hadn’t Been So Original

One of the last movies Stahelski worked on before John Wick, as an action choreographer and supervising stunt coordinator, was Safe, starring Jason Statham. In this one-man-army movie, Statham’s Luke Wright finds himself protecting a young girl who is being pursued by gangsters for the valuable code she holds in her memory, who also happen to be the people who destroyed Luke’s own life. Predictably, this is a high-octane thriller in the same vein as John Wick, with Statham showing off his action proficiency.

However, in an interview with Screen Rant, Stahelski commented that the realistic style, particularly with how guns are used, in John Wick was attempted with Safe, but didn’t work with director Boaz Yakin’s vision:

The technology of being very safe with blanks and guns and all that, we just had the sweet spot [with John Wick]. In Safe, it wasn’t quite there yet. We had been doing a lot of work with Jason at the time, who still is a very good friend of ours and we still work with quite a bit. We had the idea, we pitched it, and we thought it was cool, [but] it didn’t quite fit with what the director was trying to do [with] the character and stuff.

It wasn’t like anybody said, ‘No, we hate it.’ It [just] didn’t quite fit with the storytelling because it was more a guy down on his luck that had been hidden. It just had to be a little bit more ballistic and bombastic, and it was a little bit more of a cat and mouse [situation]. We didn’t want to force the style. You can’t force a style on someone.

It really wasn’t about missed opportunities or [that] somebody didn’t like what we were doing–it just didn’t fit. It’s like if we did John Wick and it was all wire like The Matrix. It just doesn’t fit. [Or] if we did grappling in The Matrix, it probably wouldn’t fit.

Ultimately, Stahelski stressed the style of the action matching the story. Safe benefited from more bombastic and unrealistic action because it presents a very dramatized version of gangsters and a slightly ludicrous plot. The Matrix needed wires to ᴀssist the choreography because of the reality-bending nature of The Matrix. And John Wick, very gritty and grounded, was served by the hyperrealistic handling of guns and stunts, to lend it some believability.

Of course, the work that went into the depiction of combat and firearms in John Wick was rarely seen in Hollywood, making it a very refreshing action movie at the time, as it avoided feeling over-the-top even with its larger-than-life leading man. The whole point being that it redirected the action genre in this way, this effect would have been diluted if another movie had done it first, although probably not erased, due to the overall quality of storytelling of both projects.

It’s Hard To See Safe Having The Same Impact John Wick Ultimately Did (Even With Gun-Fu)

Safe Wasn’t Good Enough Of A Movie To Have John Wick’s Impact

Historically, a movie’s technical aspects won’t garner as much attention if the story itself simply isn’t good. Movies that represent the biggest breakthroughs in special effects — The Terminator, Star Wars, The Matrix, and the like — are still good stories without those effects. On the other hand, Safe is a mediocre at best Jason Statham outing, with a 59% on Rotten Tomatoes, and would still be so even with a stellar combination of martial arts and gun-based action. It doesn’t particularly stand out from the numerous movies that the action icon has made over the past 20 years, whereas when Keanu Reeves delved back into action post-Matrix, it was hard to forget.

John Wick‘s dark neo-Western narrative has a straightforward framework, with the more unique details of the Continental system being carefully developed. Then, Chad Stahelski put his expertise to good use and raised the bar for action sequences in the industry, while his team elevated the fights with sleek production design and shooting for an overall amazingly stylish movie. John Wick, on top of everything else, always just looks cool, something that probably wouldn’t have been outcompeted even if Safe had depicted more “safety with guns and blanks.”