John Wick 4 & Mission Impossible 7 could win Best Stunt Oscars

❘ Published: 2023-06-21T16:08:41

Stills from John Wick: Chapter 4 and Mission: Impossible 7

Lionsgate/Paramount Pictures

John Wick 4 and Mission: Impossible 7 have delivered some impressive stunts and now they could possibly win a Best Stunt Oscar.

It’s safe to say that two of the biggest action movie franchises to date — John Wick and Mission: Impossible — have served up some impressive stunts over the years.

Between Keanu Reeves, Tom Cruise, and their talented co-stars/stunt people, the action scenes in these movies are pretty hard to top on a technical level.

Because so much hard works goes into setting up and executing these stunts, there’s been rumblings of maybe putting a Best Stunt category in the Oscars race and that dream come be coming to fruition sooner than we think.

John Wick director attends meeting to promote Best Stunt Oscar

During an interview with Comic Book Movie, John Wick: Chapter 4 director Chad Stahelski was asked was asked his thoughts on the Best Stunts category at the Oscars and why one hasn’t been conceived yet.

Stahelski spoke plainly about the topic stating: “No one from the Academy has sat down at a big table with a contingent from the stunt world and sorted it out. I mean, we’re not just talking about an American stunt team, we’re talking about a global network of stunt performers, and international films from all over the world.

That’s a lot of people. I don’t know, if you or anyone is really familiar with how big the Academy really is, but it’s hundreds of members. It’s a lot of mechanisms to get these things done, and I just don’t think anyone’s ever sat down at the table and figured it out.”

Stahelski went to explain that he’s been meeting with members of the Academy for several months now and it’s been “nothing but incredibly positive [and] incredibly instructional” as they’ve made “real movement forward to making this happen.”

The John Wick director even said that this category could be up and running “soon as the next Oscars, or at least the one after that, at the latest, the next three or four years.”

Integrating the category into the next Oscars would come at the perfect time as Mission: Impossible 7, which is set to release in early July 2023, captures on of the most death-defying stunts of Cruise’s career.

According to Variety, Cruise’s motorcycle stunt was filmed on day one of the movie’s shoot and consisted of Cruise riding a motorcycle off the edge of a cliff and then parachuting to safety while in free fall.

The film’s director Christopher McQuarrie explained why they decided to do such a daring stunt on day one saying: “Doing that on day one gave us all the time in the world to understand why he [Ethan] was doing what he was doing.”

Cruise had a more personal reason for doing the stunt early on as if production was already underway and he was severely injured or died during the stunt later on, the movie’s $200 million budget would be for nothing. He told Entertainment Tonight: “Well we know either we will continue with the film or we’re not. [It let] us know day one what is going to happen: Do we all continue or is it a major rewrite?”

Clearly these performers and their crew at least deserve a shiny statue if they’re going to risking their lives for our entertainement.

You can find out more about streaming John Wick: Chapter 4 here and Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 1 here.

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