7 Clever Ways Movies Hid Their Stunt Doubles
5. John Wick: Chapter 2 Exploited Change Blindness To Make You Think Keanu Reeves Did Everything
Hand-to-hand fights are one of the most difficult things to get right, especially when it comes to hiding a stunt double, and the John Wick films - which pride themselves on their melee brawls - have needed to get creative in order to combat this problem.
Fortunately, star man Keanu Reeves is more than willing to put in the necessary training time to be able to do most of his own stunts. Still, he can't do everything, no matter how hard he works, and professional help is needed on certain occasions.
Take, for example, the opening car chase/warehouse smackdown in John Wick: Chapter 2. In this scene, Reeves did pretty much all of the action (that's him in the above image), but as revealed by the movie's second-unit director, the moment when Wick is rammed by a taxi required the use of a sharply-dressed stunt double.
This is an example of a technique that, intentionally or not, the John Wick movies often use to mask their stunt doubles: change blindness.
In relation to movies and movie stunts, this basically means that, when you see an actor performing a stunt, you will be tricked into believing that the very next shot is also of the actor - even if it's not, and a stunt double has jumped in instead.
So, during the warehouse scene, we can clearly tell that it's Keanu Reeves throwing all those punches and pulling off all those car moves. Now, when the taxi stunt arrives and Reeves' double has entered the frame, we still believe that it's Reeves, because, hey, he just did all that other crazy stuff!