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A circle of inspiration in action.
A little fun fact about the recently released John Wick: Chapter 4 surprised the fans: according to director Chad Stahelski, one of the gunfight scenes was inspired by 2019's top-down indie shooter The Hong Kong Massacre developed by VRESKI.
The Massacre, in turn, took inspiration from John Woo movies as well as Hotline Miami – an iconic game that some viewers connected to this scene. Here is was Stahelski told Slash Film:
"If you’re ever lacking creativity, handcuff yourself and then figure it out, because then you’ll do something you haven’t done before. So top shots were never very cool with us, with lighting or choreography, because it gets old quick. But I had seen this video game and I’ll throw a shout-out – I think it was called “Hong Kong Massacre” – they did this top shot and we had been doing so much with the big muzzle flashes and it just kind of clicked like, “Well, if I’m above, we shoot like this and we shoot like this, and it draws these cool lines with the muzzle flash, and if I get the right flicker effect, it’s like Etch A Sketch. It looks really cool.” And it was a different way to amp up the action and keep you in that video game mode that John Wick’s kind of known for, that first-person shooter kind of thing."
It's great to see small indie studios influence well-known franchises. Hopefully, we will see more such nods in the future. Meanwhile, VRESKI seems to be working on another shooter.
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