From the World of John Wick: Ballerina (Movie)

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    How ‘Ballerina’ Set People on Fire

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    Ana de Armas wields a flamethrower in “From the World of John Wick: Ballerina” and torches, well, a lot. Here’s how they made that sequence come to life. (And yes, the flames are mostly real.)When Chad Stahelski, best known as the driving force behind the “John Wick” franchise, was in high school he volunteered with his local fire department. Over the years the images from that experience stuck in his head, and the former stuntman started to dream up an action sequence involving lots and lots of fire.“I’m like, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if I combined fire and water, and we had a flamethrower fight?” Stahelski, a producer of “From the World of John Wick: Ballerina,” said in a video interview. “Two guys with flamethrowers and they are going to shoot each other.” Watching an early cut of “Ballerina” he realized he had the ideal vehicle for his fire dreams: It would be a showstopper for the star assassin, Eve, played by Ana de Armas.“How do I make her look smart? How do I make her look badass? It wasn’t about fighting more guys,” he said. “It’s like, OK, let’s give her something that really shows a skill set. And that’s when we went to fire.”The result is a bravura third-act set piece in which Eve torches her enemies in an Alpine village, going flamethrower to flamethrower with a massive villainous henchman named Dex (Robert Maaser). Instead of using digital flames, “Ballerina,” directed by Len Wiseman, mostly went for the real thing. According to Stahelski, 90 to 95 percent of the fires onscreen are “unenhanced real burns.”To accomplish this, Stahelski called in an expert in the world of movie fire, the stuntman Jayson Dumenigo, who developed a long-lasting protective burn gel for stunt performers that recently won him an honor from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Even Dumenigo was skeptical they could accomplish what Stahelski had in mind when he first heard the pitch.Ana de Armas uses a real flamethrower as a weapon in “From the World of John Wick: Ballerina.”Murray Close/LionsgateWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Watch Ana de Armas Fight Using Kitchen Utensils in ‘Ballerina’

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      The director Len Wiseman narrates an action sequence from “From the World of John Wick: Ballerina.”In “Anatomy of a Scene,” we ask directors to reveal the secrets that go into making key scenes in their movies. See new episodes in the series on Fridays. You can also watch our collection of more than 150 videos on YouTube and subscribe to our YouTube channel.In one scene in “From the World of John Wick: Ballerina,” there may be too many assassins in the kitchen.The film’s title character, the trained killer Eve (Ana de Armas), has made her way to an alpine village in Austria as part of a mission to root out a cult. But violent townspeople keep getting in her way. In a restaurant, Eve encounters a cook who aims to do more with her knife than julienne.What follows is a brisk action scene in which kitchen utensils are wielded violently and plates are smashed frantically.Narrating the scene, the director Len Wiseman said that during rehearsal, the goal was to “explore and use everything in a diner that could be used as a possible weapon.”That included pans, a meat tenderizer and a pile of plates that became the centerpiece of the sequence, as the two performers are seen in an overhead shot smashing dishes over each other’s heads.“This was one of the hardest things to do,” Wiseman said during an interview in New York, “because the plates are breakaway plates. They have one job. They break.” This meant that the actors had to be really careful picking up the plates, but also had to make the action look forceful.In the end, Wiseman and his team just wanted to have a little fun with this sequence. “What I was going for,” he said, “is let’s have this one be violent, but also make people laugh.”Read the “Ballerina” review.Sign up for the Movies Update newsletter and get a roundup of reviews, news, Critics’ Picks and more. More

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      Ready for ‘Ballerina’? Take a Pirouette Through ‘John Wick’ Lore.

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      With the release of “From the World of John Wick: Ballerina,” a guide to the expanded Wick cinematic universe.Early in the 2019 film “John Wick: Chapter 3 — Parabellum,” our hero enters what may be the world’s most peculiar dance studio. Part ballet academy, part dojo, the expansive space is also the Manhattan headquarters of the Ruska Roma, a Russian crime syndicate that first took in Wick when he was just a boy and taught him to kill. Onstage, a lithe danseuse is ordered by her instructor to perform pirouette after exhausting pirouette till she drops.In “From the World of John Wick: Ballerina” (in theaters June 6), this small glimpse of the school is expanded tenfold. That spinning dancer, Eve, played by Ana De Armas, is now the star of the show. Over the course of the film, we get a closer look at the canvas of tattoos on her back and learn how she came to get them. We find out about the school’s traditions and initiations, as well as the Russian myths and legends that shape its mission.Since this is a Wick film, we also get to watch Eve take out fearsome fighters with pots and pans, swords and knives, grenades and ice skates and flame throwers and car doors. There’s a lot to see. But with all that inventive mayhem going on, do viewers really need to know that, say, Eve’s spirit animal is the kikimora, a haglike creature from Slavic mythology?For lovers of the franchise, the answer is a resounding yes, please. In online chats, fans debate such minutiae as exactly who is in the Ruska Roma (is Winston, the owner of the New York Continental Hotel, secretly a member?), while scholars debate the franchise’s folklore and economic systems in books like “The Worlds of John Wick: The Year’s Work at the Continental Hotel.”De Armas plays eve, who was trained to be an assassin from a young age.Larry D. Horricks/Lionsgate“When we made the first Wick movie, we thought we were just making these background rules,” said Basil Iwanyk, one of the producers of “Ballerina.” “We had no idea the lore would become one of the above-the-title stars of the movies.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More