Ballerina's Director Made Sure That Flamethrower Fight Was As Real As Possible [Exclusive Interview]

I admittedly had doubts about "Ballerina" going in, and for the first few minutes of the movie, I was very worried. The film stumbles out of the gate, but thankfully, it eventually finds its footing and settles into a nice groove. Overall, it's not nearly as operatic as the main "John Wick" movies have become; Chad Stahelski infuses those films with such an idiosyncratic assortment of influences that they've become these epic, larger-than-life tales that sometimes feel more like myths than movies. 

"Ballerina," directed by Len Wiseman, is more of a down-and-dirty, back-to-basics revenge tale. It feels more zeroed in on its protagonist — more personal, less mythological — and Ana de Armas, who plays a member of the Ruska Roma out for her own vengeance, proves she can not only hang with "John Wick" franchise star Keanu Reeves (who appears in a supporting role), but she kicks so much ass that it makes her appearance in "No Time to Die" look like child's play. There are a couple of action scenes that are among my favorites in the entire franchise, and as a lifelong action movie junkie, I can safely say there are things here I've never seen before in any other action film.

A few weeks ago, I caught up with Wiseman over Zoom to talk about those action scenes (including a flamethrower fight he says was "practical" and used "real fire"), what movies influenced the "Ballerina" aesthetic, that report claiming Chad Stahelski came in and reshot a huge percentage of the film, and more.

Note: This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity, and contains spoilers for "Ballerina."

I would love to hear you talk about the visual aesthetic of this film, which is very different than what we've seen from other films set in this universe.

Len Wiseman: The aesthetic was, it was twofold. There were some elements and scenes that directly cross over to "Parabellum," the third film. So in that, I wanted that to feel of the same world, because literally looking at different perspectives, recreating sets to see some iconic moments from a different perspective. 

Then aside from that, being able to create other looks and experiences through also the locations that we're choosing. So we've never seen a snow-heavy sequence in "John Wick," so my DP and I took a lot of time about how you do keep a kind of noir, neo-noir feeling in snow. Snow is white, it's bright. We're shooting some of the stuff in the daytime. So what we're doing with the color balance of that to make it still feel like it's part of the world, whereas, say, a Bond film is a very different snow-looking aesthetic than "Ballerina." So that was also a challenge, to also make it look daunting. It's a beautiful city, and then you cover it in snow and it looks like a winter wonderland. So bringing mood into that city. A lot of tricks and elements. Also shooting with the elements, the spotlights became a large portion of just our source for how it backlights. But the goal there was how to give a noir, sexy, cool feeling to bright white snow, was a challenge.

Did you look at any movies specifically that did the kind of thing you were going for?

I did. It was actually, it was the second movie to, oh, what's the ... "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo?"

Oh yeah.

The other one. There were some snow sequences there. I checked out "30 Days of Night," just to see what they did with that. Yeah, so I dive in. I get to a point where, when I'm making a movie, the movies that I do watch are always some form of research. So I have a lot of movies to actually catch up on now that this is done, because I just don't feel like — why would I watch a movie? I know entertainment and I love movies, but I always, I'm so in it, [in] the world [of making my film], that every movie I watch has some form of research involved in it.

So there was a report that came out a while back that claimed that Chad Stahelski came in and reshot most of this movie. And I was just curious if you could talk about what happened from your perspective.

Yeah. One, there weren't reshoots. They were additional shoots that we went out to Budapest. The studio saw the film, loved the film, and we had cut out some of the action sequences from the original script just because we couldn't fit them in the schedule. So once they saw the movie and really believed in it, they were like, "Why don't we take a look at bringing those sequences back in?" So a large part of what we shot was what was in the script originally. And yeah, no, the rumors are rumors. I've known Chad for a long time, and I ended up, I got sick. I had a health scare, so I had to take off for a couple of weeks and go to the hospital, and so he covered the scenes that we were working on, and kind of thank God that he was there with the team for that, so. And then after my stay in the hospital, I jumped back in, but that's actually what the personal story is.

Gotcha. Okay. Well, thanks for sharing. There's a pretty lengthy sequence where Eve is fighting with a guy who's using a flamethrower and she's using a flamethrower, and it looks like there's actual fire being used there. I especially enjoyed the moment where the guy purposefully catches his leg on fire so he can kick her with it.

Oh yeah, so he can kick her? Yeah. It's just a tough move. It's like, it doesn't need to happen, but it's just an extra level of, "You know what, f*** it. Let me just do this." [mimics kicking] But it is real fire. That's a practical sequence.

I was wondering about that. Because people can do amazing stuff with CG, but there's something about fire where you can tell when it's real, and it certainly looked real. So aside from the safety angle, what kind of conversations went into the creation of that scene?

Well, one of the things that was really [important] is always striving to do something different, something that we haven't seen. So we've seen a flamethrower in an action movie here and there, but never as a gun battle, a close-quarters, indoors, just a gun battle with flamethrowers. Never seen it. So it really comes from that, of that conversation of how to take a weapon that ... there's only so many weapons to play with. So it's really about, what's the clever idea? What is the clever situation, location, of how to make that difference? Much like what we were also doing with the grenades. Yes, we've seen grenades in action movies before, but I pitched this as, "What if it was a snowball fight, but with grenades? Also indoors, close-quarters." So then it creates a scene that is entirely new. I don't think we've seen anything like that. We haven't seen anything like the flamethrowers. So it's really coming from that perspective: How do we make this different?

Man, I love that grenade scene so much. How many different variations of the choreography do you guys go through once you settle on, "Okay, we're only using grenades"? You're limited in terms of like, "What can I actually do where my protagonist is not going to be obliterated by this?" So how many different variations did you end up going through there?

I mean, one, it was a lot of fun building that dynamic because they are grenades, so even the set and the setting, the steel doors, it was built out of, it's all a rock-based underground bunker. So you start from there where you could actually shelter yourself just behind a door. But I just went kind of nuts on the lobbing, almost volleyball aspect of just a hot potato kind of sequence. So the set itself, we built with a lot of — because [we also have] a lot of continuous takes, so there were a lot of trap doors in the set. So like when the guy gets pushed behind the door, we don't cut. Ana pushes the door closed, and he goes through a little magic trap door right before the explosion goes off, because it's a real explosion. So it's a bit, I felt like it was almost like little theater tricks that we would do as we're blowing people up.

That's really cool. So there are several other extended fight sequences here that I think action junkies are just going to really enjoy and I wanted to run through a few of them with you in a lightning round format and see if you could just tell me any stories from the set or moments that you discovered during editing or really anything that jumps out to you about these. So there's this hard-hitting fight scene that takes place in an ice club, which again was something that I'd never seen before. So what do you remember about that?

I mean, that's something that was, in terms of using elements that are there, of what would be in an ice club? Part of it is just grabbing weapons, because when she comes in, she can't have a real gun, so she has to use the rubber bullets. So that was a unique idea too of, again, taking something like, say she had a gun. Say she had a gun in the club. It would feel like something we've seen before, outside of the ice club [aspect], but using the rubber bullets established this idea of, with metal detectors, you just can't go there. So what do we do? So using the rubber bullets, what she practiced with in the Ruska Roma, that becomes a different kind of sequence. So it's almost like punching with bullets. Just driving and just pop, pop, pop, you're having to drive them back as if you're hitting them. So that became a new thing. "What about if we're punching with bullets, what would that look like?"

That's great. And then there's also this scene that takes place in this kind of lodge environment, which we've never really seen in a John Wick movie before. What do you remember about that one?

We had a great time with it, and I really wanted this, I had this image early on of a silhouette samurai, just wild Ana, wild Eve, just getting out all of her anger in one tableau of her going to town. So using the fire specifically — having the grenade that goes off, but then it does roll by the fireplace, so I needed the place to be on fire, mainly because I wanted that silhouette shot. So that's kind of how you go through it. You have these ideas, I go, "Okay, so the cabin has to be on fire because I want this tableau shot."

The last big one that I wanted to talk about is Eve's fight against Keanu as John Wick. What was shooting that like? Because Ana and Keanu had worked together before, they had a previous acting relationship. So what was it like from your perspective, putting that scene together?

One, I was thrilled that we got it because at [one] time, we weren't sure how extensive we could go with it. But I've got to say, they're both so committed. Also, again, it was a practical location. It is freezing. All the breath and the fog and everything is all real. And I had a great time. They were very, I think they enjoyed it. So, it's hard. It's all hard. It's all very hard work. But that one was really enjoyable, and it was also the first scene that I had directed, first fight scene that I had directed with Keanu. So that was just a thrill for me as a fan, as a filmmaker, to go, "All right, today, we're playing around with John Wick." It was wonderful.

Awesome. Okay, so I think I have time for one more question, and I want to go back to the very first time that you read the script. Was there a specific scene or moment on the page that you were especially excited to tackle?

The town, I think. The town was the thing, because a lot of the action I will restructure and build myself, so the thing that I really took from it was that the town and the tribe felt much more like a cult than any tribe we've seen in this world. That their code is different. That fascinated me. I come from a religious background, and if my family's [reading], it just wasn't for me. But there's elements of, it's treated more like a religion than it is an assassin tribe. And so, not to say that I grew up in a cult, but there's a cult aspect to it. I said it's almost if David Koresh was running an assassin congregation.

"Ballerina" is in theaters now.