So, does the dog die in John Wick 3: Parabellum? Almost, but no.
First off, its important to clarify which dog youre talking about here, because Johns replacement pooch, who doesnt have a name, stays out of harms way under the protection of The Continentals concierge, Charon (Lance Reddick). However, we meet two more pups when John escapes to Morocco to track down Sofia (Halle Berry).
She has two attack dogs, one of which is shot during a fight with Sofias old boss, Berrada. However, it turns out the dog is wearing a bulletproof vest, but Sofia shoots Berrada in retaliation anyway, Article continues below advertisement
There are two kinds of dogs in John Wick
After losing his adorable beagle puppy Daisy in the first John Wick film, the recently unretired assassin John rescues a dog from a shelter who would otherwise have been euthanized — adopt dont shop! Johns new best friend is a pit bull, and its clear Johns still dealing with losing Daisy since he cant bring himself to name him.
However, the dog who plays him is actually a female named “Cha Cha” according to the films visual effects supervisor, Rob Nederhorst. Article continues below advertisement
Sofias dogs, however, needed to be a breed that takes well to special training, which is why they went with the Belgian Malinois breed. Theyre a working dog known for strength and smarts, which is why they are among the preferred breeds to staff military and police K-9 units and bomb-detection squads.
Halle Berry actually had to become a dog trainer for the role since her character had to deliver commands to her four-legged bodyguards. On top of all her firearm and martial arts training, the Academy Award winner had to spend “two or three hours a day” with the dogs off-camera to get ready for their action sequences according to EW.
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Not long into John Wick: Chapter 3—Parabellum, our titular assassin, running from a $14 million bounty on his head, is asked a simple question that cuts to the core of this unlikely movie franchise’s existence.
“All of this, for what? Just because of a puppy?”
“It wasn’t just a puppy,” Wick responds, without a whiff of humor.
Neither character is wrong. The foundation of this dark and stylistically violent series is built upon a home invasion that occurred in John Wick, in which Russian gangsters knocked Wick unconscious, stole his Mustang and unnecessarily snuffed out his baby beagle, a gift from his belated wife. The heinous act compelled Wick to reenter the assassin underground, but it also reinforced the practical and symbolic value in having a canine companion.
Jump ahead two chapters and the franchise has remained loyal to its domesticated friends. Wick’s pitbull, which he saved from being euthanized at the end of the first movie, returns in Parabellum as his dedicated protector and running buddy. But the third installment also expands its animal roster to include two Belgian Malinois shepherds and a stable of several horses, all of which lend their speed, hooves, teeth, and claws to a few violent sequences that enable Wick to stay alive in the midst of bullet-spraying madness.
In order to effectively create these scenes, which feature the movie’s stars, Keanu Reeves and Halle Berry, director Chad Stahelski enlisted the services of Tad Griffith, a third-generation equestrian gymnast and self-described horse master, and dog and wolf trainer Andrew Simpson. Both of them prepared intensively for months before shooting, working closely with the actors and stunt coordinators, all to keep Wick’s kinship with these majestic animals plausible and, more importantly, exhilarating.
“It was a matter of what we could create that we could accomplish safely, and how we could do some awesome stuff that had never been done before,” Griffith said. “I think we accomplished it.”
Without the grueling amount of planning and effort, detailed below, none of these elaborate set pieces—spanning from New York to Morocco—could have been possible.
When Stahelski tapped Griffith to coordinate the horse scenes, he wanted something practical and innovative at the same time. “What could we get away with that would look more like using a horse as a weapon?” Griffith remembers the director asking him.
What Stahelski got was a cartoonish solution that still worked on a realistic level. As Wick darts into a barn full of horses early on in Parabellum, he uses them as a shield, sliding underneath and spinning around the spooked equines. Then, in a very efficient and technically savvy move, Wick positions the rear of one horse toward oncoming gunmen and taps its flank, causing an instantly violent back kick that sends the bad guys flying out of frame. “Everyone knows to stay away from the back of a horse,” Griffith said. “If you surprise the horse, it will kick, so it made sense.”
Pulling off the swift nature of that trick was another story. Griffith brought five of his 80 horses from his family-owned ranch near Santa Clarita, California, to participate in the movie. Before any training could begin, he needed to pick the right horse breeds, with the right experience, to pull off the variety of stunts needed. For the barn scene, Griffith chose an Arabian named Rogue, beginning prep in California to block out the sequence and then rehearsing more once the team got to New York.
He worked with Reeves to move the horse on command so they could effectively line up its hindquarters in the right spot. In reality though, a simple tap doesn’t turn Rogue into an instant weapon. “When you touch a horse in the tummy or touch him on the top he’s not going to kick. That’s not normally how you make a horse kick,” Griffith said. The execution needed to be multifaceted.
“He’s trained to where it’s on a voice cue, where I can just say, ‘Annnnd kick!’” Griffith explained. “We’re doing a dance. Keanu spins him around, I know when the horse is physically in a position to do it, I see Keanu start to cue him with his hand and then I tell the horse to kick. All three of those things kind of have to come together. Even though it looks seamless and it looks easy, it’s still a dance where I have to keep Keanu safe. I have to get the best kick and performance out of the horse at the exact moment in which Keanu’s cueing him on film.”
Notably, Rogue’s hooves didn’t actually connect with any stunt performers. The gunmen were composited in later on the exact marks where the horse’s hind leg finished its momentum, in order to look like it was all one fluid shot. “It’s not as easy as it sounds, especially on the double kick, because the timing has to be perfect,” Griffith said. “So they probably shot those kicks for the guy on the ground 15-20 times to make it match.”
The entire barn sequence took three nights to shoot, but without the weeks of preparation and the right trick horse, the scene never could have developed in a timely fashion. The success of the scenes also relied on Reeves’s personal connection with the animals, whom he trained with each day.
“He was very kind to the horses at all times,” Griffith said. “People just get on them and treat them like a prop. That’s the history of the industry, but that’s not what he did at all. He was always concerned about their welfare and how they were feeling and he’d always talk to them, which goes a long way because that’s exactly how we do it.” All of that came in handy for the more industrious riding scenes that would follow.
“No matter where our technology goes, no matter what the movies are about, the presence of a man on a horse still puts a man above other men,” Griffith told me with pride. “He looks different when he’s on a mobile throne.”
Long before footage of Reeves galloping beneath elevated train tracks spawned dozens of memes, he was training intensively at Griffith’s ranch three times a week, for more than a month before production moved to New York. Although Reeves had acquired riding experience over previous projects, most recently in 47 Ronin, “we went to a whole other level with this,” Griffith said, noting that a horse-riding scene is much more difficult when it’s part of a motorcycle shoot-out.
In Parabellum, as Wick gallops out of the aforementioned stable and dodges traffic, he’s pursued by a couple of motorcyclists who swerve around his horse. To avoid oncoming fire, Wick crouches down the side and belly of the horse, completely off the saddle, and fires bullets around his horse’s neck, still bobbing at full speed. From Griffith’s perspective, it was one of the most impressive and technically challenging sequences he’s coordinated.
Building the sequence, once again, started with having the right horse breed. Based on the way Stahelski, who had worked with Griffith before on 300, wanted to shoot the scene—primarily in front of the horse, with all the action running toward the camera rig—Griffith needed three different horses to execute things properly. The first, an American saddlebred named Marley, was used as the main cast horse, escorting Wick between action sequences without anyone in pursuit. For the actual motorcycle chase, Griffith brought in two American morgans named Nip and Tuck.
“We had to pick the right horse initially before all the rest of the training could proceed,” Griffith said. “I couldn’t really make a trick horse into a riding horse as quickly or as competently, so we went the other way. That’s one of the challenges—you never know exactly what the sequence is going to call for. That’s why we have such a grand herd because we can’t make the horse do everything … When I’m talking to directors or DPs, I say I’m dealing with an eight-year-old child, except they don’t have a voice, they don’t tell me whether they want to work or not.”
During training, Reeves worked in lock step with all three horses, which were introduced gradually to the sounds of gunshots, the engine revving of motorcycles, and the noise pollution of a busy city. “We start with them standing still and then drive the motorcycles around,” Griffith explained. “Then we’ll ride the horses as the motorcycles drive around them. The slower the introduction, the more gradual it is, and as they look at the thing, and their ears come up and they snort at it, that’s when you have to give them reassurance it’s not going to hurt them. You have to walk over and smell, look at it, get used to it. So it’s a process.”
John Wick 3 Dogs, Explained
The John Wick movies have been very popular since the first film was released in 2014. Many of us sympathize with the title character who seeks to avenge his pup – though, few of us would take it to the extremes Keanu Reeves does! If you haven’t seen the movies, you can get the general idea by watching the first trailer here, though, I prefer this version, where the dog takes revenge for his dead owner. (Warning: lots of CGI blood, but the dog is totally fine, and that’s what matters in a movie.)
Actress Halle Berry has joined the series in its most recent installment, John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum, which will be released in May. Not only is she lending her acting talents to the film, she also had a hand in training her canine co-stars!
If you’ve seen the trailer for John Wick 3 you’ve seen some of the Belgian Malinois who have been working alongside her. Her two companions were actually five dogs, with whom she was encouraged to play and bond. Director Chad Stahelski wanted the experience to be fun for the dogs, so training was a foremost concern for the film. He didn’t want dogs who were attacking actors on cue, he wanted dogs who believed they were playing a game with the stunt people and having a good time.
Halle Berry became instrumental in achieving the behavior he hoped to get from the dogs. So not only did she have the training and rehearsal necessary for a film that required so much from her already, she also had to make time to spend with the furriest members of the cast!
It’s not likely that Berry considered training with her on-screen pets a chore even with all her other responsibilites to the film – she’s a BIG animal lover. Her cat, Spanky and two Labradoodles, Jackson and Roman frequently appear in her social media. When her senior cat Playdough passed last year she wrote a touching goodbye on Instagram that broke hearts all over.
See Halle Berry and her new friends in the trailer below for John Wick: Chapter 3: