Typecasting usually affects actors by limiting the kind of roles that casting directors and film producers are willing to offer. However, anyone who pays attention will notice that directors and screenwriters can get caught up in similarly unique expectations. However, sometimes a director puts a new spin on their trademark format and surprises the audience with something special.
Chad Stahelski has carved a nice little niche for himself over the past decade. He is a gifted stunt coordinator who has elevated his amazing understanding of fight scenes to the realm of feature film. He’s put his fingerprint all over the modern action landscape and everyone is wondering what he’s going to do next.
Stahelski is best known for the continuous John Wick franchise, for which he served as director. With three movies out, a fourth in the works, a fifth still in the planning stages, and a few spin-offs, it’s a big name in blockbuster cinema. fuse‘s signature style is one of the most influential in the action movie genre. This has led Stahelski to become a sought-after stunt coordinator and second unit director competing in even bigger action franchises, such as both Marvel and DC comics. Walking the path most great directors like these days, he cuts his teeth on a medium-sized film that becomes a hit and gets one huge IP after another. Many members of the John Wick crew have followed a similar career path, from screenwriter Derek Kolstad to uncredited co-director David Leitch. Stahelski’s big project is an adaptation of the hit game from Sony and Sucker Punch Ghost of Tsushimabut he recently announced a completely different project.
In 1972, writer and film scholar Rodney William Whitaker adopted the pen name Trevanian and released his first book. His first novel The Eiger Sanction was adapted into a feature film in 1975, directed by and starring Clint Eastwood. Just seven years later, he released his best-known novel, Shibumi. An adaptation of Trevanian’s Shibumi was announced last year by Warner Bros. and will be produced by Stahelski’s 87Eleven Entertainment company. A year later, in August 2022, Warner Bros. announced that Stahelski will cut out the middleman and direct the film himself. fuse was Stahelski’s first film in the director’s chair, and since then he’s only directed entries in that franchise. Fans of the novel and the movies will find that it is primarily used as a prop John Wick. Ever since Shibumi one of his first films as a director will be outside of the franchise he started with, it’s worth looking at the story that drew him in.
Shibumi is set in the contemporary 70s but set in a world secretly run by a handful of energy companies. The novel is a political thriller describing the resistance against the “Mother Company”, a shadowy cabal of major energy suppliers who use terrorism and violence to destroy their critics. The element that draws comparisons with fuse is the main character, Nicholai Hel. He is a legendary hit man with a long history of completing impossible tasks, who voluntarily left the company to enjoy his retirement. He is a master at killing people with random household objects, his name instills fear in all who hear it, and once he sets his sights on something, a million people will die on the road to his success. Hel takes the level of hyper-competence Wick fans have come to expect and escalates into a hilarious world of physical perfection. The term “Mary Sue” is often misapplied, but Hel could be the new poster boy for the concept, which is where the book gets weird.
There is a very good thing to do that Shibumi is a parody of action-packed political thrillers. Trevanian was reportedly furious that his aforementioned first novel was not recognized as a parody. His successor from 1973 The Loo Sanction was even more explicit in his comedic critique of the genre. Shibumi is seen by some as a hilarious fanfiction-level mess that frames the main character as a borderline god, but others will argue it’s a joke at the expense of the same concept. Main character Hel’s multinational background draws a bit from different cultures, his superhuman effectiveness in combat is often funnier than impressive, and fighting isn’t the only thing he does best. The book takes long digressions to describe Hel as the greatest lover in all of human history, and to discuss his endless obscure knowledge and deep Asian-inspired philosophy. If it’s a parody, it’s a pretty hard one. If not, it’s fanfiction of an original character that makes the weakest AO3 entry look understated.
Whether Trevanian meant? Shibumi as a joke or not, Chad Stahelski will be the one to determine the cultural response to work when it comes to theaters. The director has a chance to make a hilarious parody of his own beloved franchise, or he can make the most self-indulgent Mary Sue work ever written even more hilarious. Fans will have to wait and see if they will laugh Shibumi or with that when it comes to the big screen sometime next year.
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