I don’t envy the editor of “John Wick: Chapter 4.” Director Chad Stahelski basically used Lionsgate’s money to shoot wildly extravagant action and combat sequences that went beyond anything in the previous “John Wick” movies — which, considering the action movie majesty of the “John Wick” franchise, is saying something.

Remember that club fight sequence in “Chapter 4,” where Keanu Reeves’ assassin faces off against stunt legend Scott Adkins in a fat suit? According to the film’s stunt coordinators Stephen Dunlevy and Scott Rogers, it was actually the most challenging scene to film and believe it or not, was initially twice as long as what you see in the final movie. Then there’s that entire third act that’s basically one long action montage, as Baba Yaga fights his way across Paris toward his final showdown with Bill Skarsgård’s Marquis Vincent de Gramont. And all of this even after Stahelski cut “John Wick: Chapter 4” down from its original four-hour runtime.

So imagine being an editor, staring at that blank Premier Pro timeline and the masses of combat footage and wondering how the hell you’re supposed to make some sort of intelligible narrative out of the whole thing. Well, that was basically Nathan Orloff’s job. The editor, whose past work includes cutting together “Ghostbusters: Afterlife” and working in the editing department on “10 Cloverfield Lane,” told The Motion Picture Association (MPA) that working on the latest “John Wick” entry was like “taking a comb to the desert.” Luckily, he had a few tricks up his sleeve, especially when it came to making Donnie Yen’s character, Caine stand out amid the chaos.

Orloff’s rule for Caine

Lionsgate

Donnie Yen is a martial arts and stunt legend in his own right, having established himself in Hong Kong and mainland China with the “Ip Man” franchise before transitioning to Hollywood, eventually landing roles in “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” and Disney’s live-action “Mulan.” It also turns out that Chad Stahelski is a big fan of the action star, and was intent on going all out on the big fight between Keanu Reeves’ John Wick and Yen’s Caine in “John Wick: Chapter 4.”

That fight occurs during the early stages of the film, when Reeves’ hitman manages to fight off hordes of thugs that have descended on the Osaka Continental Hotel, only to be confronted by blind assassin and old friend Caine. And the fight that ensues was made that much better because of a neat trick employed by Nathan Orloff.

As the editor explained to the MPA:

“Donnie was a different beast […] I made this decision early on that stuck: when Donnie is fighting another main character, there’s no music. I wanted everyone to hear what Caine hears. I wanted people to hear that this is doable. It created this eeriness around Caine where he felt different than all the other characters.”

Up until Caine enters the fray, “Chapter 4” is a predictably bombastic affair, with Wick having just battered a few opponents with a pair of nunchucks. But Orloff’s rule for Caine makes for a nice change of pace. As he explained:

“When there was this music, music, music, and the nunchucks, and then John gets up, there’s no music, and then Caine shows up; it’s just eerily quiet. To me, that is Caine’s world. We get an insight into his world because of that sound design choice.”