The following article contains major spoilers forJohn Wick: Chapter 4Now thatJohn Wick: Chapter 4is out, the film’s ending left many fans gasping, especially after star Keanu Reeves and director Chad Stahelski had initially teased plans for a fifth movie. However, both men insist this latest installment makes perfect sense for the Baba Yaga.
InJohn Wick: Chapter 4, the movie reaches its climaxwhen High Table rules force Johnto face off against his friend Caine (Donnie Yen) in a gun duel as the only way to claim his freedom from the council. John is shot by Caine, though he surprisingly uses the standoff to kill the Marquis de Gramont before seemingly succumbing to his wounds, with his last words being “Helen,” his wife’s name. The final scene then cuts to Ian McShane and Lawrence Fishburne’s watching over John Wick’s grave.
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Against all odds, John Wick is dead, and while many moviegoers will find the idea unfathomable, it all fits inside the plan. “We had the opportunity [to do another film] because the audience [response to]Chapter Three, and we were like, ‘What was theWhy?'” Reeves said at SXSW (viaThe Hollywood Reporter). “And when Chad and I were talking, theWhy?was death — and it was John Wick’s death. For him to get his peace, or freedom, in a way…that was the reason to make the movie. It can’t just be, ‘Let’s do another one.’ It was really about death, or a way of dying."
In that sense, Reeves and Stahelski took inspiration from theHagakure, a.k.a.The Book of the Samurai, a Japanese code of ethics. “We kind of took the way of dying — or the way we live well to die well — as the theme,” Stahelski said, which will hardly come as a surprise in a film that takes John Wick to Japan to meet with Hiroyuki Sanada’s Koji. Reeves noted this idea to bookend John Wick’s story as his favorite moment from the movie after eight long years of playing the character.
Nevertheless, consideringJohn Wick 5had been greenlit a long time ago, theJohn Wick 4footage leaves enough for speculation that John may have survived the encounter and instead chose to fake his death to gain true freedom. Stahelski recently said thatJohn Wick Part Fivewould be put on hold. Judging fromChapter 4, those statements are consistent for a franchise that will now shift its focus ontoThe Continentalseries and theAna de Armas spinoffBallerina.
If there is one man who could cheat death this way, it’s John Wick, although Keanu Reeves and Chad Stahelski’s words suggest the decision lay him to rest is final. Whatever the case,John Wick: Chapter 4reviewsdescribe it as the grand sendoff of one cinema’s greatest action heroes in a movie that already pays tribute to Lance Reddick.
John Wick: Chapter 4is currently available in theaters.
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