Keanu Reeves Explains The Only Reason He Saw To Make John Wick: Chapter 4
This post contains spoilers for "John Wick: Chapter 4."
In an incredibly rare feat for the fourth entry in a high-profile action franchise, "John Wick: Chapter 4" just delivered the best box office of the entire series with $73.5 million with a global cume of $137.5 million, according to Box Office Mojo. The obvious answer as to why Keanu Reeves' now career-defining star vehicle should keep racing along is to keep raking in the dollars. Lionsgate was incredibly confident in the potential for success here after greenlighting a $100 million budget, although the lengthy running time suggests that they (and the audience) essentially got two movies for the price of one.
But there's more to the movie business than just business, believe it or not, and the creative team, including Reeves and director Chad Stahelski, still had to have a concrete reason to do a fourth chapter that justified the blood, sweat, bullets, and tears that had to go into the monumental task of topping every other previous installment. Based on the reviews over at Rotten Tomatoes, where "John Wick: Chapter 4" currently stands at a 95% rating, turning the series into a quadrilogy was an incredibly good decision to make.
Each movie has upped the ante and expanded the rules of this unique world of assassins without undermining the action or jeopardizing John Wick as a character. Even if a few moments and lines of dialogue are revisited in the new film, the central reason to make a fourth chapter was crucial to making sure Reeves and Stahelski sill had a story to tell, even if the end of that story is a little bittersweet.
The 'why' of making a fourth movie
In an interview with Collider, Reeves talked about how he and Stahelski usually travel to Japan to begin fleshing out ideas for a potential next film to see what sticks. With John Wick going up against his biggest challenge by far in "Chapter 4," there was a natural direction that the story took to remind audiences that there was still a man at the core of the myth. Reeves had this to say:
"We usually come out of Japan with at least one or two ideas ... Yeah, so for this one, the idea was, you know, because we have to come up with a 'why,' right? What's the 'why,' why make it? And, after 'Chapter 1,' well, just after 'John Wick,' it was like, the why? Well, he's on the run, but even before on the run, maybe let's open up the world. And it was like the marker and all of the friendships ..."
Bringing in the coin marker in "Chapter 2" worked to force John Wick back into the criminal underground without taking away from his core desire to just be left alone. After "John Wick: Chapter 3 — Parabellum," Wick is left without a choice and has to take on the Herculean task of literally killing everyone that could ever bring him back into the fold.
Slowly, Reeves realized that there was really only one semi-plausible direction for a fourth chapter to go in. "And then 'Chapter 4' was, 'Why make it?' And it was like, 'Okay, he has to die,'" he concluded. "That would seem like the only reason to make it, you know what I mean? Like, it's impossible. He can't survive the High Table."
If John Wick has truly seen his last battle, technically, he was never defeated by any one adversary. He does the impossible, then just flat out dies of exhaustion.