Keanu Reeves Cut Roughly Half Of His Dialogue From The John Wick 4: Chapter 4 Script

The "John Wick" movies are an anomaly in Hollywood today. This is a rare franchise based on an entirely original concept, with the first movie only hinting at a larger world for the sequels to explore without explicitly setting up threads for future movies. Instead, the "John Wick" movies have organically expanded the simple tale of a guy getting revenge for the death of his dog and the theft of his car into a massive world that looks like our own but isn't, complete with intricate lore and worldbuilding that is organically expanding into spin-offs.

At the center of it all, of course, is John Wick himself, an absolute killing machine we know rather little about. Other than vague hints about his past, his great affection for dogs, and his love for his wife, we don't know much about him. This is mostly because John Wick is one of the quietest protagonists in a modern major motion picture, with the Wall Street Journal reporting that Keanu Reeves' John Wick has fewer than 400 words of dialogue in the nearly 3-hour runtime of "John Wick: Chapter 4." Indeed, there are more words in this article than words John Wick says in the whole movie.

Turns out, that wasn't always the case. According to Variety, director Chad Stahelski and Reeves actually "stripped out roughly half the dialogue written for his character in the initial script." For instance, in the negotiation scene between John Wick and the thrillingly punchable Marquis de Gramont (Bill Skarsgård) agreeing on the terms for their duel, the original script split the dialogue 50-50 between Wick and the Marquis.

Of course, that is not the final film. Reeves and Stahelski cut big chunks of the dialogue so Wick would mostly have one-word responses during the exchange, answering the question of what weaponry to use in the duel saying only "pistols," no more, no less.