The biggest and most obvious problem that comes with any money-spinning franchise painting its latest installment as the last one is that nobody tends to buy it for a second, with John Wick: Chapter 4 merely the latest to fall into the trap.
Sure, it was a full-circle moment to see Keanu Reeves’ titular hitman bleeding out having suffered what appeared to be a fatal gunshot, but nobody was buying it. In fact, it was only a matter of days before the key creative began teasing various ways for the story to continue in a hypothetical Chapter 5, which was confirmed to be in early development last week.
And yet, director Chad Stahelski is still beating the drum for Chapter 4 marking the iconic assassin’s final stand, as he opined on the final moments of the sequel in an interview with ScreenRant.
“Keanu and I both felt like we didn’t do our best. We didn’t send John Wick off to our best, and we felt a little broken up about that. We felt like we could have done better. So, we started thinking about, “There’s only one way; we go back and do a fourth one.” Because in film history lucky enough to get three good ones, you get four is almost unheard of no one’s ever really done it.
So, we’re like, “Okay, the only way to do it is we want to say goodbye. What’s the best way to say goodbye? Well, we got to redeem him. We got to kind of make him a good guy. We got to have his friends. We got to tie up all. How do we…?” We knew the pieces in the cities we wanted to go to, but it didn’t quite click.
It wasn’t until really about Christmas of that year where we took a break. We brought in a friend to help take one more pass at it, and it kind of clicked. It made me sad at the end, and we could hear the music and knew what we were gonna do, and that’s when it kind of made sense. All this was our plan, but nothing really felt right ’til you read it, and you could see it. Me and Keanu both looked up and smiled. You could feel yourself getting choked up. We’re like, “Yeah, we’re gonna send this guy. And that’s when it needs.”
While Stahelski is no doubt adamant at this exact moment in time that he’s done with directing John Wick movies, that’s not a sentiment shared by everybody. It would be more of a surprise if it didn’t happen at this point, but the ball lies in his and Reeves’ court.