One of the worst problems in modern Hollywood without a shadow of a doubt is the fake-out death, which does nothing but chip away at audience investment and immersion when the stakes are repeatedly lowered by a character seemingly being killed off without a single soul believing it to be 100 percent true. As sad as it is to say, John Wick: Chapter 4 is the latest offender.
While director Chad Stahelski was initially adamant that Keanu Reeves’ title hero had succumbed to his gunshot wounds and taken a permanent trip to the afterlife following the climactic showdown opposite Donnie Yen’s Caine, fans were a little less convinced because they never saw a body being buried, and we all know that you can’t take mortality at face value unless there’s an onscreen corpse.
To the shock of nobody, then, it was revealed that the massive box office success of Chapter 4 had studio Lionsgate actively seeking a fifth outing for the trigger-happy hitman, while Stahelski already seemed to be backtracking on his previous comments in an interview with Entertainment Weekly.
“Let’s just say John Wick has found a way to be at peace. What’s the only way John could have gotten out? He’s got to make everyone think he’s dead, or he has to be dead, or he has to kill off a part of his persona. However you want to take that, that’s cool with us. But it feels satisfying to me, at least, and to Keanu. We’ve come full circle, and that feels like a satisfying ending. How you interpret it, I’ll leave it to you guys.”
In essence, Chapter 4‘s emotional gut-punch has been immediately rendered obsolete by the fact that the studio wants to keep mining one of its most lucrative cash cows, all while the creative team (who opted to “kill him off” in the first place) aren’t confirming or denying whether it’s really the case or not. It’s tiring, but completely unexpected, and we’d be a lot more surprised at this point if John Wick: Chapter 5 doesn’t happen eventually.