Heading into The Continental: From the World of John Wick, the biggest question on everybody’s lips is whether or not the franchise would retain anywhere near as much of its appeal without the presence of director Chad Stahelski and star Keanu Reeves.
As it turns out, that appears to have been answered resoundingly after the three-part prequel series debuted to the worst reviews the action saga as ever experienced, and it’s not even close. At the time of writing, The Continental holds a meager 53 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, creating a vast chasm between itself and the first John Wick, which is the big screen brand’s lowest-ranked with a still-mighty 86 percent.
A lot of the scorn has been placed on the involvement of Mel Gibson as you might expect, but longtime executive producer Erica Lee has taken a completely different approach after admitting to The Hollywood Reporter that The Continental turned out vastly superior to anything she could have imagined.
“The show has far exceeded my expectations. Whenever you’re making anything, I always say the ingredients can be great, but the cake can still taste like sh*t, right? We were really lucky with Albert at the helm. He has a very distinctive vision and also came in as a fan of the movies and loves certain aspects of it, but also wanted to push certain thematics and things his own way.”
A lot of critics – and no doubt some audiences members when it releases – are fully of the belief that the show does indeed “taste like sh*t,” but it’s not as if somebody deeply embedded in the John Wick mythos is going to come anywhere close to trashing its first official offshoot.
