Ballerina - The Death of John Wick?

The John Wick franchise has been widely consistent over its four movies, with some incredibly high highs and very few lows. Does this same ideology apply to its newest entry, Ballerina? No, at least not to as high a degree. I'd like to start this review by saying: I don't think this movie should've been made. That's not due to its quality, but more just because the John Wick franchise would've been perfect at four, there is no need to drag this out and milk it for all its worth.

This was an interesting enough addition to the John Wick franchise, however. It may not have been quite as compelling as the others - strangely, I cared more about John Wick's dog dying than Eve's dad, which I imagine is a weirdly common standpoint - but I don't think it could be described as bad.

The standout for this movie is, of course, the fight scenes. every single one was spectacular with quite fun camerawork. However, I do have one big problem and that is this movie's stylisation. It was marketed as a 'majestic ballerina John Wick' movie - the whole first act was even dedicated to nailing that idea home - yet we saw none of that in Eve's fighting style. I would've liked to have seen Eve incorporate ballet into her fight scenes, majestically navigating these opponents who are double her size and three times her strength. The sheer lack of any of this just made the gimmick feel less like a 'majestic ballerina John Wick' and more of a 'female John Wick'. There is an argument to be made that the 'Ballerina' title is a codename, like the Baba Yaga, but she's not called that at all throughout, so it doesn't really hold any ground.

One thing I am very happy with is the amount of John Wick. My biggest worry was that this would end up almost being John Wick 5 - or I guess 3.5 - but luckily that was far from the case. I do think he was completely unneeded though, all he really did was threaten Eve, then give her time to kill the cult leader, so nothing would've really changed if he wasn't there. Yes, he did shoot and blow up that flamethrower on that mans back, saving Eve's life, however if he wasn't there she could've simply grabbed a gun from one of the many dead bodies around them and done that herself. But of course, he had to be included for marketing purposes.

However, I felt there was a few things that were a bit unnecessary and just used for nostalgia bait. For example, there was almost no need for Eve to visit the gun store. Anything she learnt there - the location of the cult and acquiring a car - could've come from her conversation with Winston in an earlier scene. The most egregious thing about this was that she didn't even leave with any new guns, which just made it obvious that that scene only existed for the audience to think "that's the place from the other movies" and get a small dopamine rush.

Not only is this just nostalgia bait annoying, it also shows a lack of trust in its own movie. This and the trailers focusing almost completely on John Wick just tells us that the filmmakers didn't think this movie could feel compelling without the addition of everything we already know. It all simply boils down to Lionsgate not wanting to take any sort of a chance.

One of my biggest complaints with this movie is how they treat the audience in the first act. We're almost treated like children who can't hold any information for longer than the length of one scene. I hated the scene in which Eve first finds a man with those cult markings because they show a flashback to something we saw probably twenty minutes ago.

Speaking of, I really enjoyed the idea of a cult who kill for sport, however I felt that idea wasn't properly delved into as much as it could've been. Also it felt as if most of Eve's journey at the cults base centred around John Wick himself, which felt kind of strange. It felt like their entire fight was only to show us that John Wick is still the best and Eve can't compare, which just wasn't something that needed to be told.

To conclude, while this is passable as a fun action movie, I really don't think it should've been made and I hope at some point the John Wick franchise is laid to rest because anything else that comes from this will only get worse over time.