So How Much Is John Wick in Ballerina After All?

Ahead of its June 6 release, the John Wick spin-off Ballerina (full title: From the World of John Wick: Ballerina) was plagued by negative rumors. The movie was filmed in late 2022, but there was additional shooting in 2024, leading some to speculate that what was originally filmed was a disaster. It was whispered (slash reported on blogs) that director Len Wiseman had been quietly replaced by John Wick director Chad Stahelski, and that the film’s studio, Lionsgate, demanded more Keanu Reeves (who plays prodigious assassin John Wick) to make a troubled film more sellable.

Wiseman has since dispelled those rumors, saying that what were called “reshoots”—a term that might suggest a faulty original product—were actually additive elements greenlit by a studio that was very excited about the project’s potential. Wiseman clarified that Stahelski only stepped in because Wiseman had a health scare. We’ll choose to accept that narrative—especially after seeing the film, which may be silly and nonsensical, but is also quite a lot of fun.

Let’s get to perhaps the most pressing question about Ballerina, even if it’s perhaps a little unfair to the titular character: just how much is John Wick in the movie? Reeves’s appearance in the film—which is set between the third and fourth John Wicks—is more than mere cameo, but far from a true supporting turn. He’s perhaps in the realm of a “with” or “and” credited performance from a big name who pops in to do a few scenes.

We first see John at the ballet-assassin academy where grieving-furious orphan Eve (Ana de Armas) is training. They have a brief exchange and, we assume, that will be it in terms of John’s involvement. But he returns later, for a small but not insignificant piece of action that, yes, may only exist to be spliced into the film’s trailer, but doesn’t feel too tacked-on. Wiseman and writer Shay Hatten find a way to insert John into the narrative in a mostly credible way. Though, really, what does credible mean in the ridiculous and ever-expanding universe of this franchise?

The John Wick sequels grow more ornate as they go, introducing heaps of mythology—about ancient assassin clans, rituals and rites, rules and regulations—to what was once, at its inception, a mean and efficient little thing. Ballerina only further bloats the lore, folding in a whole new sect of people—a kind of killer commune-cult—whose existence strains even the limits of this already ludicrous series. Yet one happily trots along with Ballerina as it ventures into absurdity. Its silliness is, at least, compellingly rendered.

It helps immensely that de Armas is such a limber, confident action performer. We got a too-brief taste of her chops in the James Bond film No Time to Die—her single sequence is the highlight of that otherwise moribund adventure. Ballerina blesses us with two hours of de Armas’s physical prowess, somehow both loose-limbed and crisp. She’s a natural interpreter of Wick-ian fight choreography and gun-fu. But it’s not just guns she’s adept with. Early in the film, an instructor tells Eve that there will always be male opponents stronger than her, so she must get creative and underhanded in battle. Ballerina then shows us the giddy results of that training, as Eve turns all manner of implements and physical circumstances into deadly agents.

The grand set piece of the film is a lone woman’s siege of a snowy Alpine town seemingly entirely populated by trained murderers. It’s a prolonged, multi-tiered parade of carnage, culminating in what I think is the first flamethrower duel I’ve ever seen on film. While Ballerina can sometimes be more demure about killing than the John Wick films—Eve shows a bit of mercy here and there, though John is not entirely without conscience either—during this wintertime melee, Eve gets to killing in brutal, relentless fashion. It’s a gnarly good time, staged with just enough mordant comedy to properly contextualize everything as existing firmly in the realm of make-believe.

By the end, it has become abundantly clear that Lionsgate does not mean for Ballerina to be a mere spin-off anomaly. The film is pitched as the kick-off to a entire new series, in which Eve is on the run from the people she’s grievously wronged (though, they shot first) and her legacy becomes ever more entwined with that of John Wick, of Ian McShane’s Winston, of Anjelica Huston’s shiftily ambivalent Director. Based on this first propulsive and sprightly film, I warily await whatever comes next in the Ballerina saga. But if we ever see a movie title starting with “From the World of From the World of John Wick: Ballerina,” it will be high time to reassess.