‘John Wick: Chapter 4’ Had a Much Different Final Scene, but Test Audiences ‘Preferred the Ambiguous Ending’
[Editor’s Note: The following story contains major spoilers for “John Wick: Chapter 4.”]
John Wick is dead, right?
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“John Wick: Chapter 4” director Chad Stahelski spoke to Empire magazine about the ending originally shot for the film, which indicated to audiences that John Wick was very much still alive. In the final theatrical version, John Wick appears to die on the steps of the Basilica of Sacré Coeur while ruminating on his family. Ian McShane and Laurence Fishburne’s characters are then seen looking over his grave — implying Reeves’ character has died without ever explicitly showing so.
“We had a different ending,” Stahelski said. “[The theatrical ending] was the ending Keanu and I wanted, but we shot a different ending. We shot an ending where you actually saw John Wick at the end of the movie. So it was very clear that he was still alive. The audiences we tested with absolutely preferred the ambiguous ending.”
Stahelski continued, “We didn’t feel like we had done our best [with ‘Parabellum’]. We both felt like we could have ended the series better. We didn’t feel like we stuck the landing, and that’s a shitty feeling. Because we love the character, we love working together, we love the world.”
Stahelski said the ending was born in part out of the reception for “John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum.”
“I said, ‘I’d be pissed if that’s how they ended the whole series. I’d be pissed at the director,'” Stahelski recalled following the third movie. “And I had just read this treatise on samurai etiquette called ‘Hagakure,’ the art of the way of dying. And we’re like, ‘Yeah, he’s got to die. And we got to come up with the coolest way to make[that] happen. We’ve got to make it all about, “You can only had a good death if you had a good life.”‘ That’s the first line we wrote on a napkin in Japan, three years out. We wrote the movie backwards off that one thing.”
The “John Wick” franchise continues with spinoffs like prequel series “The Continental” and a rumored follow-up film focusing on side characters.
Producer Basil Iwanyck told IndieWire’s Eric Kohn that “Chapter 4” purposefully has an “ambiguous ending” that leaves it open if Reeves were to return. “I’ll put it that way: We don’t have this answer,” he said. “There are two characters, really. There’s John Wick, and John, the civilian. The question for all of us is, OK, if the audience embraces the story and the box office works, is there another story to be told? I don’t know. But I don’t think we’ve boxed ourselves into any corner, whether he’s dead or alive, at the end of this movie.”
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