The John Wick franchise was a revolution in the world of action cinema. Not unlike The Matrix, Wick represented a new combination of elements that reinvigorated the medium. One mid-budget shoot-em-up leaped from obscurity into the forefront of the cultural imagination, launching its star into the limelight and its format into an eternal state of regular reuse. John Wick went four movies without getting too tired, but his spin-off projects don’t seem to have the same staying power. Ballerina could step out of the eponymous shadow, but considering The Continental, it could very easily get lost in The World of John Wick.
Blockbuster action franchises have a tendency to overstay their welcome. Director Len Wiseman certainly knows the foibles of pushing an idea beyond the limits of its premise. He directed two Underworld movies and produced two more, building an action franchise around his marriage to Kate Beckinsale. In the meantime, he also found time to helm Live Free or Die Hard, the fourth entry in the ailing Die Hard series. Wiseman has an abysmal track record, which is why it’s so tough to hear that he’s the director in charge of Ballerina.
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What was The Continental: From the World of John Wick?
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Showrunners |
Greg Coolidge and Kirk Ward |
|---|---|
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Directors |
Albert Hughes and Charlotte Brändström |
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Stars |
Colin Woodell, Mishel Prada, Ben Robson, Ayomide Adegun, Mel Gibson |
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Release Date |
September 22, 2023 |
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Streaming On |
Peacock |
The Continental was the first spin-off of the John Wick franchise, but its cultural impact fell so short that even most of the fanbase forgot it ever came out. It’s the most recent piece of on-screen John Wick media to date, but it seems to have faded immediately. The Continental is a prequel that takes place in the 70s and follows a young Winston Scott, Ian McShane’s character from the films. McShane’s Winston is the unflappable owner of the titular hotel, a safe space for assassins to spend their golden tokens and enjoy the luxurious lifestyle in peace. The Continental depicts the immense amount of work it took Winston to acquire his lofty position, which he loses and regains in the films. It’s an action series that owes a lot of its mechanics to the heist thriller genre, keeping Wick‘s fondness for frenetic gunplay alive in a more grounded criminal context. It also enjoys a neo-noir setting, allowing the showrunners to play with the setting in a way that Wick simply cannot. It’s far from a perfect show, falling far short of all four films in the franchise, but it’s still an enjoyable experience. It lacks the simplicity of its predecessors, but will the same issue plague another spin-off?
Does John Wick need John Wick?
It seems difficult to put together a John Wick film without the title character, but the studio keeps shoving his name onto the poster. The Continental and Ballerina are fine titles, but someone insists on appending From the World of John Wick in front of the former and after the latter. That addition rings out much like the hilarious third season of Pennyworth, which added the subtitle The Origin of Batman’s Butler. Anyone with a passing interest in the project would already know what franchise it belonged to, and anyone who needed the subtitle probably wouldn’t engage. It’s a demonstration of the studio’s severe lack of faith in its audience. Lionsgate needed to attach John Wick to the spinoff as a promise to even the least informed viewer, but this setup builds disappointment into the project. Irritatingly enough, the world of John Wick is actually extremely fascinating. It’s one of the most compelling elements of the films, but every successful dive into its Byzantine structure and absurd system of rules has John Wick front and center. Surely a movie about the world under the High Table could be excellent, but the fickle viewers simply might not turn up if they feel that the promise of John Wick won’t be kept.
Is Ballerina in trouble?
While the film’s director is not promising, there’s no way to judge its quality at this point. Its box-office performance, on the other hand, seems a little more dire. It’s a rough time for theatrical releases, putting the potential fate of Ballerina in an unfortunate place. Not unlike Furiosa: A Mad Max Story, Ballerina is a spin-off about a female character that still uses the previous male lead as a selling point in the title. The Continental might not be the best predictor of the film’s success or failure, but the prognosis still seems unpleasant.
Ballerina could be the perfect way to extend the John Wick franchise beyond the lifespan of the character, but it could also be another messy spin-off that doesn’t land. Unfortunately, the first attempt to explore a new chunk of this franchise was a complete non-starter, and the current state of theatrical cinema could easily let this dancer down. A thousand other action filmmakers have already tried movies that boil down to “John Wick with a different actor in the suit,” so it seems fitting that the franchise would also attempt it. Ballerina could outgrow The Continental, but it could just as easily fall as flat as the character’s first appearance in John Wick: Chapter 3.
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