In 2023, Lionsgate released Saw X, and the latest entry in their foundational horror franchise predictably made massive bank. Then came 2024, a historically godawful year for Lionsgate. Cut to March 2025, when news came that the next Saw film got indefinitely delayed.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all in favor of letting the Saw franchise die. It’s a dated relic that’s a terrible fit for the modern horror landscape, and keeping the series going for so many entries after killing off its elderly main character is a clear sign that the franchise was never built to last this long. Even so, this is still the most central and iconic Lionsgate franchise that isn’t The Hunger Games. And it was still making money as of 2023. Lionsgate has every possible reason to make Saw XI happen, they got a script and everything, and they can’t make it happen. That’s alarming, especially after the famously terrible year the studio only barely survived.

Cut to a few days ago, when Blumhouse announced that they would be taking over the Saw franchise from Twisted Pictures. This can only mean one thing: Lionsgate is FUCKED.

Yet here we are with Ballerina, in which Lionsgate tries to revitalize a far more expensive franchise even after its title character got killed off. (Not like that’s stopped them before — again, the Saw franchise.) Then again, the John Wick movies have firmly established that the franchise is considerably bigger than John Wick himself.

Unfortunately, the franchise is not bigger than Keanu Reeves. It’s not bigger than Chad Stahelski and Derek Kolstad and 87North. We got a test drive on Peacock to see how The Continental could fare without the filmmakers who built it, and the results went down in flames. (Though the controversial casting of Mel Gibson certainly didn’t help matters.)

With Ballerina, we’ve got a different approach. Here’s a side-quel that unfolds before and alongside Chapter 3. We’ve got Reeves on hand to exec-produce and make a brief supporting turn as Wick. We’ve got the blazing hot young up-and-comer Ana de Armas playing the lead. Hopefully, this means that Reeves can pass the torch to a new lead and the franchise can keep going without him.

On paper, it’s a great plan. All it needed was a phenomenal action director strong enough and bold enough to make it work. Instead, they went with Len Wiseman. I can only assume somebody at Lionsgate didn’t get the memo that Underworld was twenty goddamn years ago and Wiseman hasn’t made a relevant film since Bush Jr. was in office. It’s like hiring Renny Harlin to make a prestige horror film OH FUCKING WAIT.

Predictably, Chad Stahelski had to step in and save the film with reshoots. Reports differ as to how long the reshoots were and whether Wiseman was on set at the time, but there’s no dispute that Stahelski supervised some manner of reshoots and the retooling was enough to push the film back a year. Which means that somebody brought in Len Wiseman — the guy who directed a female-driven action franchise from goddamn 2003 and hasn’t done anything noteworthy since — only to bring the franchise co-creator back in when Wiseman got out of his depth.

Because, you know, anybody who knew anything about movies could tell from day one that Wiseman was the wrong choice.

De Armas plays Eve Macarro, a young woman born to two separate factions in the sprawling criminal underground of the franchise. Long story short, her maternal grandfather (the Chancellor of the Hallstatt, played by Gabriel Byrne) comes to take Eve back into the fold and kills her father along the way. After he already killed Eve’s mother for running away, I might add.

Eve escapes and finds her way to the Ruska Roma, the organization her father belonged to. This would be the same collective of ballet-themed assassins led by Anjelica Huston’s character in the third John Wick movie. Through a lengthy montage, Eve is trained to use her childhood trauma as fuel for her training into a world-class assassin.

And then Eve is told there’s an ongoing truce between the Ruska Roma and the Hallstatt. So, the Ruska Roma trained Eve all her life with the intention of going after the man who killed her parents… only to expressly forbid her from going after the man who killed her parents. Well, what the nine blue blazing hells did they think was gonna happen?!

On the one hand, I can appreciate the ways in which this movie builds upon the established lore. In a world built on paid assassins and cutthroats, I love the notion of such a character who chooses to use those skills as a Punisher-style antihero who seeks to protect the innocent instead of merely working among mercenaries or foot soldiers. As the plot unfolds, we find that the Holstatt are an actual honest-to-goddamn town with its own functional independent government, a neat extension of the established notion that literally anyone you see on the street could secretly be a badass killer. And for a society so rigidly built on rules and hierarchies, the idea of a faction that terrifies everyone because they reject everyone else’s rules is genuinely fascinating.

Furthermore, the story of John Wick has always been a story about revenge. Of all the many rules in the world of this franchise, the one above all — the one totally inviolate yet unspoken rule that all characters strictly follow — is “Thou shalt not let any transgression go unpunished.” That is exactly how things escalated so quickly that a simple arbitrary smash-and-grab spiraled into thousands of casualties and systemic upheaval over a worldwide massacre spanning four goddamn movies.

That’s pretty much what we’re looking at here. A world of assassins on the brink of outright war because of one lone antihero with a pathological need for vengeance. In John’s case, it was over a dog. In Eve’s case, it’s her dead parents.

Unfortunately, while the recurring theme of vengeance comes through loud and clear, we miss out on a golden opportunity for John to offer his wisdom and experience on the topic to Eve. Then again, if he could articulate any kind of helpful or constructive way for Eve to unpack her grief, he wouldn’t be the goddamn Baba Yaga who destroyed himself and everyone around him out of grief.

Moreover, the film tries to make some kind of statement about free will versus fate, but can’t seem to find any kind of coherent message. And I’m not sure if it’s because the filmmakers weren’t capable of it or if the franchise wasn’t equipped for it. Maybe both?

Even better, the characters bring up family, and how the very notion of family is a laughable hypocrisy in the context of this franchise. Time and again, it’s been shown that loyalty is a one-way street in this society and everyone is ultimately out for themselves. Everyone belongs to some kind of faction, but when it’s somebody’s turn to die, nobody stands up for anyone else. The Chancellor most perfectly embodies this, talking a big game about keeping the family together even as he effortlessly orders his own relatives killed off. But then again, it’s not like the Ruska Roma are that much better.

Trouble is, the film actively subverts and exposes a hypocrisy foundational to the franchise as a whole. And I’m not sure if that’s a bug or a feature.

To their credit, the filmmakers put a heavy emphasis on continuity with the return of numerous supporting actors. Keanu Reeves, Ian McShane, Anjelica Huston, and even the late Lance Reddick all make prominent appearances. They all turn in work of the expected quality, no surprises there.

Elsewhere, Norman Reedus shows up for one action sequence and that’s pretty much it. Gabriel Byrne is stuck playing a pathetically thin villain, like he’s barely even trying to make this character work. Then again, he’s playing a cartoonish tyrant with a flagrantly hypocritical motivation, so it’s not like he’s got much to work with here.

And before I hear any slander about the expected quality of a villain in a John Wick movie, I’ll direct your attention to this clip from all the way back in the first entry. Gabriel Byrne is more than talented enough that he could easily match that quality, and he never comes close.

But what about Ana de Armas? Well, her involvement as a franchise lead is going to take some adjustment. Because it’s important to remember that the entire world of this franchise was specifically built around John Wick, and Eve — most emphatically and deliberately — is not John Wick.

John Wick was built from the ground up to be a world-weary and battle-hardened shitkicker. By comparison, Eve is still very much a novice to this world. For all her training, she has little hands-on experience as an assassin. As a direct result, she’s still very much a doe-eyed ingenue next to everyone else in this picture, and Ana de Armas — for all her talents — is at her best and most comfortable when she’s playing a doe-eyed ingenue. In turn, this means it’s rather jarring for Eve to still look fresh-faced and out of her element even as she’s kicking ass. I know that’s by design and it’s the entire point, but it takes some getting used to nonetheless.

Even so, I think that de Armas is being held back by something deeper and more systemic. Consider that the film was directed by Len Wiseman, who famously directed an action franchise with his wife in the lead role. And the script was written by Derek Kolstad with help from Shay Hatten, who co-wrote the last two John Wick movies and *gulp* both of Zack Snyder’s Rebel Moon pictures.

Now consider “Hand That Feeds” and “Fight Like a Girl” two songs that freaking Evanescence was commissioned for in connection with this movie. These songs were clearly intended to be female empowerment anthems. They were expressly written for a film to be marketed as a feminist action movie. Hell, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if that was the project these actors thought they were signing on for.

But that’s not the movie we got. Because Wiseman, Kolstad, and Hatten can’t make that movie. They never could.

Then again, none of this addresses what we all care about most: The action. How are the fight scenes? Well, the fight scenes in the first half most definitely are not up to the standard we’ve come to expect from this franchise. Again, that likely has a lot to do with the fact that we’re dealing with a less experienced killer and this isn’t a series known for its training montages.

But then the turning point came with a cute little sight gag involving a TV remote. Soon after, we get a sequence that does for hand grenades what Chapter 3 did for knives and Chapter 4 did for nunchucks. This is soon followed by various fight scenes involving an icy floor, an improvised pistol/knife weapon, and an honest-to-goddamn flamethrower duel. I can only assume that this is where Stahelski came in to help with reshoots, because this is absolutely the quality and creativity I’ve come to expect from 87North.

Incidentally, this includes the black-clad elephant in the room. The trailers have already spoiled this particular plot point, but John Wick himself is pretty much the final boss of this movie. After four movies with him as our protagonist, making him an antagonist without changing anything else about him was a brassy and brilliant move. Even better, we already know how John Wick’s story ends and so we know Eve can’t kill him. Which means that now she has to find a way of getting around him without killing him, and it all has to be done in a way that makes sense without cheapening either character. And they found a way to do it. Freaking beautiful.

Ballerina is a tough one to gauge. As a standalone film, it’s a plot of formulaic tedium punctuated by some entertaining fight scenes in the back half. As a potential continuation of the franchise, I’m greatly relieved to see that the filmmakers have so many more brilliant ideas for innovative fight scenes and we badly need them to have an outlet for those ideas.

The fans need this franchise to continue, and find a way of doing it without bringing back John Wick and/or cheapening his death. The High Table, the Continental, the Ruska Roma, and this whole society of killers has to be destroyed for good and all. If it turns out that Eve will be the one to finish — or at least carry on — what John Wick started, I’m good with that.

Trouble is, Ana de Armas still needs to grow into this particular role. And we’ll have to find a director and screenwriters who are equal to the task. Will any of this happen before Lionsgate crumbles beyond repair? Time will tell.