The fourth chapter in the saga of the gun-happy assassin has caused some critics to raise their eyebrows, not least because of its, to say the least, significantly increased playing time, which clocks in at three hours. Pretty hefty for what is basically just an action movie it might seem, but now the film’s director Chad Stahelski has come to its defense and says that it was originally planned to be even longer than that.
“Our first cut was three hours and forty-five minutes, and it felt like three hours and forty-five minutes. We were like, oh, we’re so screwed,”
This forced Stahelski and his gunslinger Orloff to rethink the structure of the film a bit, making sure that John Wick himself was still the one allowed the most space.
“I wanted to make sure that he was still the center of the universe, that everything always led back to him even though we were cutting away from him.”
The director also likened the film experience to a good song.
“It’s not a piece of the song, it’s the whole song that makes you rock out.”
Long films are of course nothing new, but it has become a growing trend in recent years that the playing time drags on considerably.
What do you think about the running time of John Wick 4 and films in general from Hollywood right now?
