Keanu Reeves returned to the big screens as the titular hero, John Wick, with John Wick: Chapter 4. In the 2023 film under the neo-noir action franchise, he continues his hunt for High Table. With a runtime of around three hours, Chapter 4 has also become the longest film in the franchise so far. However, for the longest film in the franchise, Reeves reportedly cut down his dialogues, bringing them down to even less than 400 words.
The Wall Street Journal has reported that the lead actor and director of the film cut down half of his dialogues from John Wick: Chapter 4.
Keanu Reeves Dropped Half of His Dialogues in John Wick 4
John Wick: Chapter 4 is the longest film under the franchise, with a runtime of 169 minutes. The runtime is almost twice that of the first film in the franchise. The 2014 film had a runtime of 101 minutes, and it increased a little bit with every next film. Its sequel was 2 hours and 2 minutes long, and John Wick 3 was 2 hours and 11 minutes.
However, as the films’ runtime increased over the years, Keanu Reeves’ dialogues seemed to have shortened. According to The Wall Street Journal, in the first film of the franchise, Reeves said 484 words. However, since then, his word count in John Wick movies has fallen from almost 500 words to 380 words.
The report also revealed that fans could easily get almost 10% of his dialogue in the trailer itself. The screenwriter of the film, Michael Finch, was also amazed by his dedication to speaking as less as possible. “It’s a shock when you work with [Keanu Reeves] how dedicated he is to not speaking,” he said.
The Matrix star’s longest sentence consists only of 14 words when John Wick talks to Shimazu Koji and says, “You and I left a good life behind a long time ago, my friend.” Although he doesn’t enjoy having too many dialogues for himself, Reeves does seem to like to put up a one-man show.
Keanu Reeves’ One Man John Wick Show
Although he does not prefer having lengthy dialogues for his character in the film, Keanu Reeves lived reading out other characters’ lines. Chad Stahelski and the Constantine star worked with writers for nine hours or longer writing sessions. And one of the screenwriters of John Wick 4, Michael Finch, shared that during these sessions, Reeves “would do all the characters.”
He shared that he put on a “one-man show,” but he did not seem equally enthusiastic toward his own parts. Finch shared that it helped in reassigning “necessary plot exposition to other characters.” Considering the ending of the film, it is believed that the franchise would not move forward. But there have been hints that John Wick’s story will continue in a fifth installment.
John Wick: Chapter 4 is playing in theatres.
Source: The Wall Street Journal
