From the World of John Wick: Ballerina (2025) Movie Review: The Weight of Wick’s World-Building Becomes Too Much To Balance

Try as one might, you could hardly blame any Hollywood studio for holding onto the “John Wick” franchise for dear life; in an age of increasing financial uncertainty and endless failed attempts at burgeoning franchises, who could truly begrudge any studio executive for returning again and again to what seems like the one and only enduring Western action series born from scratch in the last decade? Having done the legwork to establish itself as a quality name brand, it was only inevitable that the Keanu Reeves-led saga would enter territory befitting any franchise once it reaches beyond the point of reasonable extension.

That means, of course, spin-offs, and in keeping with the times, the “Wick” series has thrown its first theatrical attempt (anyone remember that “Continental” show?) into the ring with a title so appropriately ludicrous in its desperation to recall the name we all recognize that viewers will be desperate to keep that name out altogether. “From the World of John Wick: Ballerina” (yes, that’s what they went with) hopes to make its own mark as a worthy competitor to the famed Baba Yaga, but in so doing, Len Wiseman’s film only finds its footing whenever invoking what Reeves and Chad Stahelski left behind.

Perhaps that’s because Reeves and Stahelski actually haven’t left this world behind, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

From the World of John Wick: Ballerina (2025) — A still from From the “World of John Wick: Ballerina” (2025)

Owing to the world-building that has been facilitated in this saga from the very beginning, “Ballerina” finds no trouble slipping into the world of underground assassins to find a new subject to seek vengeance. This time, it’s young Eve Macarro (Ana de Armas), a ballerina who finds herself, thanks to ever-reliable franchise staple Winston (Ian McShane), in the custody of the Ruska Roma sect headed by the tough-as-nails Director (Anjelica Huston).

The reason Eve has found her way here is because her own father has been assassinated by a mysterious cult leader known only as The Chancellor (Gabriel Byrne), acting as the fuel that keeps Eve’s lust for revenge burning so bright. It’s only when Eve completes her training and comes across the same wrist scar symbol demarcating the cult on one of her targets that the drive to find that closure finally reaches its boiling point, putting her at odds with everyone in her vicinity.

One of the obstacles facing her path, who occupies every piece of marketing from the trailers to the poster, so it’s no surprise, is none other than Mr. Wick, who all but hijacks “Ballerina” in the final act. Combined with the speculation that Stahelski came in for reshoots entirely behind Wiseman’s back, this reads like a spin-off too scared to try anything new that might work, lest it mean dropping even a single element of the previous films that might have contributed to their success.

This is likely why all the action sequences in the film—jerky and somewhat amateurish like the assassin at their center, but surprisingly fluid in a way that makes Stahelski’s involvement feel like more than just a rumor—come across as bite-sized versions of what we’ve gotten before, and while de Armas is plenty willing to put in the physical exertion to sell every punch, her Macarro is hardly given even an ounce of the personality she was able to bring to her one-scene appearance in “No Time to Die.”

That “Ballerina” finds itself set partially in the midst of the worst “John Wick” film—the one most clearly hindered by an over-reliance on filling in every gap of this universe—does not bode well for what Wiseman has been given to work with, and writer Shay Hatten (who wrote that very “Wick” film) seems more than content to turn this feature into a fusion of the first two entries in the series that he himself had no hand in penning. This is clear enough right from de Armas’s first major action set-piece, coming in the form of—say it with me, everyone—a nightclub fight scene.

As expected, it would be best to try and forget all the details that weigh this globe-trotting network of assassins down and focus on the blood-soaked combat, which “Ballerina” offers in spades. After a while, though, the film’s repetitive tricks come to be too much to support this claim for a supposedly new story—we get it, she likes grenades and hatchets (or ice skates; whatever’s on-hand)—and before long, it becomes clear that “From the World of John Wick: Ballerina” is, much like its laborious title, relying too much on Reeves and his beloved assassin to bring things to a close. “Ballerina,” for all its efforts to stand on its own toes, can’t help but buckle under the pressure of a well-worn dance routine.