'Ballerina 'director breaks down the ending and its 'brutal' consequences for John Wick and Eve
This article contains spoilers for
Eve's (Ana de Armas) fight has only just begun by the end of Ballerina.
The John Wick spinoff movie introduces a new ruthless assassin on a quest for vengeance, and director Len Wiseman tells Entertainment Weekly that there's so much more yet to come with Eve's story after this movie. And despite Keanu Reeves' titular killer advising her multiple times to walk away from this life, she continues to dive deeper into the world of contract killings even after she finally gets her revenge.
"She's checked herself into the Continental, and her next move is really sorting out how her whole life has been a lie," Wiseman tells EW of where Eve goes from here. "She now understands what her father was really doing for her, understands where she came from, and decided, 'I've made a choice. I've got the answers that I needed, but there are consequences in this world.'"
If Ballerina gets a sequel to continue exploring that open-ended conclusion, the director says it will need to unpack the fallout from Eve's choices. "She has to now deal with the consequences that John Wick laid out to her, that Winston [Ian McShane] laid out to her," Wiseman says. "It is a brutal world. You don't walk off into the sunset very easily. And so now Eve's next move is how to deal with the consequences of her actions in this [movie]."
Ballerina is essentially Eve's origin story, beginning with her tragic childhood. When her father (David Castañeda) is killed in front of her, she's given over to the Ruska Roma for training in both killing and ballet. Twelve years later, she graduates to become a hired gun. Only two months into her new career, she discovers a clue about who really killed her father, motivating her to find and punish the mysterious cult of assassins responsible for his death.
While the Ruska Roma's Director (Anjelica Huston) tries to dissuade Eve from seeking revenge, she immediately goes rogue, getting intel from New York's Continental owner Winston that helps her track down the tribe's leader, the Chancellor (Gabriel Byrne), and his entire town of trained assassins.
While fighting her way through the town, Eve learns she was actually stolen away from this place when she was a child by her father, who wanted her to have a better, less violent life. That's why the Chancellor had her father killed, to punish him for kidnapping Eve. She also meets her long-lost older sister Lena (Catalina Sandino Moreno) in the town, but she's killed pretty quickly — no emotional hugs here.
Eventually, the Baba Yaga himself, John Wick, is sent to kill Eve to stop her from causing a war between the Ruska Roma and the Chancellor's gang of killers, who have had a truce for over 100 years. But John doesn't follow through on his contract, instead helping Eve kill the Chancellor and save a little girl named Ella (Ava Joyce McCarthy) from a life of murder. Eve helps Ella reunite with her father, Daniel (Norman Reedus), ultimately finding redemption for her own tragic childhood.
It's not a totally happy ending, though, since Eve discovers at the very end of the movie that a contract has been put out on her for $5 million, forcing her into action once again. Her original mission may have ended, but her troubles are only just beginning.
"The Chancellor relates to her at the ending that this cycle will continue: 'You kill me, you've cut the head of the snake, but the body still lives,'" Wiseman says. "There will be ramifications of that. And she didn't kill the entire village."
The filmmaker would love to explore what would happen if Eve's mother isn't actually dead, as everyone believes. What if she returns to see her entire home destroyed and Lena dead?"If I really were to get my full fantasy of that, her mother would discover that village and see it decimated and her daughter has been killed, so the ramifications can come in many different forms," Wiseman says. "And also, is John completely off the hook for helping her out at the end? He technically was going by the rules in a sense, but he kind of fudged the rules a little bit. I don't think anybody gets off kindly in this world."
The director thought it was a no-brainer that John defied his orders and helped Eve in her mission instead of killing her, especially considering that this movie takes place between John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum and John Wick: Chapter 4.
"It comes down to John and what John has gone through in his life and what circumstances he's been put in at this point," Wiseman says. "And there's an understanding of how sometimes this life takes things from you. He was somebody that is having to deal with the consequences of the revenge path that he went on and what he had lost, and so it really is him seeing a bit of himself in her and how personal it is and what has been destroyed about her life. So he feels for her in that moment."
Ballerina is now playing in theaters.
Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly
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