So the new John Wick is pretty long. Nearly a decade ago, the original was an air-tight 96 minutes. Chapter 4 is over an hour longer than that. If that sounds like a long time to be watching an action movie — in a franchise that was simply about a guy avenging his puppy’s death, played by a real-life puppy lover — then get ready to learn it could have been even longer.
In a new interview with IndieWire (in a bit teased out by The AV Club), series director Chad Stahelski talks about its absurd length, which is still not as bad as it could have been. “Our first cut was three hours and 45 minutes, and it felt like three hours and 45 minutes,” he said. “We were like, oh, we’re so screwed.”
Of course, it’s not atypical for all movies to originally be much, much longer than they wind up in final cut. When people talk about “original cuts,” what they usually mean is “assembly cuts,” which are when the editing team puts everything together before whittling it down. All movies have to be whittled down. Sometimes people freak out when they learn movies they love used to be even longer, even petitioning for those cuts to be made public. But trust us, you don’t want to watch assembly cuts. At best, you can simply watch choice deleted scenes on the home video edition.
Still, 169 minutes is pretty long for a movie about a guy shooting people in the head! For some perspective, that’s 11 minutes shorter than Avengers: Endgame and 23 minutes longer than Goodfellas.
(Via IndieWire and The AV Club)
