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Warning: This post contains spoilers for John Wick: Chapter 4. John Wick: Chapter 4 director Chad Stahelski reflects on a major character’s death during the movie’s opening moments. After the events of John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum and Winston Scott’s (Ian McShane) failure to properly kill John Wick (Keanu Reeves), the Marquis de Gramont (Bill Skarsgård) seizes the New York Continental Hotel and strips Winston’s manager duties. To make a lesson out of Winston, the Marquis blows up the Hotel and shoots Charon (Lance Reddick) dead, with Winston reflecting that it should’ve been him.
In a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Stahelski discusses one of John Wick: Chapter 4‘s most surprising moments and explains why he opened with Charon’s death. The director also reflected on Reddick’s real-life passing, stating that the moment stings a bit harder when audiences see the film but that there couldn’t have been any other way for Winston and John to reflect on friendship and free themselves before its climax. Check out what he said on the matter below:
“Without Charon dying, you don’t get the Winston catalyst. You don’t get the cathartic nature of John Wick freeing himself for someone else. It’s all about friendship and camaraderie and amicus. It’s all about being a friend, and we didn’t want to do the typical tropes of adding a love interest … The original working title of the movie was Hagakure, which is this Japanese code of ethics between samurai. It was all about how only a samurai could know another samurai, only a cop could know a cop, only a thief could know a thief. It’s that bonding thing, and without Charon being killed, the whole thing isn’t set in motion. John also needs to be accountable for things. When Hiroyuki Sanada’s character says, “Well, they executed his concierge,” I need that to start John Wick’s journey or wrap up John Wick’s journey, however you look at it.”
How John Wick: Chapter 4 Honors Lance Reddick
As Stahelski explains in the THR interview, Charon’s death takes a much deeper significance with the audience knowing that Reddick suddenly passed away a week before the film’s release at 60. The character’s death serves not only as a catalyst for how the movie ends, giving each main character a sense of closure and peace, but it also makes them reflect on their friendship with the concierge. When Wick visits his gravestone, he talks to Winston about how good of a person he was, who never discriminated against the assassin when everyone hunted him down in the previous two installments.
However, in the film’s most emotional scene, Winston and John reflect on Charon’s passing while on their way to the duel between Wick and the Marquis. Winston explains that he didn’t know what to write on Charon’s gravestone, but “Friend” because “that’s what he was above all else. A friend.” While the scene is not an intentional send-off to Reddick, it sums up what the filmmakers and actors have said about him for the past week.
For Stahelski and Reeves, Reddick was more than a brilliant actor and a colleague, but a close friend who always cared about everyone he worked with. Reddick not only left an indelible mark on the John Wick franchise with his character being heavily involved in the last installment’s events but on the cast and crew, who all have nothing but praise to say about the actor who brought Charon to life. Before his death, Reddick reprised his role as Charon for one last time in Len Wiseman’s Ballerina, which will release in theaters sometime next year. John Wick: Chapter 4 is dedicated to his memory.
Source: THR
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