Improvise. Adapt. Cheat. That’s the advice that Eve Macarro, played by Ana De Armas gets in the first trailer for the John Wick spinoff, From The World of John Wick: Ballerina. And it’s a pretty solid one for surviving in the violent and ruthless world she is about to step into.
The official trailer for Ballerina, the fifth film in the Keanu Reeves led John Wick franchise is here, and it’s like we never left. The film plonks Armas’ Eve Macarro smack in the clandestine world of assassins, the Ruska Roma, and the High Table, where she must hone her skills as an assassin to go up against the Chancellor, the main antagonist in the film who is responsible for killing Eve’s family.
The neo-noir action thriller is directed by Len Wisemen (Underworld, Total Recall) and written by Shay Hatten (John Wick 3 and 4, Rebel Moon), and sees the return of our favourite characters from the world of John Wick. The trailer begins with Ian McShane’s Winston Scott asking a young girl covered lightly in blood and holding a bloody musical glass globe with a ballerina inside it if she likes dancing and if she’d like him to take her to a school he knows of where they teach dancing.
It’s followed by a training montage featuring an older Eve, played by Ana De Armas, as she learns how to be an assassin that can do martial arts and shoot weapons from Sharon Duncan-Brewster’s character, Nogi, despite her petite frame. She is simultaneously also learning ballet, under the watchful eye of Angelica Huston’s The Director, the head of the Ruska Roma, the Russian organised crime syndicate that trained John Wick and has a seat at the High Table.
Clearly, Eve is under the protection of Winston, to whom she returns, all grown up. We see her check in at every assassin’s favourite stay, The Continental, greeted by the familiar and bittersweet sight of the concierge, Charon, the late Lance Reddick in his final posthumous appearance on screen. There’s a lot of swashbuckling with guns and knives that happens next, and can I just say, Ana De Armas has taken on the action and violence in a way that is rather becoming of an assassin in the world of John Wick! Plus, the title track playing in the background really lends the perfect vibe to what we’re watching unfold on screen.
A few nice surprises are stowed in, like the first look at Norman Reeds as Pine, a mysterious character that we don’t yet know much about. And of course, the Baba Yaga himself gets a goosebumps-inducing entrance in the final moments of the trailer, befitting of the almost-mythical nature of Keanu Reeves’ character. Eve is just like all of us fangirls if we were ever to meet John Wick; she asks him how to do what he does. And his answer is sure to be a huge confidence booster for her!
In case the scene of Wick meeting with The Director in the trailer didn’t clue you in, Ballerina is set in the timeline between John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum and John Wick: Chapter 4, probably right around the time that Wick arrives to meet The Director, and presents her with the rosary to seek asylum after being labelled “excommunicado” by the High Table.
The Ballerina trailer has been highly anticipated for a while now, and now that it is here, it has succeeded in keeping the John Wick vibes alive! I’m always a fan of women kicking some serious ass, and ever since I saw Ana De Armas give us a sneak peak of it in her outing in a Bond film, well, I’ve been looking forward to this one! Although, we will have to wait a bit for this one.
From The World of John Wick: Ballerina arrives in theatres in June 6, 2025.
Published: Sep 26, 2024 05:44 pm