Why You Liked … Ballerina

Ballerina is a movie about a one-woman army who’s never had a problem with getting both mad and even.

The John Wick franchise has been a cultural juggernaut. The original 2014 movie spawned Chapters 2, 3, and 4, with a Chapter 5 hovering in the wings. Chapter 4 showed us a grave but never gave us a body or a burial, and director Chad Stahelski openly stated they filmed an alternate ending where John was clearly shown to be alive, but audiences preferred an ambiguous close.

It speaks to a man who faked his death so he could just get a little alone time.

This is probably not far off the mark for lead actor Keanu Reeves, who said his heart wants to do another Wick movie, but his knees have other views. It signals a potential end to the Wick franchise after Chapter 5, right?

Well, no. We crave more action montages while also being sympathetic to 60-year-old Reeves, who might just want some time on the couch. What better moment to pass the torch to a younger generation: the astoundingly talented Ana de Armas as Ballerina’s Eve. Her knees are totally fine.

The good news is that Ballerina’s not just a generational relay race. It’s more of a return to form than a spinoff, making guns as melee weapons cooler than ever, and avoiding much of the lore enema that bogged down some of the later Chapters’ pacing. Let’s get to those stakes you can feel in your bones.

A Return to Gritty, Personal Stakes

While Ballerina is definitely its own thing, it didn’t forget to copy the homework of its successful older sibling, all while doing a visual makeover that makes its fighting thematically on point.

Where John Wick was a revenge story about what happens when you kill a man’s dog, Ballerina is a revenge story about what happens when you kill a woman’s family. It avoids the Wick franchise’s more cumbersome later-Chapter lore by bringing us back to very simple, very personal stakes: if you kill someone’s parents, you need to kill them too. It’s good the villains made this crucial oversight, because it gives us Eve, a Kikimora to John Wick’s Baba Yaga. 

The cinematography is pure John Wick, but the colour palette leans more heavily into purple overtones (not so much pink). Combat and environments celebrate some of the dead stylish outfits that de Armas’s Eve wears, melding those to each scene. For example, toward the start of the movie she is in an ice bar/dance club, so she’s draped in an elegant dress and a superb faux fur coat. It’s an ensemble that only works in an ice bar, but crucially it’s not something John Wick would look good in, because we expect Wick to look like a mortician generating his own revenue stream. Eve marries style to substance, elevating Wick’s born-to-wear-black chic to something more aware of the world and the role she plays in it.

We can probably agree most audiences aren’t here for a high body count fashion show. Good news: this stylish world sets the stage for a character grappling with profound moral quandaries.

One I’d like to riff on is Eve’s decision to murder again. We meet her during the character-building intro as a child who shoots some asshole trying to kill her dad. While this core memory unlocked moment would give many children profound trauma and set up their therapist’s retirement plan, Eve elects to embark on the journey of revenge because of the price she’s paid. She joins a ballet/murder troupe, intent on killing the rest of the people who zeroed her family. However! As a sort of rite of passage, she’s put in a room with someone she doesn’t know—putting another random stranger in her sights, just like the person who shot her father. Eve must kill them before they do the same to her. She completes her task, but not without an almost fatal hesitation. Her choice to double down on murder is only made as a facet of self-defence, showing us that there’s more to her revenge tale. Eve doesn’t want to kill randoms; she’s only here because people forced her hand, but that doesn’t mean she’s going to quit. She ignores the exit ramp and continues her bloody trail, but it’s not a path her feet walk naturally.

We’re here for Wick levels of action, not just hand-wringing, but we also want Eve to be her own person. She can’t just be a shrink-and-pink Wick; she needs to be a believable Wick. The movie takes Eve’s sense of brutal, unwilling necessity and backs it with some of the best sound design in the business to carry off part of the prestige. 

A signature effect used to define Eve’s unique relationship to murder is audio. Audiences still need to feel the impact of destruction, even though Ana de Armas is miniature compared to Keanu Reeves. This sense of necessity is married to revenge through a soundscape that emphasises impact through the power of bass.

Bear with me while I geek out for just a moment: a core principle of game design that is widely discussed and credited to Bungie’s audio philosophy is the idea that better, more impactful sound can make a weapon feel more powerful to the player (regardless of its actual in-game damage). If I remember right, the team discussed how bullet impact sounds, shell casings falling, and the hit sounds are crucial in creating the overall “feel” of the weapon’s power.

Back to Ballerina: the movie uses this same damn trick. The flamethrower sounds amazing and the shotgun rounds roar like mortar shells. The whole thing is bananas (in a very good way). Each weapon speaks justice.

A New Legend Who Defines Her Own Darkness

We inherited our gritty world from John Wick, but a gritty world and great sound are nothing without a star who can carry it. Ana de Armas doesn’t just carry Ballerina; she owns it.

Bond fans might remember her role as Paloma in No Time to Die. That felt like the best job interview she could have given for a Wick role. Paloma was enthusiastically naive, bringing a genuine charm to the spy game, but she also had to bring the action.

De Armas continues and enhances that physicality in Ballerina; it feels like she’s put in the same kind of hard work that let us believe Scarlett Johansson was the Black Widow. Neither are large humans, so they need to put in more work to make it look like they’re actually doing the kung fu. De Armas is thrown around, a believable nod to her 168-centimetre height. Fight choreography augments this conscious acceptance of the actor’s size, showcasing her using the environment against her enemies. There are very few one-punch-kill moments. Ana de Armas imbues Eve with a compact, purpose-built stride, stance, and approach to her enemies that makes me believe she would absolutely clean my clock in a street fight.

Eve needs to work over her enemies, hitting them more times to drive her point home. There is a moment where she uses a man as a body shield, getting him to soak up the hits, all while moving him using a knife as a sort of steering column. It’s delightfully brutal—we know she can’t manhandle someone that much larger through grunt, so she uses viciousness instead. It’s a good surrogate for raw brawn.

The film acknowledges just how capable she is in a surprisingly clever way, even if it feels a little like a studio mandate. The movie inserts John Wick in the third act to remind us what series it hails from. While it’s easy to think they were using Reeves’ star power as a magnet for audiences, Ana de Armas has her own successful halo. He totally did not need to be there, but it feels like having Wick and Eve face off cements in our minds that she is someone with whom you do NOT fuck. It’s a refined gesture showing that the franchise is in good hands; Eve is, in fact, the assassin replacement we need, knees and all.

The Action – Clever, Consequential, and Creative

I’ve talked around the action, but it’s time to address it fist first. Ballerina doesn’t just copy the Wick formula. Like any clever sequel, it evolves the formula, tailoring the violence to its new protagonist. I’ve always found one of Wick’s central design pillars is how he uses guns as melee-range weapons. He makes shooting personal. While he’s an expert marksman and accomplished with any weapon you fancy, it’s the wince-worthy ways he uses them that makes it so impressive to watch.

How, then, do you improve on perfection? The answer is: cleverness. Eve is smart, resourceful to a fault, and absolutely unwilling to fail. She defines each fight on her own terms, rather than letting her opponents or the environment do it for her.

My favourite sequence is when she enters arms dealer Frank’s place to buy weapons. Eve and Frank are ambushed before she can get her arsenal, so Eve needs to take them out without guns, in a house she doesn’t know. Embarking on the world’s most stressful scavenger hunt, she uses a claymore, grenades, and recovered firearms as personal-distance weapons. Eve also uses the environment (doors as shields, tables as cover) to stop being merc’d herself, showcasing how her smaller size is an advantage—she can use her diminutive frame in a way that Wick couldn’t. It’s that cleverness in action, a nod not just to her skills, but her ability to use what people see as disadvantage as an advantage. It hones in on the film’s “Fight Like a Girl” mission statement: Eve’s making the rules, and pity the fool who doesn’t understand that.

Another scene shows her fighting in a pub/hotel, where she duct-tapes a knife to her sidearm. She’s able to use this bastardised weapon to brutally engage in both melee and range, redefining the terms of the fight when drastically outnumbered. It’s another example of cleverness, welding two disparate pieces of kit together to alter the game. Eve gets to choose, determining her success just as she defines her opponents’ failures.

But for all her ingenuity, the film never lets us forget that this violence comes at a cost. Eve is not a superhero; she visibly slows as the movie progresses, and some of this leads to moments like her being cornered or captured. Ballerina follows John Wick’s lead here; his fights felt tiring because they were.

Getting Both Mad and Even

In the end, what makes Ballerina so successful is that it understands its hero’s motivation, giving the franchise a jolt of new, ferocious energy.

Eve isn’t John Wick. Where he had a sort of I-want-out weariness, she wants IN. She’s doing this for revenge, and she has all the youth and rage you can fit in a single person. She bears her injuries because she must; there is no one else to tally for the dead, nor is there backup she can call. Her anger and desperation let us feel just how close she is, and yet, how steep the hill’s become.

It’s a triumphant debut for what I hope will turn into a more grounded spin-off series for Wick fans, bringing us back to personal stakes and getting right to the heart of the matter: when someone kills your parents, it’s time to saddle up.

A must-see for action fans, Ballerina redefines the John Wick formula with cleverness, allowing its star’s one-woman army to stand alone, valiant, smart, and undefeated. Eve doesn’t just fight like a girl: she fights like someone who’s got something to lose, a point to make, and a score to settle.

What did you think of Ballerina? Let me know the first moment that made you wince in sympathy in the comments below. If using a flamethrower is on your bucket list, click Like. And thanks for watching!

If you’d like to support my work, meet Isolde in The Three Faces of Fate. She’s close to the urban fantasy edition of Eve – you’ll love her: