The changes made to John Wick by Keanu Reeves greatly helped both the film and its ongoing franchise. The action-heavy John Wick, packed with an array of martial arts, arrived as a surprise hit in 2014, and with two released sequels and a third on the way, the anti-hero played by Reeves has become one of the most enduring action movie characters of all time. However, before Reeves took on the role of John Wick, the legendary Baba Yaga was conceived with some significant differences.
When John Wick was originally scripted, John was written as 75 years old, having been a retired assassin for 25 years, and imagined in the vein of Clint Eastwood or Harrison Ford. When Keanu Reeves boarded John Wick, he and screenwriter Derek Kolstad modified the script to make John roughly 35 years old. This change not only facilitated Keanu Reeves portraying John Wick, but it also helped John's story of dealing with grief significantly.
In John Wick, the former assassin returns to the game after his dog is killed by a gang, which also comes on the heels of John's wife passing away. With John's much younger age compared to how he was initially written, his time in retirement was far shorter than the quarter century it had been penned as at first. Yet by making John a man in his mid-30s, Reeves and Kolstad's rewrite of John Wick made his return to his assassin life much more tragic and endearing as a result.
Keanu Reeves' John Wick Changes Made The Story Far More Emotional
The first three John Wick movies all take place over a period of a few weeks or so, with John breaking out his weapons mastery again as his whole world is turned upside down by the chain of events set in motion by his vendetta for his murdered dog. The films also emphasize the life John was living with his wife as a genuine escape and chance to start over for him, which he loses in her passing and then subsequently completely taken from him when the dog she left behind is killed. This peaceful life John had finally achieved for himself was one that he only managed to inhabit for a fairly short time in the totality of his life, making its loss hit much harder.
Had John been a septuagenarian on a revenge mission in John Wick, his 25-year-long retirement would have given John a very extended period of living a life without killing or being subject to the rules of the High Table. The loss of that life would still have been a big one for John, but, at the age he was re-written to be, he clearly feels that loss even more so for how short-lived it was. In some sense, John's pact with the Bowery King (Laurence Fishburne) at the end of John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum makes the High Table a vendetta of its own, with John vengefully furious that he will not be left to the peace he finally found for himself.
John Wick could have been a throwback to Clint Eastwood's heyday had his original age been maintained, but it also would have sacrificed much of what ended up making the series so great. John Wick, as a young but very experienced former assassin unable to truly leave his old life in the past, is the foundation of the John Wick franchise. Because of that, the freedom he'd finally found being much briefer was ultimately the best storytelling choice for the series.
