John Wick 4's First Runtime Puts Avengers: Endgame To Shame

"John Wick," of course, originated as a revenge thriller, where the eponymous former hitman (Keanu Reeves) was drawn back into the life when thieves stole his car and killed a puppy gifted to Wick by his late wife, Helen (Bridget Moynahan). As the body count in the film series grew, so did the runtime of each sequel, with "John Wick: Chapter 2" coming in at 2 hours and 2 minutes, while "John Wick: Chapter 3 — Parabellum" grew only slightly to 2 hours and 10 minutes.

Of course, new characters have been introduced with each new "John Wick" film, especially when Wick was declared "Excommunicado" and became the target of assassins after killing a crime boss on the grounds of the Continental Hotel — a violation of the rules of the High Table crime organization. Among the new players in "Chapter 4" are Wick's former friend-turned-foe Caine (Donnie Yen), assassin Mr. Nobody (Shamier Anderson), Shimazu (Hiroyuki Sanada), who runs the Continental Hotel in Osaka, Japan, and his daughter, Akira (Rina Sawayama).

As such, the director's ensemble of new characters meant Stahelski needed more time to flesh them out, which, he told IndieWire, contributed to "Chapter 4's" original runtime of 3 hours, 45 minutes. Ultimately, though, the film's editor Nathan Orloff, realized that all roads in the film needed to lead back to Wick, and making the edits did the trick. "I wanted to make sure that he was still the center of the universe, that everything always led back to him even though we were cutting away from him," Orloff said.

However, the editor's work was not done.