One of the most iconic action franchises of the last few years has been officially confirmed to continue with John Wick 5, continuing the story of the legendary ᴀssᴀssin, even after his apparent death at the end of John Wick 4.

Lionsgate has confirmed that director Chad Stahelski and star Keanu Reeves are set to return, but very little information has been revealed about the film itself. However, the film’s confirmation means the franchise has a chance to bring the series back to the way it was with the original John Wick.

Even though the John Wick franchise is most well-known for its incredible action scenes, the story that was told over the course of the four movies, and the characters that were built up within that story were another one of the central reasons that the series worked so well.

With the main story of the first four movies over, John Wick 5‘s story is seemingly going to be something completely different, taking the characters and world that have been created and placing them in brand-new situations, which will require taking a step back, and potentially copying one of the most important parts of the first John Wick.

John Wick 5 Can Return The Franchise To The Grounded Nature Of The Original Movie

The Movie Can Bring Back The Feel Of The Original Film

While the idea of a world where hundreds of ᴀssᴀssins are running around, killing people and making their own secret society in H๏τels across the world was always somewhat fantastical, the first John Wick movie did go to lengths to try and ground the film in the real world.

Aside from the story having a very simple central conflict, with John’s mission for revenge pitting him against an easy-to-understand Russian Mafia organization, there were also a number of smaller plot details that showed how this world of ᴀssᴀssins operated in conjunction with the lives of regular people, which John Wick 5 can learn from.

One of those details was the group that John, or whoever needed them, would call when they needed bodies to be disposed of. There’s a lot of killing in this universe, so to allow these groups of ᴀssᴀssins to operate with any kind of secrecy, there would need to be a group that could clean up all of their messes, which the first movie showed off.

Another was when a police officer showed up at John’s house after a fight due to a noise complaint, who left even after seeing that there was a ᴅᴇᴀᴅ body in the house, explaining why the police don’t try to arrest all the criminals in the Continental, as they are aware of their world and have some sort of understanding.

The John Wick Sequels Lost Some Realism & Became More Unbelievable

All Attempts At Realism Were Very Quickly Abandoned

While realism isn’t the be-all-end-all of action movies, the John Wick sequels very quickly blew out to a huge proportion, throwing any sense of realism out the window in order to continuously up the ante when it came to the movies’ action sequences.

The immediate counterargument is that the cleanup still happens, it just isn’t shown, but by the end of the fourth movie, that seems very unlikely, with scenes like the Arc de Triomphe fight in John Wick 4 being impossible for anyone to cover up.

However, it is important to note that the lack of realism wasn’t necessarily a bad thing in those movies. They allowed the scope and scale of the series to grow, leading to great scenes like the Arc de Triomphe fight, which absolutely worked to the benefit of the movie more than a complete dedication to realism would have.

John Wick 5 Being More Grounded Would Help Reestablish The Universe

The Next Movies Need To Be Able To Build Up Again

John Wick 5‘s director, Chad Stahelski, has said that the next movie is moving away from the High Table story, which was the main focus of the last few films in the franchise, and the next one will focus on an entirely new threat.

With that in mind, bringing the scale of John Wick 5 back down to Earth and telling a similarly grounded story to the first film would help usher in this new era for the franchise, slightly turning back the scope of the series so that it can build up to another big moment like what came with John Wick 4.

Even if the movie doesn’t entirely return to the kind of story that was told in the original John Wick, it could still take some cues from it, lowering the stakes a little bit, with fewer of the mᴀssive, city-spanning action scenes, and making John Wick 5 the perfect entry into a new age of the franchise.