SPOILER WARNING: The following article contains major spoilers for John Wick: Chapter 4. If you have not yet seen the film, proceed at your own risk!
Looking at the titles of the movies in the John Wick series, one of the four definitely sticks out. John Wick, John Wick: Chapter 2, and John Wick: Chapter 4 are of a kind, but John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum is unique thanks to its Latin subtitle. It’s a bit of an oddity, but it’s a more understandable one when you learn that there was at one point a subtitle in mind for the third sequel, but it ended up getting cut.
John Wick: Chapter 4 was almost titled John Wick: Chapter 4 – Hagakure, and while the former is certainly simpler, director Chad Stahelski told me an interview earlier this month that he remains a fan of the latter. While talking about the ending of the film, the alternate ending, and concluding the journey of Keanu Reeves’ titular protagonist, he explained how the planned subtitle fit in with the narrative that was being executed. Said the filmmaker,
The original working title of the movie was Hagakure. It's this Japanese treatise. It's a book from the 16th century that was about the code of ethics of Samurai and how to prepare for dying; the way of dying kind of thing. And that's where the whole thing started. If we don't conclude John or John Wick's – depending on obviously it's a myth with dichotomies and all that stuff – but if you don't end the journey, then why do the show?
It goes without saying that the death of John Wick at the end of John Wick: Chapter 4 is a shock… but would it have been as shocking if the movie was called Hagakure and was heavily analyzed by fans on the internet? I pondered this and asked if the excision of the subtitle was related to the fact that it could be a potential spoiler, but Chad Stahelski explained why that wasn’t the case. Instead of the cut being made because of what Hagakure is intended to specifically mean in the context of the film, the reason was because it could potentially be mistranslated:
We dug the title of it and stuff, but sometimes it... it can translate different ways....Even in Japanese terms, it kind of means like, 'hidden leaves.' There's mixed translations. It was just a group consensus that we'd just keep it Chapter 4. I could have gone either way. I like titling chapters, but also we didn't want to make it a gag, so it was just like that kind of thing.
Staying on the subject, my curiosity piqued, I asked if there was also a subtitle that was considered for John Wick: Chapter 2. He laughed and said that there wasn’t, and he told me about the origins of “Parabellum” for John Wick: Chapter 3 – noting that it is meant to have a double meaning because of its translation from Latin and history in the world of guns and ammunition. Said Stahelski,
It's just weird. We started talking 'Parabellum' because we all like do the competitive shooting thing with 3 Gun and in the ammunition and gun detail world, 'Parabellum' is when the Germans first came up with 9mm, it was called ‘Parabellum for War.’ It was just the way they did it. So Parabellum had all these cool meanings, like 'Go to war, John,' and it needed a little kick, I thought.
Continuing, Chad Stahelski said that he would have been happy if the movie was titled John Wick: Chapter 4 – Hagakure, but the complexities of releasing a film in the modern world didn’t allow it:
I would have happily put a chapter title on number four. It just got to that point where we're trying to figure out how it's gonna translate and market and does it give it too much of a samurai vibe or not enough. It just, you know… whatever.
Minus a subtitle, John Wick: Chapter 4 is now playing in theaters everywhere – featuring a stellar cast including Keanu Reeves, Donnie Yen, Lance Reddick, Ian McShane, Bill Skarsgård, Laurence Fishburne, and more. The film just had a massive opening weekend at the box office after it earned near-universal critical acclaim, and it’s a must see on the big screen (up to and including its exciting end credits scene).
