Pop Culture Happy Hour - From The World Of John Wick: Ballerina And What's Making Us Happy

Episode Date: June 6, 2025

John Wick's back in a spinoff new film, Ballerina, starring Ana de Armas. She plays a ballerina-turned-assassin making her way through the international criminal underworld, and crossing paths with some new and familiar faces — including the one and only Keanu Reeves.To access bonus episodes and sponsor-free listening for Pop Culture Happy Hour, subscribe to Pop Culture Happy Hour+ at plus.npr.org/happy. Follow Pop Culture Happy Hour on Letterboxd at letterboxd.com/nprpopculture See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

John Wicks back, baby. And this time, it's in a spinoff where Anna DeArmis plays a ballerina turned assassin. She makes her way through the international criminal underworld and crosses past with some new and familiar faces, including the one and only Keanu Reeves. I'm Aisha Harris, and today we're talking about ballerina on Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. Joining me today is Waylon Wong. She's the co-host of NPR's Daily Economics Podcast, the Indicator, from Planet Money. Hello, Waylon. Hello, great to be back.

Great to have you. Also with us is Jeff Yang. He's a cultural critic and author of the Golden Screen, The Movies That Made Asian America. Hey, Jeff. Hey, Aisha. Great to have you here as well. And rounding out our panel is journalist and host of the new podcast Black Queer Canon, Trevelle Anderson. Hello, Trevelle. Hi, hi, hi. So excited. We have an Assassin's Row of a panel here. It's going to be fun. It's going to be fun. So look, ballerina, it's a John Wick movie. It takes place during the events of John Wick Chapter 3, Parabellum. Anna Da Armist plays Eve, a trained assassin of a crime syndicate, and she's

on a personal mission to avenge her dad's murder. Kana Reeves isn't the only cast member returning to the franchise. Angelica Houston and Ian McShane are here, too. Ballerina is in theaters now. Waylon, I'm going to start with you. How did you feel about ballerina? How are we feeling about Al-Di Armist? I had a really fun time. I think this movie, it's really propulsive. I think the action really, really delivers.

And it's honestly such a pleasure to be back in this world. You've got the Hotel Continental. You've got the switchboard operators. You've got the old-fashioned phones. You have the tattoos. You have the pneumatic tubes. I love pneumatic tubes. Me too.

I wrote pneumatic tubes exclamation point in my notebook. It's like the only note I took. This movie is also really light on lore, which is good because I don't like a lot of lore. And I feel like John Wick, when it tries to do a lot of lore, it kind of gets really lead in. I will say that the movie kind of fumbles every opportunity it has for an emotional moment or interesting character development. I found myself kind of like rewriting the script as I was watching it in certain parts. But grading on a curve of what I want from a summer action movie, very, very satisfying. my customer. Yes, yes. I like that. Super straightforward. It's literally, you killed my father.

I want vengeance. But there can be, there can be joys and pleasures in that. J. Val, how are we feeling about ballerina? You know, I think propulsive is a great word, right? For all of the John Wick movies, right? It's high action from the very beginning and you're going, going, going. I don't need the deeply emotional drama acting bits that they try to, you know, put in between all of the action scenes. I'm really here to see how many ways you can kill a man. You know what I mean? Many.

Apparently, right? And that's exactly what I think the movie gives you. It's like exactly what you want summertime in the movies. It's a good time. You don't need to have seen the other movies in the John Wick franchise to follow along. I've been saying it's very, you know, Colombiano. with Zoe Saldana. If you saw that movie.

Oh, man. I forgot about that. I know. Probably for the best Aisha. But, you know, a very similar kind of story, right? But I really enjoyed it. It's such a good time. Great, great.

Jeff, did you, too, dance with the ballerina? I was end point throughout. I got to say, I did enjoy it quite a lot. the blend of murder antics and wild action and kind of almost too on the nose humor that you expect out of the franchise. A character says, may I be frank, right? And then they turn cut to the chest and the name tag is Frank. Stuff like that. You know, this is the world of John Wick and we've come to expect certain things from it.

And I have a little bit of a theory of the case for the franchise. It's like John Wick movies are a horror movie where you're rooting for the serial killer. Right? It's like, the big twist here is in Valerino, the serial killer is also the final girl, right? With all that entails, she's scrappy and resourceful and she's not like an inevitable murder machine. And I think that's really kind of the movie's strength and weakness. Yes, interesting. I don't want to throw cold water on this conversation because I'm really glad that you all.

You can. Yeah, yeah, I know. I was entertained and I agree with Waylon that I was absolutely grating on a curve here. It was fun to see it with. an audience. It was fun to hear the audience, cheer, and this is why, this is one of the reasons we go to the movies. But, you know, this is the kind of movie that I don't know if I'm ever actually going to go back to because, as you all were mentioning, there's this low in the moments where it tries to have this emotional heft. Like, the person I was sitting next to

while we were watching it turned to me at the very beginning was like, this is like a 90s action movie. And I love 90s action movies, but the script itself, the dialogue was not, it was giving very, not just on the nose humor, which I actually enjoy that on a nose humor. It was more than just like, I'll be back. She doesn't say I'll be back. But it felt very, we're trying to make a new 90s catchphrase here. But to say all that, I do think it's the kind of movie that it doesn't add to the franchise in any meaningful way, but it also doesn't subtract. Like, it's not going to make me not want to return to this world again.

I guess I'm curious what you all think of Anna da Armis's like chops as an action hero. Because to me, she didn't quite stand out. She looks great. She's very athletic. But for me, it wasn't working. And I'm curious, like, does she feel like a worthy addition to the action hero canon? I mean. There's a lot of cocked heads here happening.

You know, is her casting, like, super pivotal to the story? No. Could somebody else have done what she does? probably. But I did think she did a good job at it. You know, I believed most of the stunts, you know what I mean? Yeah, I don't know if she can carry her own sub-franchise like Keanu Reeves does, but I didn't hate it. You know what I mean? Yeah, that's fair. I mean, she has the kind of misfortune of being compared to Keanu Reeves in this incredibly iconic role, right? I mean, that's so hard to love up to you.

And I personally really liked her, like her hair's so shiny. I liked him when she fought with the ice skates. Yeah, the ice skates are, that was fun. Yes. That was incredible. The movie, I feel like at times, has this vote of low to no confidence in Anad DeArmus as the protagonist, because we all know that Keanu is in this movie as John Wick. That's in the trailer, so it's not a spoiler.

and he gets a sequence where he's fighting all by himself. The action completely leaves Anandarmus behind, and we're just watching Keanu Reeves doing his John Wick thing. And I thought to myself, like, why did they put this in? Like, this is supposed to be her movie. And then I'm like, did they just feel like, oh, people won't be dialed into this movie if we don't give them a Keanu solo sequence? But to me, I thought, does this just mean like they thought that she couldn't carry the

movie on her own, but by then, we're almost at the end of the movie. So I'm like, well, we've been following her the whole time. It's fine, guys. Just let her do her thing. I mean, there was a lot of conversation, I think, early on among fans of the franchise as to whether or not Valerina was going to include, like, a significant cameo by Keanu Reeves. And in fact, John Wick plays a pretty significant kind of inciting role in this. Yeah, I wouldn't even say it's a cameo. They've been kind of throwing it out there as a cameo, but it feels like a second or like a tertiary role. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But when Kianno's on screen, he's like the only thing you want to look at. And that's saying a lot because Anna to Armus is not hard to look at, right? But there is this moment, right, where, you know, Angelica Houston's character says, and what if I send someone, someone capable? And you know who that is, right? At that moment, you know that, yeah, this is the world of John Wick. We all just live in it. And I kind of appreciate that.

One of the ways they're trying to do something different here is, kind of hammered in that sort of on the nose thing. This is about fight like a girl, right? This is we hear this as dialogue in the movie. We have the final song, fight like a girl, Evanescence. Oh, that was evanescence? I was wondering.

But I do think that that actually does change some of what is going on in the movie in terms of how she fights in particular. Anandaramus fights with a lot of stuff which is like equalizer, like force multiplier type stuff. Grenades and flame. And it's a different world.

I kind of dug it. I think for me, it started off kind of rote. I was very rote. But the action sequences, and I was waiting for like what makes this different from other movies? Because that's to me, the John Wick, its signature besides John Wick himself, Keanu Reeves, is the fight scenes. Anytime you watch one, you're just reminded of how so many other, especially American-made movies, action movies, just pale in comparison. They're not as interesting with the choreography. They're not as creative and they're not, the camera movement isn't as great.

I like that there's like a little bit of subversion where there's one scene where we just like cut to the aftermath. We don't actually see what happened. And so she's like walking through and pulling knives out as she's leaving the place. And I just, I loved those little touches. And that to me was what made me be like, oh, this is fun. This is finding the John Wickness again in a way that made me appreciate that this franchise, even when I'm not as invested in it, it still does things so much better

than most other action movies. When she presses the open button on the elevator to go back for one last night. I was like, yes. That's like a Hong Kong action movie to me, you know? I'm curious, you know, what you thought about the way that this movie also incorporates the other characters from this franchise.

It's not just Keanu Reeves, but as we said, we see Ian McShane. We also get Lance Redick, who, like, you know, as the concierge at the Continental, it's very, very brief, but it was very nice to see him there because he was able to finish filming before he passed in 2023. I think the way it kind of, it nods to the John Wick franchise, that mostly worked for me, and I appreciated it.

Would you want to see more spinoffs in this world? Absolutely. Yeah. A couple movies ago, I wanted the Halle Berry movies. You know, I wanted them to see. spin her off. Oh yeah, that would have been good. Because she's got dynamism, okay? She, you, you want to watch her on screen, do all of the things. At least I do. There's, there's so much potential with this franchise to give us a different character, a different movie, you know,

every year if they want it to, I'd watch them as long as the action, you know, stays where it is, because I think that is the thing that draws people in. But I would absolutely watch, you know, 12 more of these, for sure. I think that for me, I am very invested in this franchise. I really like it. I want to see any future movies try to do something a little bit different story-wise. Because I think I want it, Anna to Armist, to show us something new, right? Like, show us a different take on the born-to-be-an assassin story. And the fact that she is motivated by the same primal desire for vengeance as John Wick, the way that she's, that, you know, she fights like a girl, so she's trained to fight differently than John Wick. I was hoping they would even do more with that, right? Where it would show her maybe being a more cany, strategic long-term thinker. She thinks on her feet, her twinkle toes, very well.

But again, that's something we've seen before from John Wick. So if they do make more of these, I want her to maybe have a slightly different motivation or a slightly different journey than what we've already seen. Well, I also just wanted a little bit more like ballerina in the fighting. Oh, my God. Yes. Ballet Foo. Yeah.

Right? Like, I was expecting it to be... I wanted this to be in conversation with, like, center stage. Yes. Thank you. Center stage. Save the last dance. Like, I needed that, like, Julia Stiles dancing while also kick her butt.

Absolutely. That's what I... Yeah, she's just trying to get into Juilliard, you know, with her hip-hop ballets. There's, like, one moment where she's in that, like, giant... Because, of course, there's always the obligatory mega club fights. sequence in one of these Johnwick movies. Those are my favorite things about this. And like this is a megacob that's like ice themed, I guess.

Ice capades. Yeah. And so she like at one point she tundus around like, like Rondejans around behind her her foot. But that's like, that was the closest to God. I was like, what? I wanted more ballerina. Yeah.

Just like a little tease. I wanted more. To the larger idea of this being a franchise I want to see more of, I kind of just dig the idea of movies where you kind of zoom into somebody in the background and say, Hey, this person has a story too. Let's tell this person's story. The natural spin-off, and I think they're going to do it, is Donnie Yen's character, right? Yes.

He was in the fourth one, right? Yes. The vibe of the world of John Wick, it is so global. It is international and intercontinental, as it were, by definition, that there are all these characters who are kind of, again, populated in this space. And they're all very different. Diversity is inherent in the franchise. These are all third culture kids. where the culture is murder, you know?

So it's like, we can zoom in on anybody, and there's probably kind of something interesting. Yeah. Yeah. It sounds like we would all recommend seeing this, seeing this with an enthusiastic crowd, because it is that type of movie. This is why we go to the theater, isn't it?

I feel like you came around on this, Ayesha. I feel like you started this conversation feeling, well, and then I feel like we persuaded you. We got it. I was entertained. And that's the thing. Again, I don't know if I'm going to go back and rewatch this. But, you know, it was fun.

And I'm very glad that Keanu Reeves is actually in this more than we all thought he would be. So, yes, that is how we feel. You should definitely tell us what you think about ballerina once you've had a chance to check it out. Find us on Facebook at facebook.com slash PCH and on Letterbox at letterbox.com slash NPR pop culture. We'll have a link to that in our episode description. Up next, what's making us happy this week? And now it's time for our favorite segment of this week and every week what's making us happy. Waylon, tell us what is making you happy this week.

I recently finished a wonderful novel. It's called Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte Mekonecke. It takes place on a remote island near Antarctica where there's a scientific research station and a seed vault, which is based on a real-life seed vault. It's a repository of plant seeds that civilization is hanging on to in case we have to re-becky. build after some cataclysmic event. And there is a widower who is the caretaker of this island. He lives in the lighthouse with his three children. And one day, a woman washes up on shore.

And the action unfolds from there. And it's just such an immersive, gripping, interesting novel. It's a great mystery slash thriller that has this deep, deep emotional core that explores There's parenthood and grief and not just grief for loved ones that have passed on, but grief for the climate. And so all these things come together in the most satisfying, interesting way. I've been telling everyone about it, including the Trader Joe's cashier. And that is Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy. Thank you so much, Waylon.

Appreciate that. Trevelle, what is making you happy this week? So I also have a book recommendation for you all this week. Summer reading. Okay. Come on to the reader girlies. So the book I want to recommend is called We Now Belong to Ourselves. It's written by Ariane Edmonds, and it is the story of her great-great-grandfather, who was born enslaved, gained his freedom and eventually started a black-owned newspaper here in Los Angeles called The Liberator.

And she has dived into her family's personal archived, dived into the archives. dived into the archive of this black-owned newspaper that doesn't exist anymore. And she's telling a really interesting story about what Black Los Angeles life looks like. She has entries written by her great-great-grandfather. There's one in particular in which he's talking about the folks on the plantation that he was born on, learning about the Emancipation Proclamation, learning that they had their freedom. And it's such a beautiful thing to read, you know, actual lived experience in that particular way. And, you know, considering what's happening, you know, sociopolitically in our country right now, having these ways that we can still preserve this history and share it with our communities is deeply important.

So everyone should check out. We now belong to ourselves. J.L. Edmonds, the Black Press and Black Citizenship in America. by Ariane Edmonds. Love it. Thank you so much, Trevelle. I got my summer reading list started here. Let's go. Jeff, what is making you happy?

Is it a book? It is not a book, and I feel... It's okay. Mine's not either. Don't worry. I have been indulging myself in K-Drama on Netflix called T-Fely Yours. Basically, it's delicious food and hot people or vice versa. It involves a rich, spoiled air and a gorgeous, like, out-of-the-way chef who is creating delicious food that he kind of hunts down and initially wants to steal recipes from, but instead steals her heart.

So that's the kind of thing you might expect from K-Drama. And look, you know, it's not going to challenge your brain, but it is funny and has just enough whimsy and slapstick and certainly easy-in-the-eyes folks in the cast that it is definitely where. watching. I've been enjoying it quite a lot. Awesome. So that's tastefully yours. And where can folks find that? On Netflix. Awesome. Thank you, Jeff. I do not have a book.

But, you know, like, sometimes you want to, like, avoid things that might remind you of how bad things are. Absolutely. And other times you just, like, dig into it and maybe try and laugh about it. And that is my pick for this week, which is Farms Race, a new-ish board game, basically, like, Catan. meets risk with an ostensibly heavy influence of George Orwell's animal farm. Basically, you're playing as these like mutated, power-hungry farm animals who are seeking to control as much land as possible. It's very cheeky.

The design is really beautiful. And basically you're gathering resources, you're building herds, and then it encourages you to nuke the other players as much as possible. There's a herds of humans? There are humans involved that you actually have to wipe out first before you can conquer the land. And then you go after each other as the animals. You send the humans to the glue factory. Okay.

Okay. Is this our future, Aisha? It could be. What's going on here? It could be. It's fun. It might cause fights because, again, you are encouraged to fight each other a lot. But that is what is making me happy this week.

It's farms race. It's a board game. You can kind of find it. wherever you find board games. And that is what's making me happy this week. Also, this Sunday in our podcast feed, we'll have another monthly mailbag bonus episode for our Pop Culture Happy Hour Plus supporters.

What's better? The beach or the pool. We'll be debating chicken wings, drums, or flats. I'm a flat girly. You know, I prefer that. Yes. Give you the flats. Give me the flats.

And what are our favorite summer cocktails? We have thoughts on thoughts, on thoughts. Sign up for Pop Culture Happy Hour Plus at plus.nepr.npr.org. We'll also have a link in our episode description. Huelan Wong, Jeff Yang, Trevelle Anderson. Thanks so much for being here and dancing with me around the ballerina. This was fun. Thank you.

What a blast. Thank you. Thank you. This episode was produced by Liz Medsker and Mike Katzif and edited by our showrunner, Jessica Reedy. Hello, come in, provides our theme music. Thanks so much for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Aisha Harris. We'll see you all next week.