Oliver Stone: ‘John Wick: Chapter 4’ is ‘disgusting beyond belief’
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
Most viewers went starry-eyed for “John Wick: Chapter 4” when it was released earlier this year. But Oliver Stone isn’t most viewers.
Speaking to Variety before receiving a lifetime achievement award from the Transilvania Film Festival, the two-time Best Director Oscar winner unloaded on the Keanu Reeves blockbuster, calling the film “disgusting beyond belief.”
More from GoldDerby
“I saw ‘John Wick 4’ on the plane. Talk about volume. I think the film is disgusting beyond belief. Disgusting. I don’t know what people are thinking,” Stone said of the feature, which grossed more than $432 million worldwide after its release in March. “Maybe I was watching ‘G.I. Joe’ when I was a kid. But [John Wick] kills, what, three, four hundred people in the fucking movie. And as a combat veteran, I gotta tell you, not one of them is believable. I realize it’s a movie, but it’s become a video game more than a movie.”
Stone, who won Best Director Oscars for “Platoon” and “Born on the Fourth of July,” said the action in “John Wick” was a symptom of an industry and culture that “lost touch with reality.”
“The audience perhaps likes the video game. But I get bored by it,” he said. “How many cars can crash? How many stunts can you do? What’s the difference between ‘Fast and Furious’ and some other film? It’s just one thing after another. Whether it’s a super-human Marvel character or just a human being like John Wick, it doesn’t make any difference. It’s not believable.”
Critics loved “John Wick: Chapter 4” and audiences agreed. The film has high marks from both groups on the review aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes. Stone, of course, was once considered one of Hollywood’s prime chroniclers of violence. His 1994 feature “Natural Born Killers” was broadly criticized and condemned by the media upon its release due to the graphic nature of its imagery.
“[‘Natural Born Killers’’] violence was satiric,” Stone said in 2019 when looking back at the controversial film. “I had a history of making films with realistic violence, and I thought it was clearly not literal, but metaphoric, over-the-top, not even close to real. Rodney Dangerfield drowns in a fish tank!”
Looking back on “Natural Born Killers” that same year for its 25th anniversary, star Juliette Lewis said Stone had an “ability to antagonize who he wanted to light a fire under” with regard to the film’s violence. “I feel there are relevance in the statements of the film and it’s also ugly in that these characters are vomiting out ugly behavior and then there’s humor within it,” she said to Entertainment Weekly.
Stone’s last major theatrical release was 2016’s “Snowden” and he’s stuck to making documentaries in recent years. His last film to sell significant tickets at the box office was 2012’s “Savages.”
“When they make movies now, they want to think about how do we market it, who’s going to watch it? Of course, that’s a consideration. But it becomes the sole consideration,” he said to Variety. “You really have to have a bigger and bigger hit, which ruins the business because it makes the margins bigger, and of course that makes the cost of the film bigger.”
PREDICT the 2023 Emmy nominees through July 12
Make your predictions at Gold Derby now. Download our free and easy app for Apple/iPhone devices or Android (Google Play) to compete against legions of other fans plus our experts and editors for best prediction accuracy scores. See our latest prediction champs. Can you top our esteemed leaderboards next? Always remember to keep your predictions updated because they impact our latest racetrack odds, which terrify Hollywood chiefs and stars. Don’t miss the fun. Speak up and share your huffy opinions in our famous forums where 5,000 showbiz leaders lurk every day to track latest awards buzz. Everybody wants to know: What do you think? Who do you predict and why?
SIGN UP for Gold Derby’s free newsletter with latest predictions
Best of GoldDerby
Sign up for Gold Derby's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
