It’s easy to forget that the original John Wick was once destined for the direct-to-video trash pile. With a script originally titled Scorn and a lead that hadn’t had a box office hit in years, the Keanu Reeves assassin thriller might have been doomed to be a forgotten B-movie left to collect dust at the bottom of a Walmart bin. But then a title change and a theatrical release turned John Wick into a sleeper hit, and later, a cultural phenomenon.

Now, it’s hard to imagine the contemporary action movie landscape without John Wick and the many, many knockoffs it inspired. But if you ever wondered what the original direct-to-video, forgotten B-movie version of John Wick might’ve been, the answer has come in the form of the Ana de Armas-led spinoff, Ballerina.

Ballerina comes into the world with a hand somewhat tied behind its back. The first feature film spinoff from the John Wick franchise, this movie comes two years after John Wick (supposedly) dies in John Wick: Chapter 4 and features a lead character who is totally new to the franchise. It has a confusing place in the timeline too: between 2019’s John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum and Chapter 4, making it feel stuck between being an odd coda to John Wick’s story and a weird prequel.

But perhaps most damning, it’s the first movie in the franchise to not be directed by Chad Stahelski, with Underworld director Len Wiseman at the helm instead. This is the thing that ultimately makes or breaks Ballerina. Despite a terrific lead turn from Ana de Armas, without Stahelski’s heightened visual touch elevating the movie from its B-movie trappings, Ballerina feels like an overwhelmingly generic action flick. At worst, it feels like another John Wick knockoff, at best it feels like an inconsequential side quest for John Wick before he goes onto his final, doomed revenge quest.

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If you love violent, animated action, Predator: Killer of Killers will almost certainly be one of your favorite movies of 2025. The animated film, set in the Predator universe, is certainly a triumph for a very specific kind of world-building and feels a bit like this franchise’s answer to something like Star Wars: Visions. That said, the meta question of Predator: Killer of Killers is somewhat harder to answer at this point. And that question is simple: Does the Predator franchise need nitty-gritty installments like this? Is it, like Alien, capacious and compelling enough to tell different kinds of stories?

With Killer of Killers, the answer is mostly yes. But it’s not really until the fourth and final piece of the movie that its power is truly felt.