Pod Insights Pop Culture Happy Hour From The World Of John Wick: Ballerina And What's Making Us Happy About this episode 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.
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Transcript 4,113 words · 10 speakers
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0:27 Aisha Harris? John Wick's back, baby. And this time, it's in a spinoff where Ana de Armas plays a ballerina turned assassin. She makes her way through the international criminal underworld and crosses paths 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 Wayland Wong. She's the co-host of NPR's daily economics podcast, The Indicator from Planet Money. Hello, Wayland.
0:57 Speaker 02 Hello. Great to be back.
0:59 Aisha Harris? 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.
1:07 Speaker 03 Hey, Ayesha.
1:08 Aisha Harris? Great to have you here as well. And rounding out our panel is journalist and host of the new podcast Black Queer Canon, Travell Anderson. Hello, Travell. Hi, hi, hi. So excited. We have an assassin's row of a panel here. It's gonna be fun. It's gonna be fun. So, look, Ballerina, it's a John Wick movie. It takes place during the events of John Wick Chapter 3: Parabellum. Ana de Armas plays Eve, a trained assassin of a crime syndicate, and she's on a personal mission to avenge her dad's murder. Keanu Reeves isn't the only cast member returning to the franchise, and Jelica Huston and Ian McShane are here, too. Ballerina is in theaters now. Wayland, I'm gonna start with you.
1:53 Aisha Harris? How did you feel about Ballerina? How are we feeling about Ana de Armas?
1:57 Speaker 02 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.
2:19 Aisha Harris? Me, too.
2:20 Speaker 02 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 leaden. 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 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 satisfied customer.
2:55 Aisha Harris? Yes, yes. I like that. Super straightforward. It's literally, "You killed my father. I want vengeance." But there can be joys and pleasures in that. Travell, how are we feeling about Ballerina?
3:06 Speaker 04 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?
3:32 Speaker 03 Many.
3:32 Speaker 04 Apparently, right?
3:34 Aisha Harris? Yes.
3:34 Speaker 04 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, Colombiana with Zoe Saldana. If you saw that movie.
3:56 Aisha Harris? Oh, man, I forgot about that.
3:57 Speaker 04 I know. Probably for the best, Ayesha. But, you know. A very similar kind of story, right? But I really enjoyed it. It's such a good time.
4:08 Aisha Harris? Great, great. Jeff, did you too dance with the ballerina?
4:14 Speaker 03 I was endpoint throughout.
4:18 Speaker 03 I gotta 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 sort of cut to the chest and there's 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 Ballerino, 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.
5:03 Aisha Harris? Hmm, yes, interesting. I, I don't want to throw cold water on this conversation because I'm really glad that you all.
5:10 Speaker 04 Oh, you can.
5:11 Aisha Harris? Yeah, yeah, I know. I was entertained and I agree with Waylon in that I was absolutely grading 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 lull 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, it 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 the on the nose humor. It was more the just like the I'll be back.
5:53 Aisha Harris? It's not that 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 Ana de Armas's like chops as an action hero. Cause 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.
6:31 Speaker 02 There's a lot of cocked heads here happening.
6:35 Speaker 04 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?
6:56 Speaker 04 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?
7:06 Speaker 02 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 live up to. And I personally really liked her, like her hair is so shiny. I liked it when she fought with the ice skates. Yeah, the ice skates were, that was fun. That was incredible. The movie, I feel like at times, has this vote of low to no confidence in Ana de Armas as the protagonist. Because we all know that Keanu Reeves 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 Ana de Armas behind.
7:48 Speaker 02 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.
8:19 Speaker 03 I mean, there was a lot of conversation, I think, early on among fans of the franchise as to whether or not... Valerena was going to include like a significant cameo by Keanu Reeves. And, and in fact, John Wick plays a pretty significant kind of inciting role in this.
8:32 Aisha Harris? Yeah, I wouldn't even say it's a cameo. They've been kind of throwing it out there as a cameo, but it's, it feels like a second or like a tertiary role.
8:40 Speaker 03 Tertiary.
8:41 Aisha Harris? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
8:42 Speaker 03 But when Keanu's on screen, he's like the only thing you want to look at. And that's saying a lot because Anadarmus is not hard to look at, right? But there is this moment, right, where, uh, you know, Angelica Huston's character says, and what if I send someone? Someone capable, and you know who that is, right? At that moment, you, 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, avanescence.
9:22 Aisha Harris? Oh, that was avanescence? I was wondering. Okay.
9:26 Speaker 03 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. Uh, Anadarmus fights with a lot of stuff, which is like equalizer, like force multiplier type stuff.
9:40 Aisha Harris? Yeah.
9:40 Speaker 03 Grenades and flamethrowers and, you know, it's, it's, it's a different world. I, I kind of dug it.
9:45 Aisha Harris? I think for me, it started off kind of rote. Oh, it 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, the John Wick, it's signature be, 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, 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.
10:27 Aisha Harris? And I, 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. Yeah, yeah. 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.
10:45 Speaker 03 When she presses the open button on the elevator to go back for one last knife.
10:50 Speaker 03 That's like a Hong Kong action movie to me, you know?
10:54 Aisha Harris? 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 Reddick, 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?
11:30 Speaker 04 Absolutely. Yeah. A couple of movies ago, I wanted the Halle Berry movie. You know, I wanted them to spin her off.
11:38 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah, that would have been good.
11:39 Speaker 04 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 so much potential with this franchise to give us a different character, a different movie, you know? Every year, if they wanted 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.
12:06 Speaker 02 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 wanted Ana de Armas 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, 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 canny, strategic, long-term thinker.
12:50 Speaker 02 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.
13:04 Aisha Harris? Well, I also just wanted a little bit more like ballerina in the fighting.
13:07 Speaker 04 Oh, my God, yes.
13:09 Speaker 03 Ballet foo.
13:11 Aisha Harris? Right? Like, I was expecting it to be-
13:13 Speaker 02 I wanted this to be in conversation with, like, center stage.
13:16 Aisha Harris? Yes, thank you. Center stage, Save the Last Dance. Save the Last Dance, come on.
13:20 Speaker 02 The red shoes.
13:21 Aisha Harris? I needed that, like, Julia Stiles dancing-
13:24 Speaker 02 Yes!
13:24 Aisha Harris? -while also kicking her butt.
13:26 Speaker 02 Absolutely.
13:26 Aisha Harris? That's what I-
13:27 Speaker 02 Yeah, she's just trying to get into Juilliard, you know, with her hip-hop ballet.
13:30 Aisha Harris? Yeah. There's, like, one moment where she's in that, like, giant- because, of course, there's always the obligatory mega-club fight sequence in one of these John Wick movies. Those are my favorite things about this. Where, and, like, this is a mega-club that's, like, ice-themed, I guess.
13:44 Speaker 02 Icecapades.
13:45 Aisha Harris? Yeah, and so she, like, at one point, she tendues around, like, like, rendezjans around behind her, her foot. But that's, like, that was the closest it got. I was like, what? I, I wanted more ballerina.
13:55 Speaker 02 Yeah, just like a little tease.
13:56 Aisha Harris? I wanted more.
13:57 Speaker 03 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 gonna do it, is Donnie Yen's character, right?
14:14 Aisha Harris? Yes. He was in the fourth one, right, John? Yes, yeah.
14:17 Speaker 03 The vibe of the world of John Wick, it is so global. It, 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, 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.
14:42 Aisha Harris? 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, this is why we go to the theater, isn't it?
14:51 Speaker 02 I feel like you came around on this, Ayesha. I feel like you started this conversation feeling, well, hee, and then I feel like we persuaded you.
14:58 Aisha Harris? We got it. I was entertained, like, and, and that's the thing. Again, I don't know if I'm gonna go back and re-watch this, but, you know, it was fun. And I'm, I'm very glad that Keanu Reeves is actually in this more than we all thought he would be.
15:13 Aisha Harris? So, yes, that is, 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/pchh and on Letterboxd at letterboxd.com/NPRPopCulture. We'll have a link to that in our episode description. Up next, what's making us happy this week.
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15:37 Speaker 06 This week on Here and Now Anytime, in the closing days of the midterm elections, we're in Iowa and Arizona, two states where independent voters will decide who controls Congress for the next two years.
15:49 Speaker 07 Even though we're in a red district, we will get out the Democratic and independent vote. We will.
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16:02 Speaker 08 Happy fall. Yes, the days are getting shorter and colder, and the rain can be a drag. But this is also the perfect time of year to get cozy. Life Kit has lots of ideas so you can embrace the change of seasons with episodes on everything from making soup to exercising outdoors. Listen to the Life Kit podcast in the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.
16:25 Speaker 09 This is Terry Gross. Listen to Fresh Air for thoughtful questions, like when I asked Steven Spielberg about porn titles. When John Waters was on our show, he said his favorite was shaving Ryan's privates. Did you know about this? No, not until this very moment. Listen on the NPR app or wherever you get podcasts.
16:49 Aisha Harris? And now it's time for our favorite segment of this week and every week, What's Making Us Happy. Wayland, tell us, what is making you happy this week?
16:57 Speaker 02 I recently finished a wonderful novel. It's called Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaughey. 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 rebuild 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.
17:37 Speaker 02 It's a great mystery slash thriller that has this deep, deep emotional core that explores 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 McConaughey.
18:04 Aisha Harris? Thank you so much, Wayland. Appreciate that. Travell, what is making you happier this week?
18:09 Speaker 04 So I also have a book recommendation for you all this week.
18:14 Aisha Harris? Ooh, summer reading.
18:15 Speaker 04 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 Ariann 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 archive, 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.
18:59 Speaker 04 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 Ariann Edmonds.
19:44 Aisha Harris? Love it. Thank you so much, Travell. I got my summer reading list started here. Let's, let's go. Jeff, what is making you happy? Is it a book?
19:54 Speaker 03 It is not a book and I feel.
19:55 Aisha Harris? It's okay. Look, mine's not either. Don't worry.
19:59 Speaker 03 I have been indulging myself in a K-drama on Netflix called Tastefully Yours. Basically, it's delicious food and hot people, or vice versa. It involves a rich, spoiled heir 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, it's not going to challenge your brain, but it is funny and has just enough whimsy and slapstick and certainly easy on the eyes, folks, in the cast, that it is definitely worth watching. I've been enjoying it quite a lot.
20:43 Aisha Harris? Awesome. So that's Tastefully Yours. And where can folks find that?
20:46 Speaker 03 On Netflix.
20:47 Aisha Harris? 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.
20:58 Speaker 03 Absolutely.
20:58 Aisha Harris? Then 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.
21:19 Speaker 02 Two legs bad, four legs good.
21:21 Aisha Harris? Yeah, but basically, like, 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. Is it 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.
21:50 Speaker 02 You send the humans to the glue factory.
21:53 Speaker 04 Okay, okay. Is this our future, Ayesha?
21:56 Aisha Harris? It could be.
21:57 Speaker 04 What's going on here?
21:58 Aisha Harris? 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 me the flats. Give me the flats. And what are our favorite summer cocktails? We have thoughts on thoughts on thoughts.
22:40 Aisha Harris? Sign up for Pop Culture Happy Hour Plus at plus.npr.org/happy. We'll also have a link in our episode description. Willan Wong, Jeff Yang, Trevel Anderson, thanks so much for being here and dancing with me around the ballerina. This was fun.
22:55 Speaker 02 Thank you. What a blast. Thank you.
22:58 Aisha Harris? Thank you. This episode was produced by Liz Metzger and Mike Katsev and edited by our showrunner Jessica Weedy. 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.
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