5 Reasons Why John Wick Has Overtaken Neo As Keanu Reeves’ Signature Character

Keanu Reeves was once best known for his portrayal of Neo in the Matrix franchise, but his role as John Wick has since taken the throne for his signature character. Reeves is well-known as one of the most charismatic stars in Hollywood, with the list of immortal characters he has embodied, including Jack Traven of Speed, Ted Logan of the Bill & Ted franchise, and the DC Comics demon hunter John Constantine in 2005’s Constantine. However, for the longest time, Reeves was most immediately associated with Thomas Anderson, aka Neo, the prophesied savior of humanity against their machine rulers in the Matrix franchise.

Then, in 2014, after nearly a decade of being relatively out of the mainstream spotlight, Keanu Reeves leapt back into action as the titular anti-hero of the unexpected hit John Wick. Reeves has gone on to reprise the role four times, with John Wick: Chapter 5 set to continue the story (and tasked with accounting for John’s apparent death and other big questions.) Aside from launching a remarkable career resurgence for Reeves, the Baba Yaga has also accomplished an arguably even more impressive goal.



Here are five reasons why John Wick has come to supplant Neo as the definitive Keanu Reeves character.Keanu Reeves’ John Wick Tenure Eclipses His Neo TenureComparing Reeves’ portrayals of Neo and John Wick in purely quantitative terms, the Baba Yaga comes out significantly ahead. In total, Reeves has portrayed Neo in four movies from The Matrix to The Matrix Resurrections, while he has delivered five John Wick performances to date between the original John Wick and the 2025 spinoff/interquel From The World of John Wick: Ballerina.

While Reeves has also voiced Neo in a number of animated and video game projects, such as The Animatrix, Enter The Matrix, and The Matrix Awakens, his likeness as John Wick has also been used for such video games as Payday 2 and Fortnite, as well as the John Wick comic book series by Dynamite Entertainment. The real kicker, however, is the fact that Reeves’ time as John Wick is still ongoing.In addition to the confirmation of John Wick: Chapter 5 – which will bump Reeves’ minimum cinematic portrayals of the Baba Yaga to six – a John Wick anime prequel movie is also in the works, along with a John Wick video game, both of which seem very likely to see Reeves return to voice the character.

Additionally, other projects like Donnie Yen’s Caine spinoff could theoretically involve Reeves returning at least in a cameo or supporting role. Coupled with Reeves having already portrayed John Wick on-screen much more than he has Neo, the snowball effect of the expanding John Wick universe is giving the character and the franchise a level of immediacy and multi-generational recognition that surpasses that of Reeves’ association with Neo and The Matrix, and that’s just the beginning of it.The John Wick Franchise Has A Much Better Overall Reputation Than The Matrix FranchiseWhat also gives John Wick an edge over Neo as Keanu Reeves’ defining character is the former’s much stronger overall reputation.

By any measure, The Matrix changed movies forever in 1999 and cemented Keanu Reeves as an action hero after his occasional ventures into the action movie world with Point Break, Speed, and Chain Reaction. However, 2003’s double-whammy of The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions didn’t match the reception of their predecessor, even as the former stands as the franchise’s highest-earner at the box office. 2021’s franchise revival The Matrix Resurrections suffered an even worse fate, utterly tanking at the box office and drawing a divisive response.

While the reputations of Reloaded and Revolutions have improved noticeably since their 2003 debut, John Wick has never faced such struggles.The original John Wick became a major box office sleeper hit in the fall of 2014, while drawing a highly positive all-around response to the point of being directly pinpointed as Reeves’ comeback vehicle (John Wick’s immortal “Yeah, I’m thinking I’m back!” quote an undeniably meta allusion to Reeves’ return to the spotlight). However, John Wick‘s success was anything but a fluke, with each sequel significantly out-grossing the last and each John Wick movie being showered with resounding acclaim.

Obviously, Rotten Tomatoes scores are hardly the be-all and end-all of film commentary, and it would be a fallacy to declare John Wick inherently superior to The Matrix on that basis. With that said, the fact that the John Wick franchise has garnered a far stronger batting average reception-wise than The Matrix also adds to the case of the Baba Yaga having a generally more solidified iconography in Keanu Reeves’ own filmography. While that’s still just one factor in the overall analysis, the case becomes stronger when looking at the two franchise’s general trajectory.

[RELATED – 26 Years Later, The Matrix Is Starting to Feel Underappreciated]The John Wick Movies Have Maintained A More Consistent Momentum Than The MatrixWhile The Matrix remains an undeniable classic of both sci-fi and action, the franchise’s overall presence has been relatively sporadic and concentrated within a very specific time period. Indeed, The Matrix’s heyday was a rather short time of just four years between 1999 and 2003, with the original trilogy and The Animatrix being released in that timeframe, and marking the period when the franchise was at its peak. Numerous Matrix video games arrived here and there since 2003, but it wasn’t until 2021 that Neo finally returned to cinema screens (and, due to the pandemic-era adaptations of the time, HBO Max) with The Matrix Resurrections.

That movie’s financial failure and highly split reception make a case that The Matrix was really a lightning in a bottle phenomenon debuting at the perfect time when technology and the internet were becoming staples of modern life, but with those factors being so key to its success, recreating The Matrix‘s impact in subsequent years has been a tough nut to crack, to say the least, and one that the announced Matrix 5 could well find itself struggling with.On the flipside of the coin, John Wick arrived in a manner that made it much less tethered to the specific time period of its debut, and therefore in an arguably better position than The Matrix to build strong, sustainable long-term momentum. And build momentum it has, with four mainline John Wick movies in nine years, one prequel streaming mini-series with Peacock’s The Continental, and the aforementioned franchise expansion with sequels and spinoffs left and right.

Even with a likely break of four to five years between the fourth and fifth John Wick movies, the Baba Yaga and the world he lives in have been consistently in the spotlight and on the minds of moviegoers from the moment he first avenged his dog. That strong of a presence has proven to be fertile ground for building out the John Wick universe in multiple different directions, and make John himself the character the audiences most immediately associate with Keanu Reeves.John Wick‘s Influence On Action Movies Has Been Longer & More Widespread Than That Of The MatrixBoth the Matrix and John Wick franchises proved hugely influential on the action genre, but The Matrix‘s impact was also comparatively brief and, in some ways, unintentionally counterproductive.

The Matrix debuted at a time when Hong Kong action was becoming all the rage in the West; it was particularly well-positioned to ride that wave thanks to the Wachowskis enlisting legendary Hong Kong fight choreographer Yuen Woo-ping to design the movie’s wire-work heavy action (or “wire-fu”, as it known to martial arts fans.) Woo-ping’s work on such kung fu classics as Drunken Master, Iron Monkey, and Fist of Legend already preceded him, but his work on the Matrix trilogy took the popularity of Hong Kong action to a whole new level in the early 2000s. Unfortunately, The Matrix‘s wire-fu-heavy fight scenes might’ve worked a little too well, in hindsight, with many Hollywood action movies making clear efforts to pattern their set pieces after The Matrix in often silly and over-the-top ways.

For example, the first two Charlie’s Angels movies (which enlisted Woo-ping’s brother Yuen Cheung-yan as fight choreographer) took their CGI and wire-fu fight scenes to outright cartoonish levels, while 2001’s Exit Wounds proved that Steven Seagal and wire-fu are just not a winning combo.Additionally, following the release of The Matrix, the movie’s bullet time slow-motion effects had been either mimicked or satirized so much that the Matrix sequels themselves almost seemed late to the party. That certainly isn’t to say that the early 2000s didn’t see some genuinely strong action films using Matrix-style bullet time and wire-fu fight choreography (the Jet Li vehicles Romeo Must Die and The One, The Rock’s 2003 action-comedy The Rundown, and the Woo-ping choreographed Kill Bill movies being the biggest standouts in this regard), but on the whole, The Matrix‘s influence on action movies was fairly short-lived and had largely run its course as soon as The Matrix Revolutions was released.

When it comes to influencing modern action movies from the 2010s onward, almost nothing comes close to the impact that John Wick has had in introducing the combo of blending many different martial arts disciplines with gun-fu, and packaging it all in a world where innumerable assassins hide in plain sight. Moreover, while the Fast & Furious movies have done everything they can to ignore the laws of physics, the John Wick franchise has also kept its action consistently grounded in realism with an emphasis on complex stunts, fight choreography, and gunplay. In turn, with the roles Chad Stahelski, David Leitch, and the 87Eleven action crew played in shepherding the John Wick franchise, that’s also made stunt performers transitioning into action movie directors a consistently growing trend.

Of course, any student of Asian action can attest that wire-fu is far from going the way of the dinosaur (one need only look at 2024’s Hong Kong monster hit Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In to know that), but it’s fair to say that fight scenes in contemporary martial arts films bear an overall closer resemblance to those of John Wick than The Matrix, while the integration of heavy stunt work and gun-fu has made the style introduced by 87Eleven unmistakable when put to use in action movies like Atomic Blonde, Nobody, and Love Hurts – all of which also provide testimony to the trend of assassin protagonists and plots becoming undeniably popular in John Wick‘s wake. A decade after John Wick‘s release, it’s still commonplace to see new action movies with the gun-fu-martial arts combo and the assassin backdrop to get the John Wick comparison, proving just how much influence the Baba Yaga continues to command over action movies.The John Wick Franchise Has Become A Cinematic Universe Where John’s Presence Can Be Tactically UtilizedWhat may be the final determining factor in whether John Wick or Neo is Keanu Reeves’ most iconic character is, paradoxically, how self-reliant their respective franchises are without either of them at center-stage.

The Matrix has a vast ensemble of strong characters like Trinity, Morpheus, Agent Smith, Commander Lock, and many others, but in the end, there’s a reason why Neo is known as The One. That’s indicative of just how much the Matrix franchise really relies on Mr. Anderson.

Despite the potential for spinoffs seen in The Animatrix and a strong foundation for prequels laid with five incarnations of The One preceding Neo, the series has been as centered on Neo’s journey as the Star Wars universe is on the Skywalkers. A prequel focused on The Oracle’s tense alliance with the Architect or a techno kung fu adventure with Collin Chou’s Seraph would seem like compelling new directions to go in, but the theatrical failure of The Matrix Resurrections both exemplifies the franchise’s dependence on Neo and how even he is not a guaranteed draw after the conclusion of the original trilogy. The Matrix franchise is in something of a tight spot with The Matrix 5, which represents both the perfect opportunity to focus on a new protagonist and untested waters for a franchise that has both sunk and swam with Neo as its focal point.

While the Baba Yaga himself is obviously the central figure of the John Wick franchise, the goodwill it has accrued and the way it has been built out make it a full-blown cinematic universe with massive potential even without John Wick around. John’s return in Ballerina has long been common knowledge, but it also hasn’t detracted from the focus being on Ana de Armas’ Eve Macarro. Reeves’ return as John Wick, and the use of his name in the title, serve a narrative function for the movie’s story, but also as a clever marketing tool to incentivize audiences to check out a movie in the John Wick universe where his presence is more compartmentalized.

From The World of John Wick was also used to great effect on The Continental, and it wouldn’t be surprising for it to be included in the title of Donnie Yen’s Caine spinoff either. In each case, audiences are made aware of the John Wick connection in a way that makes clear that he himself isn’t the main character (and may not even be present at all), but that the action-packed elements they love about the franchise are going to be heavily in play.In an odd way, From The World of John Wick is not only a strong branding label for the franchise itself, but an indicator of how much value the Baba Yaga’s name carries as an endorsement of an action movie or series set in his world.

In such spinoffs and prequels, John Wick can either drop in for a cameo or supporting role or be out of the picture altogether, and in both cases, it shows how much mileage such projects can get by mere association. With all of that and an actual John Wick: Chapter 5 in the works, the Baba Yaga has achieved an iconography that is etched literally into his very name alone, whether the story is focused on his next mission or is simply From The World of John Wick.Once upon a time, Thomas Anderson awakened his dormant abilities as The One and made the Matrix franchise into an unforgettable phenomenon of sci-fi and action for its era.

While the legacy of Neo and The Matrix will live on for all time, John Wick charted his own path to success, and one that not only proved supremely popular and influential in its own right, but which also accomplished what once seemed impossible in surpassing the impact of Neo, making John Wick into the most iconic and defining character of Keanu Reeves’ career.From The World Of John Wick: Ballerina will be released in theaters on June 6th.The post 5 Reasons Why John Wick Has Overtaken Neo As Keanu Reeves’ Signature Character appeared first on ComicBook.

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