10 Movies That Should've Scrapped Their Opening Scene

And let's wrap this list up with a possibly controversial choice now. John Wick: Chapter 4 is one hell of an action extravaganza, albeit one that starts with its worst, most perfunctory action sequence.

The opening scene sees John head off to Morocco, where he guns down a fleet of Bad Guys on horseback and then confronts the Elder (George Georgiou) before also killing him.

For the series' standards it's a relatively lackluster set-piece - there's nothing special about the chase or fight choreography, and it really just felt like a bit of an excuse for director Chad Stahelski to do an homage to Lawrence of Arabia.

And even despite the scene being shot on location in Jordan, it looks strangely plastic and digital. 

All in all, a little less would've been more in John Wick 4 - in this 169-minute movie, this opening feels like cutting room floor material, especially considering how tangentially it's related to the rest of the movie.

Though the filmmakers clearly wanted to give us a brief sliver of Keanu Reeves kicking ass upfront given that there isn't another action sequence for 20-or-so minutes, the film should've just started instead with the introduction to the villainous Marquis Vincent Bisset de Gramont (Bill Skarsgård).

At this point in the John Wick franchise, audiences are onboard enough that they're willing to sit through some action-free establishing scenes, comfortably confident that the stuff they paid good money to see is coming soon enough.