John Wick Safe Is Dropping Again

As action fraalnchises go, John Wick is relatively small. The kickoff film in the serial earned a modest $88 1000000 worldwide, which was a squeamish render on a $twenty million production budget, but not the kind of money that gets studio execs excited. The new installment, John Wick: Chapter 2, is on rails to make a trivial more than its predecessor, just then once again, it cost twice as much to make. So given the relatively small audience size for these films, it'southward been fascinating to run into how they've seized the popular imagination for a certain sector of film fan, the audiences who love outsized action and extreme quirk in the same package.

2014's John Wick, the directorial debut of longtime stuntman Chad Stahelski, is a slick shoot-'em-upwards near retired assassin and depressed recent widower John Wick (Keanu Reeves), who gets back into the killing game after a careless Russian mobster steals his car and kills the puppy John'south wife left him. Information technology's a fascinating moving picture — a standard violent revenge story delivered with tremendous style, and ofttimes prepare in an intriguing assassins' enclave total of unusual community and relationships. The new sequel, John Wick: Chapter 2, is a fun return to that world, but it coasts a bit on the energy of the commencement film, with few new revelations or angles. And perhaps most disappointingly, the whip-fast, os-crunching shut-quarters combat that played so well in the showtime film is scaled up in the sequel, to the indicate where an awful lot of the fight scenes wait very familiar. 2 of our writers took a wait at what's wrong with the worst of John Wick: Chapter 2'south combats, what works well in the all-time ones, and where the franchise might successfully become from hither.

Spoilers for John Wick: Chapter 2 alee.

Adi: We both saw John Wick: Chapter 2, and one of my biggest sticking points was the fight scenes. The movie is annihilation merely tame, but some of the action felt so metaphorically bloodless and un-spatial. Russell Brandom did a video nigh Mad Max in 2015, going through how its car chases are neat because the scenes are chaotic and weird, but yet give us a sense of how a bunch of moving parts fit together, even if information technology usually leads to things going incorrect. John Wick 2's fights sometimes experience more similar a bunch of random casualties. Manifestly, the fights are supposed to be over-the-height — that's great. Just they're over-the-meridian without the sense that they're really happening to real people in real places, and this is in a series that lives and dies on visceral grittiness.

Tasha: The odd thing nearly that is, from everything I've read and watched, these fights are happening to real people in real places. The commentaries and backside-the-scenes / making-of features on the John Wick movies have all emphasized how heavily they're based in practical effects, existent martial arts, and Keanu Reeves doing his own driving and shooting and fighting. It seems pretty visually obvious that the blood-spatters and other wounds are after-the-fact CGI furnishings, only Reeves' concrete involvement and delivery on the series is surprisingly high, especially given that he's in his 50s.

Adi: I believe a lot of it is him, I just take issues with the manner the combat scenes were acted and shot — similar, the Catacombs are just this long set of corners where he looks around, shoots some guys, and moves on. Whereas the subway scene between Keanu Reeves and Mutual is fantastic, because y'all have this clear story about them making their manner through the PATH station and onto a train. (Complete with NYC subway riders advisedly ignoring them, which I can confirm is 100 percent accurate behavior.)

Tasha: The scene where Reeves and Mutual trade potshots while playing information technology coincidental, and no one around them seems to find, is ane of the picture'due south best moments, considering it'southward funny and strange, and like aught else in the movie. My trouble with the Catacombs fight, and several of the other group combats, was that they feel humorless and identical. In that location are but so many ways for a guy to shoot l generic mooks in the head before all the action starts to blur together.

And some of the fights this time around just experience obligatory, as if the filmmakers felt we need ane every fifteen minutes to earn the "activity moving-picture show" tag. Sometimes when a new i started, I just sighed, because I knew we were in for another three to five minutes of the same shoulder-throws and double-tap face-shots nosotros'd seen in the final two fights, plus the frustrating "Allow'south each expect our turn to charge him" business that's been going on at least since martial arts movies of the '60s. The John Wick movies are improve about this than a lot of films — some of the mooks practice have the sense to go along their distance and just proceed firing at their target — just style besides many goons run at him as if they didn't notice him killing the terminal eight guys who tried exactly that.

Adi: I thing I recollect liking about the get-go movie was the sense that John was getting more than and more than worn-down over the course of it. He'southward inhumanly tough, only there are consequences to everything he'southward doing. He's just good plenty to power through them. The opening scenes of Chapter ii — which I loved, by the way — captured this for me, especially because the film uses his increasingly mutilated machine to tie the whole arc together.

For almost of the picture show, though, he seems too disconnected from the harm he's taking. He can go hit by a car or fall downwardly three flights of stairs and walk it off in a couple of minutes, while everyone else in the moving picture (except Common) seems to be made of tissue paper by comparison. This also means we don't have any narrative pretext for mixing up the choreography in response to his physical limits.

Tasha: And given that his physical limits first at a college setting than everyone else'due south, nearly of the fights don't seem to challenge him enough to make them every bit thrilling as they should be. The Catacombs scene is laser tag with existent guns — same murky visual aesthetic every bit a smoke-filled light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation tag loonshit, plus endless barriers to duck around — merely for some reason, one actor is racking upward all the points.

I desire to be clear — I was deeply impressed by the visceral action in the original John Wick. The fight choreographer in that pic was Jonathan Eusebio, who too designed the fights in Haywire, The Avengers, and some of the Bourne movies. He does an excellent job of putting together intense but clear combats that await bruising and intimidating and don't take to be cut upwards into a blur of fast cuts. According to the IMDb, JW2 had a different fight choreographer, and Eusebio was only called in for reshoots, and so that may explain the difference betwixt the first picture show and the 2nd. Simply there'south besides simply a case of diminishing returns in any film that keeps returning to the same exact model of combat over and over.

Adi: That'southward totally plausible. Also: I experience the same mode most the Catacombs. Somewhen I would start counting bodies and get to a couple dozen, then surrender and wait for Common to show up again. Considering evidently he's the only human on Earth besides John Wick who knows these magic bulletproof suits exist.

Photo by Niko Tavernise

Tasha: We continue coming back to Mutual because the simply fights in the movie that feel meaningful are the ones where the other participant is a person with a personality and a cause, instead of an anonymous goon. Even though it'southward an extremely uncomplicated personality and an extremely basic cause.

Adi: It's as well obvious that John isn't only going to simply immediately shoot Common in the head and win the fight.

Tasha: As I said on Twitter, I recollect anybody in the John Wick world wears bulletproof suits, and the only reason Wick is considered super-deadly is that he's figured out headshots, whereas everyone else aims for the chest. How many times in this moving-picture show does he get shot in the suit?

Simply just in full general, I wish JW2 had prepare more adversaries with personality. Ares (Ruby Rose's character) gets a lot of buildup, but doesn't last long. The series of assassins that come after John when his contract goes wide — the busker with the violin, the sumo wrestler, and and so along — mix upwardly the fighting styles a fair bit, but they don't have names or distinct personalities. They don't talk. They're all the same mooks, they're just stylish mooks.

Adi: Speaking of Ares, I couldn't tell whether the movie was subverting expectations, or simply doing a bad job of foreshadowing a climactic fight that never really comes. The same goes for the bump-off of Gianna, the pivot on which the whole story hinges. Within the course of a few scenes, we go from John Wick saying "I'm the best assassinator in the world, and I'g telling y'all, this lady is unkillable" to "Oh hey, her bodyguard left and she surrendered immediately." Subsequently information technology establishes things like the fact that she hides weapons in her hair, which feels like a setup for a fight. The movie built up ii characters every bit formidable foils for John, only to dispatch them almost offhandedly. Information technology's as well a little annoying that they're the two major female ones, although I don't remember that was intentional.

At least Chapter 3 seems to promise more personality-driven choreography — after all, John Wick is supposed to have every independent hired killer in the world out looking for him, presumably including Laurence Fishburne as the secret king of New York panhandlers.

Photo past Niko Tavernise

Tasha: Gianna'southward surrender didn't bother me. I think it was well established that she had formidable protection, and John basically bought his way around it through the Continental'due south services, which got him into her sanctum. The hard part was e'er going to be fighting his manner out later, and he prepared extensively for that. And their confrontation was different from all the others, which automatically made it better, as far as I was concerned. Their conversation teaches usa more than virtually who she is, and who he used to be, and where he stands emotionally in the midst of the blackmail that put him in that situation. I respected her decision to get out her own mode, instead of just condign another headshot corpse on the heap. In retrospect, though, it makes me wish she'd been a bigger part of the story from the outset, then we had more context for and investment in her death.

But overall, I remember the confront-off between Gianna and John shows i place the serial could go — more surprising and informative face-offs similar that 1, which builds the grapheme and sets upward the stakes and motive for Common's graphic symbol, and fewer generic mow-'em-downs where John seems to exist running out of unique means to accept down a horde. Equally the filmmakers look for ways to escalate the activeness, I'm hoping they escalate the drama, too. What do you desire to see in the next John Wick movie?

Adi: I think there's a high-risk and a low-take chances fashion of making a practiced Chapter 3. The prophylactic way is to get all-out with the idea that this is an archetype-driven martial arts film, become an amazing choreographer, and throw John Wick up against a series of one-dimensional but distinctive assassins in architecturally interesting locations. (Again, the subway scene comes to heed here — at least the Oculus transit hub was good for something.) Tone downwards the obvious double-crosses and the lore-dumps, for a plot that fades inoffensively into the background. Throw in a few more than dogs. Maybe 1 of the dogs is an assassinator? I'll have to think virtually information technology.

Tasha: Information technology's already been washed! Funded every bit a curt, every bit a John Wick: Chapter two viral campaign.

Adi: Okay, and then the more hard, but interesting, style would be to treat the entire picture show as a cat-and-mouse game between John Wick and an archvillain with a personal vendetta, hunting him down now that he'southward fair game. This could be someone we know, or a new nemesis — about of the existing characters are thin enough that y'all'd exist starting from nigh-scratch either way. We've had two movies where John is e'er the smartest, best-prepared guy in the room, going on the offensive against people whose biggest advantage is their hundred-henchman meat shield. I'd similar to see him in a position where someone else is setting the frame, making decisions that aren't purely reactive.

This wouldn't exist a two-hr, two-person collision, obviously. There'due south enough of fourth dimension to accept the kinds of fights I mentioned in a higher place. But you'd also get a larger story that leaves room for the sort of dramatic not-action scenes you mention, where we're able to learn something about characters besides John. Since the original picture is largely known as "the film where Keanu Reeves kills anybody over a puppy," it could fifty-fifty be a clever bookend to have some other person whose motivations are as comparatively trivial as John'south.

Tasha: What, similar John Wick stepped on their pet turtle while running from the latest band of 50 assassins?

Adi: I am totally on board with that, yes.

Tasha: I don't necessarily care whether the latest villain has a rich motivation or a trivial i. I mean, the stomped-turtle thing does have the advantage of reminding the states that these movies only sometimes accept themselves fully seriously, which I appreciate. I can see why you don't like John falling down three flights of stairs and then walking it off… just the scene where he falls downwardly 3 flights of stairs is directed similar a slapstick comedy, and it's a hoot.

But I'm also entirely fine with the knee-knocking, crazy-colored-subtitle-talking, fairy-tale-spouting villains who consider John Wick the boogeyman, and are throwing every possible resource toward stopping him because they're absolutely terrified of dying. Either way, I'thousand just ready for them to get a niggling more artistic almost wiping him out. We've seen, over and over, that if he's mobbed by 25 men, he'll just wrestle three of them while he shoots the other 22 in the confront, one at a time. It takes a named character to give him a challenge. So next fourth dimension effectually, let's come across him go upwards against meaningful, scary individuals, not Eazy-Broil Batch-O-Goons™.

Oh, and I really hope he faces off confronting Lance Reddick's cool-as-cucumbers concierge Charon before the franchise wraps upward. Now that sounds similar a fight with some stakes.

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Source: https://www.theverge.com/2017/2/15/14624466/john-wick-2-action-fight-scenes-keanu-reeves-common-gun-fu

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