John Wick Franchise (Chad Stahelski, 2014-2023)

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domino harvey
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Re: John Wick Franchise (Chad Stahelski/David Leitch, 2014-?

#26 Post by domino harvey » Thu Jan 17, 2019 12:44 pm


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Re: John Wick Franchise (Chad Stahelski/David Leitch, 2014-2019)

#27 Post by DarkImbecile » Fri May 10, 2019 1:27 pm

First reviews for the new entry seem to be very positive, especially when it comes to the choreography and production design of the main setpieces. Have to admit I'm oddly excited for this, given my lukewarm reaction to the first two; maybe there's just been a dearth of what I think of as "real" action movies as opposed to fully CGI fantasy films with occasional fight scenes.

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Re: John Wick Franchise (Chad Stahelski/David Leitch, 2014-2019)

#28 Post by Cde. » Mon May 13, 2019 11:21 pm

The fight choreography is undeniably spectacular, and more fluid and cleanly shot even than part two. This film borrows a discipline and approach to action from the Raid films, not just cast. Unfortunately it also borrows a focus on shock and gore from The Raid 2 - the wit and physical comedy of John Wick 2 have been replaced with bones snapping, heads splitting, crotch chopping, all accompanied by disturbingly squelchy sound design. The side-effect of the protagonist's brutality being so lovingly fawned over is that it's hard to empathise with him even on the crude level we might have in the past - he is now merely the raging psychopath who serves as vehicle for more action, bigger scale, more explosion of flesh. And there is a lot. This movie brings to the screen the cognitive dissonance of video games, where a hero might be an everyman in cut scenes but then pitilessly dispatch thousands of faceless inferiors in between.
Initially the technique of the action is undeniably thrilling, but the point of excess is reached very early on. Choreography is very samey throughout, and coupled with Wick's superhero like invulnerability, the scenes eventually become tiresome and numbing.
An action movie for the Marvel generation, I guess. It also reminded me of Marvel (and The Raid 2) in the way it expects us to suddenly care about what happens to its characters and its world, which were never more than fun, weird ways to keep the plot going in previous installments and haven't picked up on any additional depth here. Very soap opera.

Glimpses of humanity are at a new low for the series, car-ad aestheticism and sheer numbing repetition to the action is at a new high. In its celebration of the destruction of bodies, slick, clinical surfaces, and it's sublimation of all else to the drive for bigger, meaner, more, Parabellum has traded what made the series fun for an all encompassing nihilistic cruelty.

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Re: John Wick Franchise (Chad Stahelski/David Leitch, 2014-2019)

#29 Post by tenia » Tue May 14, 2019 2:11 am

First French review I've read states this 3rd movie amps up even more the action scenes, but also is the first entry to thoroughly fail on the writing level, with the movie not having anything left to say halfway through (and showing) and the majority of the secondary characters being totally pointless.
However, it calls the first half hour "prodigious".

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Re: John Wick Franchise (Chad Stahelski/David Leitch, 2014-2019)

#30 Post by Cde. » Tue May 14, 2019 2:41 am

The first half hour is the only time you'll really appreciate the action, because it's just the same thing over and over again afterwards.

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Re: John Wick Franchise (Chad Stahelski/David Leitch, 2014-2019)

#31 Post by Finch » Tue May 14, 2019 5:35 pm

Cde. wrote:
Mon May 13, 2019 11:21 pm
Glimpses of humanity are at a new low for the series (..) Parabellum has traded what made the series fun for an all encompassing nihilistic cruelty.
Maybe I'm being over-sensitive but I felt the second film already included some off-putting fawning admiration of weapons (the scene where the weapons dealer presents Wick with a choice of guns to pick from for the assassination mission) and the tone of the second film already felt more callous than the first. What you're describing makes me less and less keen on the third film.

The writing has always been somewhat iffy but listening to the dialogue from the trailer I thought, Christ, it's gotten worse. I liked the first film alright but two viewings of the second film have already soured me on this series. I'll concede that the second film has some very nice setpieces.

Finally, I can't stand Ian McShane's character in this. To me, Winston isn't any better than any of the other lousy roles McShane has been offered and accepted since Deadwood, and for me, it's gotten to the point that I find McShane's performances as lazy as the writing (I've not seen American Gods, though).


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Re: John Wick Franchise (Chad Stahelski/David Leitch, 2014-2019)

#33 Post by Finch » Mon May 20, 2019 10:01 pm

John Wick 4 is happening and slated for 2021, according to Variety.

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Re: John Wick Franchise (Chad Stahelski/David Leitch, 2014-?)

#34 Post by DarkImbecile » Fri May 24, 2019 10:25 pm

The first half-hour of John Wick: Chapter 3 — Parabellum* tricked me into thinking the franchise might fully acknowledge the inherent absurdity of the world it has created and embrace a kind of hyper-violent comedy it has flirted with at times and hinted at in an early nod to Buster Keaton. Unfortunately, the film both starts to take the continuing expansion and development of the underground assassin society seriously again and the action devolves into mostly monotonous gunplay after
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an enjoyably mismatched fight between Reeves' Wick and NBA player Boban Marjanovic, followed by a delightfully choreographed fight in an antique weapons shop that culminates with the darkly hilarious pin-cushioning of two villains with a dozen or so knives.

The entire Moroccan section of the film (including Halle Berry) is superfluous, and what could have been exploited as a change of scenery from the slick urban aesthetic present in every other minute of these films is so ineffectively utilized that it's a relief to end up back in a multi-level, all-glass room with neon psychedelic imagery flashing across giant screens in the background again. The third-act appearance of two of the best martial artists from the Raid films mostly serves as a reminder of how far the Wick films would have to evolve to reach that series' level of quality.

Still, because there's no action sequence as crushingly repetitive as the Italian tunnel shootout from the last film — the two worst set pieces here still add a wrinkle of attack dogs or insanely effective body armor to make them distinguishable from all the others — and because a handful of one-on-one or two-on-one fight scenes in the finale are well-staged, I'll say that Parabellum is probably the best of the series so far. Ultimately, though, the margin of difference is small enough between all three films that I'd argue that if they don't do something substantially different in the next installment, they'll have outlived whatever marginal value they might have as vehicles for above-average choreography and stunts, even in an action-movie landscape depressingly devoid of actual humans doing actual stunts in recognizably real settings. Since each of these films makes exponentially more money than the last one, any hope that they'd abandon their reliance on video-game-style gun massacres and the diminishing returns of adding more layers and rules to the already convoluted assassin society and instead just try to consistently be as gruesomely entertaining as the first half-hour of this entry is probably a pipe dream.

*These titles are getting as unwieldy as late Mission: Impossible entries already!

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Re: John Wick Franchise (Chad Stahelski/David Leitch, 2014-?)

#35 Post by tenia » Sat May 25, 2019 5:50 am

John Wick 3 felt like a significant step back from the previous entry. Mostly, the issues are that it doesn't want to stop extending its pointless silly mafia universe, but if there was anything making sense in the way the High Table works, Parabellum makes an appalling job at explaining it (for something that seems that entwined in order and rules, everyone seemed way too stupid to be a part of it). This results in antagonists whose motivations are pretty much undecipherable, preventing me to feel compelled by their chase after John Wick (or, vice versa, in feeling for John trying to escape them). Since John is still pretty much invincible, that doesn't help.

The issue also is that extending this universe meant extending the characters' roster, and while JW2 wasn't too bad in this regard, this third entry has a very hard time balancing all those. Dacascos is a very bad idea ("hey, what if the badass bad guy actually turns into Bozo the clown towards the end ?"), Fishburne is nothing more than a glorified cameo, Berry doesn't fare much better and exists the movie as quick as she enters it, and even McShane gets his character "desecrated" in order to create a vastly artficial open ending. All this makes it look as if the developments in this episode just slides by on John, and on us by extension, despite him being the main push for the movie. He's having the movie in his hands, yet, he undergoes it (though I laughed at Said Taghmaoui ending up here).

Oh, and Tyler Bates OST is awful.

Still, the (fortunately numerous enough - but only just) action sequences are pure visual treats. While the first half hour is something to remember (especially the hilarious knives shot - musuem ? - that had the entire theater laughing), the Casablanca choreography with the dogs are fantastic, and the later fist fights are very impressive too. Stahelski favors again longer takes and wider shots and it works perfectly. It does get a bit repetitive when a bad guy gets kicked in the nuts for the humpteenth time (the nuts-count is proably as high as the bodybount), but they're so well conceived that I was very willing to overlook that.
The production design also is beautiful, though the last third heavily leans on reproducing the technological mirrored room from JW2. It's still a beauty to look at, but it feels slightly overdone, and more unfortunately not as nice : the photo and the production design are similar, but the framing and mise-en-scène aren't as good.

Hopefully, JW4 will be a much more direct movie and will drop trying so much to build tons of needless context.

(addendum : I never found the 2 Raid movies that compelling. I have barely any memory of the 1st one except that I felt it was an "above-average choreography and stunts", while the 2nd movie endlessly tries extending its universe - just like JW2 and JW3 - in its first 45 minutes, which I usually skip when I watch it again on video)


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Re: John Wick Franchise (Chad Stahelski/David Leitch, 2014-2023)

#37 Post by DarkImbecile » Sat Mar 25, 2023 4:50 pm

Usually when a genre franchise gets to its fourth entry, a fatal case of bloat has set in, ballooning the budget and runtime while packing in more characters, plot lines, mythology, CGI, and globe-hopping locations to compensate for a lack of originality and narrative thrust. The just under three-hour John Wick: Chapter 4 does each of these and also has to compensate for an action star nearing sixty and showing it... and yet bafflingly is still somehow the best film in a remarkably consistent series of action spectacles.

Yes, the previously NYC-bound action now bounces from the Saharan desert to Osaka, Berlin, and Paris. Yes, there are many new characters ranging from the grotesque (Scott Adkins' obese, gold-mawed Killa) to the oddly pointless (Shamier Anderson's Nobody) the plainly awesome (Donnie Yen's blind assassin Caine). Yes, the labyrinthine underworld codes and rituals continue to expand in new and bizarre directions. Yes, the filmmakers sometimes rely on transparently unreal VFX to make absurd sequences like a gun and car battle in the Arc de Triomphe roundabout happen. But all of this is either in service of (or at least fails to get in the way of) a gleeful indulgence in unapologetically over-the-top action filmmaking, none of which reaches the hilarious heights of the third films' opening forty minutes, but through sheer commitment to quantity and scope offers a full meal for any action fan.

Fully embracing the series' drift into manifesting a live-action cartoon that makes death and mayhem on an otherwise unfathomable scale easily digestible by wrapping it in neon colors, lavish art and architecture, and references to filmmakers from David Lean to Sergio Leone to Walter Hill, the Wick crew wallows in a choreography and cinematography of excess completely divorced from the laws of any recognizable physics, anatomy, or human endurance. My particular favorite was the Berlin club battle between Reeves' Wick and Adkins' sweat-oozing, fat-suited crime boss (and a few dozen ax-wielding henchmen), which goes on and on amid a psychedelic background of swirling lights, waterfalls, and writhing partiers so high they can't bring themselves to stop grinding until the fiftieth or so nearby killing. Another sequence on the Montmartre stairs culminates in the funniest joke of the series and illustrates just how seriously the filmmakers take the Buster Keaton influences and references sprinkled into the earlier films, while some overhead drone work and some unique ammo gives the latest "Wick mows down fifty guys in a row with a big gun" sequence a distinguishing visual kick.

I was hoping based on the generally rapturous reviews that on its fourth attempt the series would finally produce a film that I could unreservedly recommend, and while Chapter 4 comes very close, its flaws — an underwhelming climax that doesn't quite earn the emotionally and narratively satisfying resolution it's aiming for, the unavoidable slowing down brought on by Reeves' aforementioned aging, and the diminishing returns on the whole enormous criminal subculture angle — keep it just short of that mark. That said, for anyone who loves the genre and stylistic forebears these filmmakers so lovingly reference throughout, there's more than enough to justify the runtime here.

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Re: John Wick Franchise (Chad Stahelski, 2014-2023)

#38 Post by Finch » Sat May 27, 2023 6:45 pm

The John Wick series is really frustrating. They clearly have a love for action movies and the Hongkong classics; the sets look great, and you can always tell what's going on. But 4 is at least an hour too long and they double down on the boring world building and the terrible dialogue. They also need to change it up with the settings: yet more neon lights, yet more exhibition spaces to be demolished. Also, Keanu gets branded. Again. Some of the action goes on forever (they could have dropped the entire Berlin sequence actually and not lost any meaningful plot). At least 4 hires Donnie Yen and actually gives him some cool things to do instead of him being a bit player. Makes me wish they gave me more reasons to like the film.

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Re: John Wick Franchise (Chad Stahelski, 2014-2023)

#39 Post by The Curious Sofa » Sun May 28, 2023 4:33 am

I often question when someone dismisses a movie as boring whether its their attentions span which is at fault but I found John Wick 4 life suckingly tedious. I stuck it out to the end and then I was genuinely angry at the three hours I wasted in a way I haven't felt in a long time. Admittedly action movies based around fight sequences aren't my thing but I can go along for the ride if there other aspects to make the medicine go down. There wasn't. Nothing. There is no plot to speak of, no characterisation or interesting performances and the apparent stylishness I read about in reviews, felt generic and didn't do much for me. I have found Bill Skarsgård to be a striking presence in other movies but the film doesn't know what to do with him, he's the blandest of villains. No other character makes any sort of impact and the biggest stake is a daughter's life being in danger, a character we never meet. The other Asian associate of Wick under pressure from the bad guys, also has a daughter in peril. Is that the only source of tension they could think of ? She is the only character I started to be invested in as she appears to become the female lead, only for her to disappear from the movie after the first act. Apart from that, everything that happens in this film was set up by the previous one. Anytime the action movie techno-rock score kicks in for another brawl, with nothing interesting having happened in the brief moments between, I felt a profound sense of existential despair.

I watched the first movie because I like Keanu Reeves (who doesn't?) and the notion of a revenge movie based around avenging a dog struck me as amusing. It was OK, no more.
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As a call back to its more humble beginnings, I wished John Wick's heavenly reunion at the end of Chapter 4 would have been with his dog, instead of his wife.
Four movies in, I question my poor life choices. Thinking back, I can't remember a thing about the 2nd and the 3rd John Wick movie (wasn't Halle Berry somewhere in there ?) which should have been a warning but I don't remember feeling as resentful as I did after this.

I'm hoping the next M:I movie will restore my faith in the modern action film even if I wasn't on board with the raves for the most recent movie in that franchise, the 4th and 5th movie are high watermarks in the modern action movie though. Adding to my hatred for JW4, may be a general action movie fatigue as every big budget movie now, is some type of action film and to me, they all are declining in quality, be it superhero movies, Star Wars, James Bond.

That's my "old man yelling at cloud" moment for this week (I just turned 60), I just needed to vent but considering the high appreciation for this, I'm at a loss as to why I feel so out of step with what's considered to be a good mainstream movie these days.

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Re: John Wick Franchise (Chad Stahelski, 2014-2023)

#40 Post by J Wilson » Sun May 28, 2023 10:41 am

I didn't hate JW4, but I've grown to dislike it more each time I think about it. It's far too long of course, but JW4 also pushes the suspension of disbelief into eye-rollingly stupid territory. Obviously most action movies force us to accept a certain amount of "this couldn't happen, but I'll go with it" elements, but JW4 becomes what is basically a superhero movie. Also, many action scenes descend into tedium and absurdity via the movie's use of the characters' armored suiting material being able to tank close range gunfire (yet this doesn't work in the final scene). Characters run in circles around each other with an arm in front of their face as they shoot at the other person. If guns aren't a threat, what's the point of all this beyond a nebulous "it's cool looking" rationale. Many scenes could just have a video game lifebar at the top of the screen, and as Wick pauses at the end of a setpiece to gather himself, we see the bar go from flashing red to full again as he staggers off to the next encounter. Each movie after the first has gotten increasingly video game-y, with each set piece feeling like a level to be traversed before the next. They even have fetch quests. Hopefully this is the end of the series and its world.

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Re: John Wick Franchise (Chad Stahelski, 2014-2023)

#41 Post by Finch » Sun May 28, 2023 11:59 am

News broke the day before yesterday that the fifth film is in development, and Ana de Armas is filming a spin-off called Ballerina (I think?) with Len Wiseman. Then there's the Continental TV series.

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John Wick Franchise (Chad Stahelski, 2014-2023)

#42 Post by Mr Sausage » Sun May 28, 2023 1:20 pm

It’s only the jackets that are bullet proof, not the shirts, hence in the final scene they remove them.

I love how the series uses body armour to force the characters to find creative ways to actually injure each other, mix shooting and grappling and such. And nothing in this or the other John Wicks resembles a video game.

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Re: John Wick Franchise (Chad Stahelski, 2014-2023)

#43 Post by Never Cursed » Sun May 28, 2023 8:10 pm

Mr Sausage wrote:
Sun May 28, 2023 1:20 pm
And nothing in this or the other John Wicks resembles a video game.
I have to take a bit of umbrage with this claim (unless it's sarcasm that's flown over my head) - I think the directors and Reeves have been relatively open about how various shooters have inspired the looks of various sequences in these films, most prominent among them the overextended (but isn't every scene in this film) top-down fire shotgun sequence that Stahelski freely copped to having ripped off from a game that was itself ripping off Hotline Miami

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Re: John Wick Franchise (Chad Stahelski, 2014-2023)

#44 Post by Mr Sausage » Sun May 28, 2023 9:13 pm

Never Cursed wrote:
Sun May 28, 2023 8:10 pm
Mr Sausage wrote:
Sun May 28, 2023 1:20 pm
And nothing in this or the other John Wicks resembles a video game.
I have to take a bit of umbrage with this claim (unless it's sarcasm that's flown over my head) - I think the directors and Reeves have been relatively open about how various shooters have inspired the looks of various sequences in these films, most prominent among them the overextended (but isn't every scene in this film) top-down fire shotgun sequence that Stahelski freely copped to having ripped off from a game that was itself ripping off Hotline Miami
Umbrage? Seems a bit extreme. But you're right, that top-down scene does resemble a top down video game--and is one of the highlights of the movie, so I don't know why it escaped me. As for the influence of shooting games in the rest of the movies, I see a lot less of that than the influence of HK action, but ok, sure. But I'll be a bit less categorical: whatever visual influence may be there, the experience of watching a John Wick movie is qualitatively different from playing, or watching another play, a video game, and it annoys me to hear people trot that out. It's one thing for people to notice a movie's pop culture allusions, and another for them to make shallow jabs, resting on received opinion, and usually when they themselves don't play video games. It's such an unimaginative criticism to make.

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Re: John Wick Franchise (Chad Stahelski, 2014-2023)

#45 Post by J Wilson » Sun May 28, 2023 10:27 pm

I've played plenty of games, and I've no idea what received opinion on these films is, as I've never read critical opinions on them. That said, certainly the last two films often felt just like a game to me. Unrealistic running fights with a virtually unkillable protagonist who obtains weapons and gear from fanciful dealers against an array of faceless enemies who exist to be mowed down en masse, with a tougher enemy to defeat at the end of the scene. Found weapons all over the environment, with occasional "special" weapons like the last film's dragon's breath shotgun in the bit directly cribbed from a game. I don't have a problem with this, just that I don't think the last two movies did it in a way I enjoyed.

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Re: John Wick Franchise (Chad Stahelski, 2014-2023)

#46 Post by Mr Sausage » Mon May 29, 2023 7:45 am

J Wilson wrote:
Sun May 28, 2023 10:27 pm
I've played plenty of games, and I've no idea what received opinion on these films is, as I've never read critical opinions on them. That said, certainly the last two films often felt just like a game to me. Unrealistic running fights with a virtually unkillable protagonist who obtains weapons and gear from fanciful dealers against an array of faceless enemies who exist to be mowed down en masse, with a tougher enemy to defeat at the end of the scene. Found weapons all over the environment, with occasional "special" weapons like the last film's dragon's breath shotgun in the bit directly cribbed from a game. I don't have a problem with this, just that I don't think the last two movies did it in a way I enjoyed.
Received opinions about games.

And everything you said just describes action movies. None of it is especially true of games. Any resemblance comes mainly because: video games have been heavily inspired by movies, especially action movies. Which is one of the irritations I have, how people tend to get the influence the wrong way around. Not as big an irritant as the unstated assumption that video games = bad, but still irritating. Pointing out that if you squint your eyes, some superficial details in a film could also be in another medium heavily influenced by film--it's a nothing comment.

Comparing a movie to a video game as some kind of criticism is not interesting, and usually says more about the prejudices of the critic than the qualities of the film.

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Re: John Wick Franchise (Chad Stahelski, 2014-2023)

#47 Post by The Curious Sofa » Mon May 29, 2023 10:26 am

I hated it first and I hated it without referencing video games, therefore my hate is valid.

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Re: John Wick Franchise (Chad Stahelski, 2014-2023)

#48 Post by ntnon » Tue May 30, 2023 12:28 am

Mr Sausage wrote:
Mon May 29, 2023 7:45 am
Pointing out that if you squint your eyes, some superficial details in a film could also be in another medium heavily influenced by film--it's a nothing comment.
That's a good point that I've rarely seen mentioned as clearly. Obviously cross-applies to a variety of (usually inept) comparisons made between comics, film and TV as well as videogames.

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Re: John Wick Franchise (Chad Stahelski, 2014-2023)

#49 Post by P-Rock » Wed Aug 09, 2023 3:28 am

I think the first John Wick is a solid revenge flick, but I don't care much for the rest of the franchise. They've made John Wick kind of a superhero in those sequels, killing hundreds of bad guys and trying way too hard to explain everything about the elusive High Table. Especially in Parabellum John had literal plot armor. The first one's good because it kinda leaves you guessing and in the dark, and when John got hit by a car he got hurt. I guess that David Leitch is the talented one of the two directors, looking at the movies he's done after John Wick. Chad Stahelski seems like a one trick pony.

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Re: John Wick Franchise (Chad Stahelski, 2014-2023)

#50 Post by tenia » Wed Aug 09, 2023 10:25 am

Leitch, like the one who made Atomic Blonde, Hobbs and Shaw and Bullet Train ?
Yeah, not really.

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