My special thanks to my dear film professor Jules Becker for his help and guidance.
In an era, which has seen a massive takeover of mainstream cinema, with screens flooded with superheroes of the Marvel and the DC pantheon, many film creators and artists have expressed their concern about what is going to happen to a cinema so heavily transformed. It seems that through grossing record figures of box office income, comic book superhero movies have gained a sort of monopoly in the creative industry, squeezing out all other genres to the very margin. One genre that used to be a particularly high earner has found itself perhaps on the brink of extinction – the action hero. Action hero movies have been on a slow down-slope ever since the 90s, and although there were some notable revivals, such as The Borne identity or Taken, in the decade behind us it seemed that the ab-human action hero has little to offer against comic book demigods, who level mountains with one blow and shoot lasers from their eyes. One franchise however will succeed in revitalizing the classic action genre - it is of course John Wick! The primer of fourth installment is approaching and judging by the reactions of the public, multiple cancellations and delays have not hindered the interest in the franchise one bit. The fourth installment was actually supposed to have already premiered in spring last year, however due to the pandemic we had to wait for two year, an eternity by today’s franchise standards, however the meantime even the fifth installment has been announced. So, while we eagerly await for the next installments, we can take a look at what made this franchise so popular and allowed the action hero to get back under the spot light. The first two movies of the franchise “John Wick” and “John Wick 2” are to a great extent similar to their action hero precursors from the 80s. We have a lone hero, with almost beyond human combat skills, to whom, by no fault of his own, a grave injustice is committed. This of course starts a whole avalanche of violence. The consequent mangling of lots of depersonalized low-level bad guys follows, en route to the big boss, then the big fight, after which our hero walks away into the sunset, in John’s case with his dog. The success of the first two movies lay first and foremost in the technical realization of the action scenes and their enticing, refined stylization. Fight scenes are clear and impeccably shot, with the irritating “shaky cam” technique from The Bourne identity and Taken, by now finally abandoned. John has a fresh fighting choreography, mixing close quarter hand to hand combat with gunfire, where he likes to shoot his opponents barbarically up-close, which for the viewer translates as an immersive, tangible action.
The films offer an unique atmosphere that is an original mixture of all up-to-date trends, from slick and stylish of the now, to a mild “never ending” 80s retro nostalgia. The surrealism of comic book elements is a worthy addition to the genre, with fictitious and caricatured elements, such as a hotel for an assassin society, that has its own neutrality rules, its own currency etc. In this way the franchise makes itself both appealing to current audience and learns from Marvel, adding a dose of humor and mockery on its own account, making it easier for us to swallow a familiar formula all over again. Overall the first two movies succeed on a technical level (as original as that is in this type of film creation) and manage to check out all the known elements of the genre in a satisfyingly fresh way, thus pleasing its viewers. In these terms the third film follows the steps of the first two, however here is where things become really interesting. John Wick 3, the pinnacle of the series (at least for now), in order to further stimulate its audience, dares to dive deep down into their subconscious. What is it in fact all about? Some would say that, as in classic action genre, the key for John Wick’s success is thrilling action with good special effects, explosions and so on. Of course, these elements are necessary but in the end they are purely technical. The true appeal of action genre lies not in its technical prowess but in its potential to use the main protagonist as a vehicle. The character of every action movie is nothing else but an empty shell in which the viewer should place him or herself. These characters do manifest their specific traits of course, but aside from the universally heroic ones, like courage, determination, strength, all the others are on a noise level. The actors in these roles are rarely known for character acting. The complex emotional states of action heroes are almost never on a display. Why would they be? That would make action heroes more humane, more specific character wise and would fill out the room that should in fact be filled with the ego of the viewer. An action hero is just an empty car we occupy for the ride through the movie, achieving all these impossible warrior tasks, overcoming every obstacle. Action movies of this type make their, in general not particularly powerful audience, feel omnipotent. Action movies are ideal masturbation of an ego of its audience. This is what every action movie does, every John Wick as well, but the route taken by the third is the novel one. For a successful, imaginative identification, where the hero’s powers are fully projected onto the viewers allowing them to become the hero, a sufficiently demanding challenge is necessary. Without it, the manifestation of all that supremacy is redundant. A good villain is what is required! In the first two movies the main villains were the mafia leaders in a very human form that we could visually perceive and hate. In the third movie it is as if someone forgot to add these characters into the plot. Of course, this is not a matter of disregard, an entirely different thing is in play.
The main antagonist in the third part is actually the whole criminal cartel that tries to end John because he ignored their sacred rule – he killed the main villain from the second installment on the neutral territory of the assassin’s hotel – and thus dared to defy. However, in the third installment none of the scenes at any point display a final big boss running the show, awaiting triumphant defeat by John. All we see throughout the movie is a bunch of comic book styled clerks that run the administration of hit contracts, hitman dossiers etc. A bunch of clerks in offices and outfits from 1930s, with telegraphs and massive telephones, straight out of Kafka.
The antagonistic criminal cartel is therefore not shown as a criminal organization, but as a giant bureaucratic apparatus with its own currency, id-s, industrial etiquette and an impersonal and incredibly irritating supervisor, sent on the field in order to carry out policies from the obscure top, in the most legal-administrative manner. All the antagonists that John Wick encounters in the third act rarely have any specific character traits and exposition mostly runs down to one thing and that is the insistence on rules. The insistence on rules that have been broken and a punishment that must in turn be conveyed. A far and wide nagging talk about social contracts, rules without which we are but animals and without which everything would sink into chaos. It is the insistence upon rules as fundamentals without origin or alternative, as an inescapable necessity, righteous in its own respect. The insistence upon legalism in a system run by criminal cartels. The creators of John Wick listened carefully to the thumping of the pulse of their audience. They dug their hand down, deep into the bellies of our subconsciousness and squeezed the knot. Unlike his generic predecessors, John Wick is not in conflict with the familiar criminal archetypes that have intruded into the ordained lives of every-man. Such villains are a sporadic anomaly of evil in a society broadly deemed to be good and honest. No, in John Wick there is no conflicting anomaly of evil relative to a plane of normality and decency of the world he lives in.
John Wick is in conflict with the very world that surrounds him.
There comes the anger and the satisfaction you feel when John Wick shoots one of hundreds of henchmen, through the opening of their bike helmets. Up until now these were just random bodies thrown at him. You didn’t have any particular hate for them, they were just an obstacle to the main villain you owe vengeance to and where you await satisfaction. But now in the third act even the most common henchman is a part of a huge body, the very world that is trying to devour its protagonist.
Those who have seen the third movie will say: “Aha but there is a big boss, the bedouin in the desert, the elder.” Correct, but the whole sequence is actually ethereal and dreamlike, it even starts with the awakening of John Wick. The elder is not a boss, he is the avatar of gods, the deepest point of subconscious probing. What does the elder want? What does the world want from John Wick? The elder asks lifelong cooperation of John in exchange for his life and the ability to remember his wife. For John his wife is a symbol of life beyond the hell of the crime cartel, a symbol of love and justice. This is exactly why the ethereal persona of the antagonist, the elder, makes his request. To give up the thing most sacred to him, so he would at least be left with an option to remember and fantasize. It is an antagonist that doesn’t want to torture you or kill you, but to force you into cooperation and submission in order crush the very essence of your soul. In the age of definitive loss of trust in institutions and social systems, an era of ideological crisis, the makers of John Wick have dived deep, deep into the belies of their audiences, seen their most severe frustrations and created a perfect villain.
You can hate criminals, you can hate terrorists, but the fact is most of us never come into contact with any of these elements. Our hatred and fears towards them are of a more cognitive nature. But the hatred of ordinary man towards social injustice, bureaucracy, depersonalized societal systems that hide their faces behind rules and hypocrisy, systems that don’t practice direct violence but rather slowly grind one’s soul… now that is a visceral and tangible hatred.
In opposition to a perfect villain, lies a perfect hero.
If Rambo and Commando were the omnipotent projections of their audience, John Wick is more than that. He is not just omnipotent, he is the indestructible individuality that stands against the tidal forces trying to crush him. In a world in which you are bound to follow the rules, along the hypocrisy of which you are fully aware, John Wick is a projection of a free man. Omnipotent heroes in combat against mafia and terrorists are masturbation of an ego of an ordinary man unable to protect himself from the anomaly of evil, John Wick is a masturbation of ego of a man who is unable to cope with the hypocritical and exploitative society he finds himself in. At the very end of the third film, after numerous twists and turns, betrayals and multiple severe body traumas, John Wick manages to survive but not prevail.
The third installment ends with a scene at the throne room of the Beggar king, who is punished both for helping John and for insubordination. In this final scene we get a glimpse of the future direction and perhaps culmination of the franchise – the deal is not possible, there is only conflict.
But how will this conflict come about? Will John Wick, with the aid of other outsiders, cathartically destroy the world that denies him peace, will he die fighting, gaining freedom through combat, will he somehow extort his freedom, or something else? It remains to be seen.
If the franchise remains determined to stay up to date and as tied to our subconscious as it has so far, we are in for an exciting sequel. Text originally published on: - Oblakoder - John Wick - put u podsvest -