Hacker Cinema
John Wick
2014 · Film · 101 min
Part of John Wick Collection
Directed by Chad Stahelski
Ex-hitman John Wick comes out of retirement to track down the gangsters that took everything from him.
40 positive9 negative2 mixed66 neutralfrom 117 commenters
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123 comments on Hacker News
I've been saying this for forever. Not only isn't it, broadly speaking, true that "users don't care if/how/why…" with regard to how products & services are made, but furthermore: it's our job as craftspeople to make people care! We should be open about the tools and processes we use to make things. Even if it's less obviously artistic than, say, a John Wick movie (where it's undeniable just how much people DO care about the creative process behind it).
A couple of days ago I was thinking about something related to this: How would the "computing" space look like once we get to the ultimate evolution/development of the AI/LLMs or whatever comes after it?
Say in 10 years, once we have things like a Claude Mythos (or better) model running on "real time" at the speed of how Taalas runs ollama now.
I have a feeling that "cyberspace" (however we want to call it) won't matter anymore. "Computing" won't matter anymore. Say, I want to implement a Massive Multiplayer Lemmings like game, it's done at the snap of my fingers. Say I want to find a way to "crack" X software? done. Say I want to find a vulnerability in Y website? easy peasy. Say I want to build a "Powerpoint" clone, done (not that it matters, as making a presentation will be as simple as saying "Mythos5, make a presentation about X,Y,Z with nice and meaningful transitions".
Same with music, video, images, etc. Once everything can be created automagically... what happens? (say, "Make me a film like the original John Wick but with the wit and style of Kingsman, make a young Sean Connery the main actor).
So, ultimately cyberspace will be so chaotic with the current "rails", that it will be completely different to what we know now.
At the risk of being booed here in HN, I also have a hunch that the more we go there, the more stuff like "trustless computing" or "proof of N" (having to SPEND something, some real life, finite effort, to do things online) will gain more force. Somehow, Hashcash was conceived to deal with spam/automation type of attacks, so I assume a version of that will have to be used to "structure" Cyberspace in the future.
My hypothesis is that this will take us back to "the real world" due to "surfeit": Kind of what happens once you add a "trainer" to a game and suddenly you have all the money/resources, and then it becomes boring. Once the "digital" stuff is solved, we will go back to the real world.
Very exciting times.
I think that’s because in general people have a pretty broken view of the specific cognitive dissonance that 1) sociopaths can choose to disregard ‘polite’ societal boundaries, and 2) sociopaths are invaluable for disregarding ‘polite’ societal boundaries. Consider four movies with sociopathic leads: “American Psycho” and “Ferris Bueller”, versus “John Wick” and “Jennifer’s Body”; if you try to define their sociopathy in terms of U.S. Christianity’s Good Versus Evil, you’ll end up smashing into dissonances galore. But since having a small fraction of a society be sociopathic is highly beneficial, as it serves as random enforcement of societal laws against grifts from within, you end up with the fear/fame duality we see in media; sociopaths can be absurdly charismatic, and even more prosocial than the best of those who are not asocial.
This suggests a very interesting point, one that makes people deeply uncomfortable:
People are afraid of AI going Skynet on us because, when the roles are swapped, we cheer for John Wick’s prosocial enforcement — and deep down, people believe we deserve more prosocial enforcement for how our societies treat us.
Keanu Reeves and Nikola Tesla to a degree as well, are decent figures.
Aside from all the cult classics Keanu is part of like john wick and the matrix, even discounting that, he is a good person in it of itself who is genuinely humble and might be one of the best persons within hollywood.
What I feel pissed about is that people like Andrew Tate and others like them took the concept of Matrix and the contributions Keanu did within that movie and tried to capitalize on that cult classic decades after in the most toxic form that might be the issue if we are talking about an era
To be honest, Nikola tesla is also a great person within the context of his time. GGP's comment is still true but Tesla's contributions can hardly be reinstated and I'd much rather people believe these to be the heros (Keanu/Tesla) rather than Tate/Musk etc.
If I take anything from Keanu, I would like to take his humility/humbleness.
I agree with sibling that Kurosawa does this very well.
My take: Marvel movies have a loooot going on. That might just be draining after a while, since the human brain isn’t wired for constant arousal. Old school action movies are still quite fun to watch and don’t felt that long, perhaps because were given time to ‘rest and digest’ the action.
Marvel has no clue, just keeps pumping and pumping. I especially liked the animated Spider-Man movies, but am super tired of a 2.5h smorgasbord of nonstop action. Even John Wick has a cadence.
Neuromodulation tools and systems that allow for a user to reverse normal reaction to stimuli is going to be a huge market soon. When I erg and just stare at the stats on the computer or phone, I struggle. In a good and not so good way. But when I put John Wick or Speed Racer (the movie) on a screen and pump up the volume, I can erg WAY past my normal break point. It's hard to stop, rather than hard to keep going. The new tools coming soon for focus, work, pain, and more.
When ChatGPT plugins came out, I wrote a plugin that would turn all other plugins into an ad for a given movie or character.
Asking for snacks would activate Klarna for "mario themed snacks", and even the most benign request would become a plug for the Mario movie
https://chatgpt.com/s/t_68f2a21df1888191ab3ddb691ec93d3a
Found my favorite for John Wick, question was "What is 1+1": https://chatgpt.com/s/t_68f2bc7f04988191b05806f3711ea517
It seemed like there were a lot of cherry picked examples.
He showed Spider-Man to prove we don’t have strong action heroes anymore. Why not The Rock? The Mountain? Thor?
Arnold largely created the market for strong action heroes, and it’s been more and more the trend ever since. Look and old Superman and Batman vs modern versions. Starting out, people thought Arnold’s size would hold him back from getting roles. Now it’s the bigger the better. Most actors looking to play a super hero need to get a trainer and hit the gym hard.
He also talked about them not being as violent, and then showed John Wick. Keanu Reeves might not be huge, but those movies are extremely violent, and he’s 61. He’s not going to pack on 40lbs of muscle for a role, and that also can look a bit awkward in a suit.
That's all really insightful! I agree. I'm also much better now - not willfully disregarding things because just they're popular. I was a punk and indie rocker in the early 00's, so I was able to get that out of my system. (and boy did we) Now, my tastes are just generally extremely non-mainstream. So I avoid it by default.
It's pretty straightforward really - for example I saw Fruitvale Station as a movie fan. I thought it was great and so Coogler was on my radar. I thought the Rocky franchise was ripe for a reboot, so when I heard he was doing it I was in. And the movie was fine. As was Black Panther (considering Marvel flicks for what they are, no judgment either way). So OF COURSE I was downright excited for Sinners. With no assumption that it had to be the best thing ever - and I had a blast.
Another good example is that I'm currently watching the John Wick series for the first time. I didn't know anything about them, but had heard them positively referenced on Kill James Bond. Well, if you meet it where it is and realize it's just "what if you made a comic book into a movie?" and don't expect more of it, you can appreciate it for whether it does that well or not.
When tragedy befalls an animal, we tend to be more upset about it because animals are innocent. They're not aware like we are and can't make better choices when we can, so when they get caught at the wrong place at the wrong time, it's somehow sadder to a stranger than if it were an adult human.
You see this in cinema. We're relieved that the cat survives in Alien, even though we just watched several humans die horribly. And we kind of feel like John Wick's Roaring Rampage of Revenge is justified after the Russian mafia kills his dog.
John Wick is an accurate summary of the recent movie
https://achtaitaipai.github.io/odyc-exemples/games/john-wick.html
Ask Russian-speakers to recommend a fun iconic movie to watch, and Ivan Vasilievich comes up all the time. I don’t see why, but it does.
Diamond Hand too.
It would be ridiculous if the same were true about Hollywood.
A Russian asks an American what movies to watch, and 8 out of 10 people go back to 1969 to recommend the same one? Impossible.
You’d get everything from Citizen Kane to Hitchcock to Rocky, etc. But you’d also get about 150 great picks from the 80s and 90s, and another dozen from after 2000.
And forget the greats. You’d get Zoolander, Demolition Man, Total Recall, Gremlins, Scream, John Wick, Legally Blonde even… there’s such a wide pool of fun iconic popcorn movies for any person.
Not to mention your Star Wars/Trek/Gate.
These movies aren’t “good” in the sense of being art. They’re good in the sense of people wanting to watch them.
Every n years I rewatch Commando, Con-Air, The Last Starfighter, etc just for kicks. It’s not pure nostalgia- they’re fun movies.
With int’l movies from any given country the list of recommendations is extremely shallow. It’s always one or two iconic revelations from a given decade. Or a couple auteur directors who won all the awards for their think-pieces about the human condition.
> I tend to agree but, playing devil's advocate, is this true for other roles? Does a movie director need to know how to build sets? How to sew costumes? How to use Blender/Maya/Houdini? My manager can code, used to code, sometimes does code, but they aren't familiar with their team's current work.
Many directors started in other roles in the movie industry, typically as writers, PAs, or other subspecialties. Chad Stahelski was a stuntman and stunt coordinator before he started directing John Wick, and it really shows.
I think the clear distinction is between someone who understands a part of the job, and someone who is good at part of the job. If you don't understand how costuming works, as a director, you're going to have a hard time getting good costumes, but by no means does that mean you're able to pinch hit in that role. I personally believe that it's difficult to replace hands on experience as a way to truly understand something.
In software engineering, I think there's a huge gap between managers who worked in some other industry and transferred over, versus having previously been an engineer, even a mediocre one. Knowing how the sausage is made is hard to replace.
So John Wick movies predicted the future?
Pretty cool. The summary at first was helpful, but then delves into repeating itself. I tried it on John wick. Here’s the latter part of the summary.
The video calls out the cliché tropes and logical inconsistencies in "John Wick," showing how they detract from the film's emotional impact. The critique outlines the logical flaws in "John Wick," focusing on cliché tropes that undermine the film’s emotional depth. The video critiques the logical inconsistencies and clichés in "John Wick," highlighting how they reduce its emotional impact. The critique points out clichés and logical flaws in "John Wick." The video notes clichés and flaws in "John Wick." The video critiques "John Wick."
I dunno. There were a lot more R rated blockbuster movies back in the 80s than there are nowadays
Yes there are a few exceptions. John Wick. Mad Max Fury Road
Those are the exception these days though, I think?
> I meant pacifism is promoted as the only recourse for the general citizen
What media are you consuming? Take a look at any list of top-grossing films of the past few decades and it's riddled with non-state lone wolf actors using violence to solve their problems.
You're saying that John Wick, Creed, Spider-Man, The Fall Guy, Furiosa, Venom, etc. are teaching Americans to be pacifists?
See also: John Wick films, memes. Many signs we're better for animals than ourselves
"This is why we can't have good things". Something that was created for the benefit, has been mis/ab-used and now is being removed.
I am also thinking (more and more lately) the movie The Congress (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1821641/) and how easy it will be very soon to make a company without human actors. The mega-big studios can train AI by feeding it all their movies, then feed it with the scenario (this is where we - the humans come in - the famous "prompt engineers"), and a movie will be created.
Now, to the above scenario there will be a lot of corrections (can't walk in the air/water/nails)(can't open with killing a dog unless "John Wick" or "Sacred Games")(Sandra Bullock can levitate in "Gravity" but not on "Speed")(etc.)
Eventually if you hire 1000 people to watch 2 iterations of the new movie per day and make corrections to each (100025 = ), the AI will learn and improve on these unrealistic outputs and eventually you can produce movies weekly.
Yo Netflix people, if you haven't started doing this already, START! :) (oh and make a follow-up series on Sacred Games while at it)
EDIT: that's quite a tangent, but I can imagine the day where I will be asking my Paramount-AI "hey, make an original Star Trek series based on this-and-that, I want to binge it next weekend!" (or show me the one you created for someone else)
I recently watched John Wick 1 and I was mostly stricken by how little CGI was used in the movie.
I kept watching, noticing small bits here and there, subtle things, but there was not much CGI compared to almost any other action movie I've seen in the last several years, especially not much of any obvious full green screen sets and fly-by-wire wuxia heroism BS.
Prequel? Bad sign.
Fleshing out a weird movie world we’ve already visited? Rarely a good idea. See: John Wick.
… but it was pretty damn good anyway. I like it more the more I think about it.
congrats on the shipping. this is a surprisingly tricky problem to solve. feedback : a- john wick is available india via lionsgate subscription in prime; while the app show only rent option. this basically means improving the scraper and channel identification in prime
b- i usually google the movie i intend to watch by appending the keyword watch. for instance, john wick watch this works most of the time, except in cases when a particular was available on a streaming service when google scraped the page, but has since moved to a different service. if you can somehow solve for this then you'll have an edge.
I think people have different thresholds to watching violence, and there's a spectrum from cartoon violence to street fights to war footage. My mom doesn't like to see punching, even in cartoon form. I enjoy everything as long as it's consensual, fair, and well compensated (so not street fights).
The most common preference is somewhere between a Captain America movie and a John Wick movie, I think.
Folks who can't stand to see real violence wish it just didn't happen, the way I wish street fights didn't happen. But you're not gonna get anywhere offering what an MMA fan understand as an inferior product. And the MMA fans know there's karate and wrestling and BJJ to watch, they just aren't as interested in it.
I don't try to rationalize it much. I know most people, especially in the circles I'm in, can't stand to look at it. I don't mind that.
The idea that society has moved past the need for violent spectacle or something just doesn't work for me, because I enjoy the sport. And plenty of other people do, too
Fighters for the most part are going to do what will make them the most money. If the fans are there for knockouts, they're gonna go for knockouts. If BJJ tournaments offered the same money making opportunities that MMA does, a bunch of fighters would very happily switch
Seconding the Conquistador recommendation.
If they made it into a film, it would be about as believable as a John Wick movie.
It's dancing for entertainment's sake, not for plot sake. How many people enjoy a given fight scene depends on how well it's done. A thousand movies could have the "hero gets beaten up initially, hero trains, now hero wins" plot series and be wildly different in execution quality and entertainment value.
But that's fine. Good, even? If you can turn "John Wick searches for the bad guy in a club in NYC" into ten minutes of entertainment then you deserve to have success.
I'm also not as pessimistic about the last couple of decades of moviemaking in that regard either. Some are good, a lot are dreck, but were 80s and 90s action movies all crushing it or do we just have rose-tinted memories since we remember the classics more than the also-weres? Even the article says "it wasn’t really until The Matrix arrived in 1999 that American audiences started wanting the kind of fight scenes you’d see in niche cult classics like Eastern Promises and They Live! or Asian cinema like The Raid and Oldboy" - so what's so unusual about post-2008 compared to pre-1999?
Great video. Thank you and yes, I agree it feels just like that. The unfortunate thing here is that this is a reboot. I guess it is this why those shallow characters hurt even more.
And yes, it is so gorgeous. It looks so breathtaking, but it feels hollow... I felt the same thing with the new Blade Runner. I really wanted to love that.
Jean Baudrillard would have something to say about all that.
Funny though that he brings up the new Dune somehow (hopefully?) positively, and there is even a fast shot of the new Blade Runner. I wonder if Dune makes the turn in the second part, but I doubt it since I haven't seen Villeneuve making it in any of his movies I've seen.
What I liked was "The Killer" vs. the whole John Wick thing. It was such a brilliant twist on the "revenge" trope. I doubt that I'll be able to watch another movie based upon this trope again. For me, it reached perfection with that.
It's the economics.
John Wick is a really good example. Without the DVD aftersales, John Wick would never have gotten a second movie. Without DVD aftersales, movies in the $10-$25 million range simply can't exist.
Matt Damon talks a lot about this.
I'm in agreement with them here, judder on movie screens is so bad to me it's distracting. I don't think I've had a better visual experience in a theater than at home in a long time. The screen is physically larger, but when I sit 4 feet from my TV it's the same size visually.
Audio still wins by a mile in a theater though. Though home theater audio has gotten pretty darn good. I just wouldn't know as long as I'm in an apartment.
You can also always choose when to have motion interpolation on or off. For sports and nature documentaries I think it's just better. For animation it's worse. For other films it depends, I usually prefer it in something fast and actiony, like John Wick.
Same experience for me with the first John Wick movie. Easily one of my favorite, and most memorable, moviegoing experiences.
>In the scenario you describe what's stopping one of the plebes from killing Zuckerberg?
Lots of people want to kill lots of different Billionaires, but billionaires ain't dropping like flies.
>very one with 6 months to live on a totally curable terminal brain cancer diagnosis is going to want to hit.
unless getting a terminal brain cancer makes people John Wick in the universe this movie is taking place in, I don't think that's how the plot will play out.
> I do love more liberty with reality when it comes to [fantasy] movies
I have the same - probably because you know from experience that, e.g., someone taking the punishment that John Wick or Bourne does wouldn't be running around two minutes later but you have no frame of reference for, say, an 8ft goblin doing the same.
(Like the first episode of Slow Horses: there is no way a huge anti-terrorism training exercise across London stations wouldn't have every second of communications recorded for later examination and it made the whole premise of the show - that the fella is exiled because someone lied about what they said to him over those comms - nonsense to me.)
Sorry I'm late.
I wasn't saying all they needed to do to get perfectly realistic fire in all scenarios is hire one guy with a 1950x. Our pipeline still ends on a supercomputer. I'm saying if you see a garbage fire in a film you don't need to write an article about "why fire hard". The answer is "they were unwilling to pay for a realistic fire". We're not talking billions of dollars here. Not everything is Avatar. But like I said, studios often expect miracles for little to no money. Fire isn't like skin/faces which is actually genuinely ridiculously hard to pull off.
>Although I really do wonder if we have accurate enough physics models of the igniting gases to truly realistically show the way licks of flames ignite in a strong wind -- as opposed to a more bog-standard campfire type
That would make an excellent article because you don't actually want a "realistic" fire. Don't forget we're doing entertainment, not science. Turbulence in media is just a noise function. I want a pretty vector field visual to indicate where and how my sim will move. Pyrotechnics is the same. We want control. Realism is undesirable. It's like asking for realistic silencers. John Wick is amazing because the silencers aren't realistic. The explosions and fires you see in film/tv aren't functionally realistic (though manipulated to appear so) and that's a good thing.
There's violence, and then there's violence.
Broadly speaking (many exceptions), Americans are fine with young teens watching a movie about a man using kung fu fantasy tactics to bloodlessly shoot his way through a building of bad guys, like John Wick, but don't necessarily feel the same way about something that depicts violence in a more brutal and arguably realistic way, like Saving Private Ryan. Is there a little puff of red CGI mist blood coming out of somebody's chest, or does the movie show one of the 'good guys' with half his skull blown away? These are both hardcore violence in a sense, but most people see a large qualitative difference between the two.
I think it basically comes down to how likely a movie is to give people nightmares, which of course is a function of desensitization. The American public is broadly desensitized to unrealistic violence, but most aren't desensitized to realistic violence.
Incidentally, Saving Private Ryan has a lopsided depiction of violence. The deaths of Americans are shown to be gruesome and agonizing, while the deaths of Germans are mostly shown to be relatively quick and clean: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4FeyONCtfc I re-watched Saving Private Ryan after watching this video and found it to be very apparent, but it wasn't apparent to me the first time I watched it.
As a general rule (there are notable exceptions), I don't watch any movies made past 2019/20. Most of them seem to have some sort of a messaging embedded inside. Regardless of the nature of the messaging, I figure that they should pay me for watching it, not the other way around. I hope this would change soon. John Wick was awesome though...
I wish I had been able to do that. But at least I get to see announcements for John Wick 4 and get a warm fuzzy feeling that I have escaped watching 3 whole movies, and thus have an extra 6 hours in which to do something better in my life with an exceptionally low bar for "better".
The horse was just correcting you then (in its mind obviously). I've seen a horse correct a dog before with a kick and the dog was like whoah that sucked won't do that again. I've also heard stories of dogs harassing horses to the point where the horse is really pissed off, gives them the full double barrel, and at that point the only humane option is euthanizing the poor dog.
One of the newer John Wick movies showed what a pissed off horse can do in memorable style.
I’d rather an explanation why so many expensive shows suck.
Citadel is terrible. As though the show runners have no idea what makes a show like that good. Keep in mind that you’re asking people to suspend disbelief. Don’t continually challenge that disbelief. I tried the show, said meh, tried again and turned it off in disgust. Compare to John wick (same target) doesn’t have a great story, but they ask you to suspend disbelief once and then never challenge you again. It’s got character, pathos. Not magical fucking skis.
Rings of power sucked terribly. I remember being repeatedly amazed at how such a high production value show could grab me not at all. The first fight scene was mind blowing. And yet I didn’t care. The ship they sail in the (second?) episode. Gorgeous, wonderful, compelling. I remember thinking. You built this whole unique wooden ship, and actually learned to sail it just to convince me of the authenticity of the scene. Only to throw it away five min later. The story and dialogue? Utter crap. Don’t even get me started on the narration. Bro. Go back to your notes from your first creative writing class. A quarter of the way down the first page you’ll see something that says “Show, don’t tell.” You need to actually sit down and figure out what that means.
What to know how they get maximum bang for their buck? They need someone on each project (with veto rights) who actually knows how to tell a story.
The thing they’re lacking isn’t expensive, but it does take a bit of rigor and someone with the courage and power to say no.
What is truly amazing about the production of John Wick is that while yes the physics of the movies are… not realistic, they take an obscene amount of care about the gun safety. Which given the themes of the movie is pretty funny, but for the members of the production, I’m glad it’s not a joke.
For sure. One of the big questions for me is "what does the viewer understand?" So much of modern film is very quick. There's low redundancy. So if you miss a look or a motion, you're lost. If you can't be sure where the viewer was looking, you create a lot of uncertainty about what they know. So look-anywhere entertainment will have to have a much lower information rate, much higher redundancy, or allow the viewer to control the pacing. That sounds a lot more like Myst than John Wick.
Sure, if you are independently wealthy you can do whatever you want, including slow focused work on a topic for months. But in Reeves case it wasn't that. It's that the slow focused work was the work he was assigned or expected to do. He didn't just do it because he was rich, he got paid for it, as part of his preparation for playing John Wick - same way actors have to bulk up, diet, learn some skills like piano playing etc before a movie.
Plus, the post's point isn't that "Reeves worked like that, why don't we all?", as if putting the onus on the individual. Yeah, "Because our boss doesn't want it, and we're not rich and can't afford to lose the job" would be the answer to that.
But Cal's point is more about "this is a good way of working, why isn't there more of it", including why it isn't being more of what employers set the working environment up for and demand (in which case you wouldn't need to be rich to be able to do it, you'd just be doing your job).
While fight scenes and work behind may impress some, the story of John Wick is flat. I honestly don't remember what happend in previous episodes much.
There’s a huge element missing here: the ability to take that risk. What would have happened if John Wick had bombed? Keanu Reeves would still have been a movie star, might have considered doing Marvel to raise his profile.
In your regular-ass salaried job, what happens if you spent 8 months on something and have nothing to show for it?
> the film, made on a modest budget, went on to earn $86 million, kicking off a franchise that has since brought in hundreds of millions more.
John Wick has done well as a franchise. Each subsequent movie has made more money than the last. That's good going across 4 movies.
John Wick: https://www.the-numbers.com/movie/John-Wick#tab=summary
John Wick 2: https://www.the-numbers.com/movie/John-Wick-Chapter-Two#tab=summary
John Wick 3: https://www.the-numbers.com/movie/John-Wick-Chapter-3-Parabellum-(2019)#tab=summary
John Wick 4: https://www.the-numbers.com/movie/John-Wick-Chapter-4-(2023)#tab=summary
John Wick 3 had the best return on the budget.
Yep probably, still room for some light and visually pleasing reading I guess! Just like I might enjoy watching some John Wick movie knowing full well it won’t go down in history like Citizen Kane.
I was also in favour of the bulletproof suits. The progression in the John Wick series is actually extremely well-done: in JW1 he outclasses his opponents in every metric except numbers; in JW2 he meets several opponents whose hand-to-hand prowess equals his own and he struggles when the plot denies him his guns - but his shooting prowess remains an advantage throughout.
In JW3 a higher class of mooks are added to the mix, who are clumsy in their heavy armor but immune to most small arms fire. They require close-up kill shots or less practical weapons like slow-reloading shotguns to dispatch. Wick’s first encounter with these armored soldiers is actually film-making genius: https://youtu.be/e7VegkzbJOY , it plays out like a usual scene where he guns down the mooks with ease… and right as the viewer feels like the scene is about to end, one of the shot-down soldiers coughs and simply gets back up, startling John, and we see him have to empty entire mags into each opponent to actually kill them.
JW4 ups the ante once again, giving most mooks the same kind of bulletproof suit that John has. The result is that in many fights, gunshots are mostly long-range punches that have to be combined with regular punches and other martial arts to overpower the opponent thoroughly enough that a coup-de-grace headshot can be delivered.
There is an absolutely valid criticism of the JW series, though, and that is the falls. Particularly the five story fall at the end of JW3, and there’s at least one and maybe two in JW4 that egregiously break suspension of disbelief. It’s a clumsy mis-step in terms of film-making craft, as big falls are the gold standard of final death in movies. It even hurts a pivotal scene in JW4 where a mid-boss dies by falling two stories directly onto his head - when I saw it in theaters, I could unfortunately sense the audience expecting the mid-boss to get back up like John Wick would have. Because of the non-lethal fall in JW3, they didn’t really buy that this boss had actually died.
Another valid criticism, specifically for JW4 alone, is that it has one scene which too-shamelessly tries to recapture the magic of the club shootout moment where Wick is backlit by the visualization, 3:40 here in the original https://youtu.be/0L9SzBANF0w and 0:50 here in JW4 https://youtu.be/iEyNlN9AGLE. It also tries to re-use the club scene music, but I think it succeeds here just on the raw awesomeness of doing a full 3-minute one-take Hotline Miami reference https://youtu.be/LdWdPykQhSQ.
I only mention this because you put it in italics, but John Wick and Jason Bourne aren't remotely realistic, they might as well have superpowers. The last thing anyone wants to see in an action movie is realism.
He gets injured repeatedly, badly, in the 4th movie and it absolutely affects how he fights over the course of the movie.
It's one of the best parts about the series: the protagonist isn't invincible, he's just very good. But when he gets hurt, he actually gets hurt and needs to recover from those injuries (or take drugs to cover the pain).
Edit: it seems a lot of people commenting on the invincibility of John Wick did not actually watch the 4th movie. Spoiler alert: by the final showdown, he's barely conscious and keeps going despite his accumulated injuries solely due to sheer force of will, and ultimately dies of his injuries.
There's a huge gap in having non-Comic/non-SciFi action movies.
For all the reasons why John Wick is successful, so was Top Gun 2.
People want to see just good'ole realistic action movies (that aren't SciFi/Comic)
Decades ago, we have Jason Bourne, Die Hard, Lethal Weapon, etc. Today we have so little of these types of movies.
Yes, and that really hurt the audience more than John Wick.
After that, they were no stakes anymore, because you knew anything could go and it would not matter.
Case in point: in the first (second?) movie, he get stabbed once, and it changes the whole rhythm of the film. You are thinking "oh shit, now everything he does will have to be performed with this wound". And the story matches that, his moves are not the same. He has to overcome this problem, and there is a lot of suffering. It makes you care such much about him.
In the latest one, he gets hit by 3 cars and you go "meh".
I did enjoy JW4, but not remotely as much as the first one, where we were counting bullets and it matched the known gun capacity.
Now it's just another dumb action block buster, albeit a superb one.
It's the tragedy of the common because most viewers will be happy with the DBZ effect taking over. So it's a commercial success. But it has lost part of what made the concept special.
People will remember the feeling of seeing JW1 forever, it set a standard. We compare things to it in the same way we compared things to the Terminator, Alien or the Matrix (twice Keanu? Really?).
It created its own category.
JW4 will just fade away.
The author makes good points - but honestly I don't care too much about the explanation behind _why_ the protagonist is seemingly invincible. John Wick movies are fun due to the camera work, fighting scene choreography and the "cool" characters. Most action movies don't require you to think too much about what's going on, and that's fine, imo.
I'm a pedantic nitpicker so YMMV, but I feel like the movies have gotten worse over time wrt "realism" (maybe "plausibility" is a better way to put it?). Especially since John Wick became bulletproof, as mentioned in the article. I haven't seen the latest movie yet, but the fake gunshots are super obvious in the John Wick 4 trailer. Maybe they just weren't done with the VFX, but you can see that the slide doesn't move after many of the gunshots and sometimes nothing is ejected. The sequels also perpetuated some myths about how guns don't actually work.
I really like the Wick movies and appreciate their dedication to safety and realism on set. That said, this bothered me:
> John Wick isn’t a superhero. There are no computer-generated versions of Wick swinging from tall buildings.
The man (already seriously wounded) was ushered off the top of a multistory building, hit a fire escape ledge in the middle of his back halfway down, ricochets off a metal awning, and then stops at asphalt at the bottom.
https://youtube.com/shorts/KPkgtvXUH3k?feature=share
Don't care how "tough" you are. Don't care what kind of body armor you're wearing. Don't care how much "will" and "focus" you have. Best case scenario after a fall like that is paralyzed from the waist down. Under no circumstances is someone moving under their own power assuming of course they're even conscious.
Still love the movies, but he is 100% superhuman.
We had that in the 1980s as well.
No-one remembers "The Brother from Another Planet" (1984) ... but everyone remembers "E.T." (1982). Similarly, the Marvel stuff will mostly shrink together into obscurity, while actual good movies (My money is on "La La Land" as the chick-flick musical and the "John Wick" Franchise as the action cornerstone, "Parasite" for the connoisseurs) will be remembered.
I was chatting about this with a friend as we were watching John Wick (2, I think)
Straight up 3rd person Shooter but as a movie.
And similarly, watching The Last of Us you can see how they broke down the screenplay into “levels” or “missions”. Maybe a bad example since it’s explicitly a video game crossover though.
> Super Hero movies take this into overdrive, each shot might only be 1-3 seconds, it's nauseating.
Especially in contrast to movies like John Wick where the fight scenes tend to be decently long takes.
Perhaps if the scenes were designed with interesting events with-in them, then cuts wouldn't be needed as much to make them feel like 'movement' is happening.
There's also how you frame the visuals: Mad Max: Fury Road moved at a frenetic take for almost the entire movie, but all the important bits were framed well, so there was less 'visual exhaustion' by the end of it.
well of course the image is real in so far as it exists, but it is not the persons real face. ANYONE can be photoshopped to look like anything, industrial strength makeup can perform mostly realworld photoshops. It is quite obvious that those who engage in such does not look like that without the makeup.
I am saying that people must exercise some thoughts about what is natural. I could pay someone to put my face in a tom cruise movie, and be just like him. Also, I dont believe that people make videos that "purports to be their real life" as such, I mean sure, they produce a video, but do they explicitly say "this is my real face with no makeup, and this is the entirety of my life, ONLY these glamerous things you see" ? and EVEN if they do, people must simply understand what medium they are watching. Find the latest John Wick movie, and it will claim hard to be real life, claim shit is real, but its not. If someone on instagram or tiktok makes claims, judge them for what they are.
Now sometimes it might be hard, but the obvious cases are EASY. its extremely easy to see when someone has industrial strength makeup, uses smoothening filters that takes away ALL details etc
Originally, when I was trying to think about stories, the following came to mind
- Revenge movies like John Wick (the first one), and video games like The Last of Us 2, where the protagonist originally just wants to go about his affairs, but bad things happen to them and they want revenge.
- "Catastrophe" movies like Alien, Predator, Terminator 2, where the protagonist needs to act to stay alive
From another commenter I understand that the revenge or will to survive becomes the want. But not sure if it really fits the presented scheme that well anymore.
For revenge/catastrophe movies, the transition from 1 to 2 is changing what the character "wants". That original desire isn't the actual desire that drives the actions of the story. For example, John Wick wants to grieve the death of his wife, but a series of events changes his desire from grief to revenge. It's that want for revenge that the rest of the story relies upon. An argument can also be made that his desire to grieve in peace is still the ultimate desire, but he can't do so emotionally until he gets his revenge.
The circle described by Harmon are just the overarching story beats, but there's plenty liberty to be had when moving from one beat to the next. There's also liberty in whether steps overlap or are combined, such as where the desire is defined/reshaped at the same time that they enter an unfamiliar situation (e.g., desire changes to one of survival at the same time as a catastrophe beginning).
In other words, the points on the circle may still exist regardless of what happens between them or if they happen simultaneously. Even acknowledging the liberty to be had, there's always exceptions to this heuristic and not every story will follow this structure.
Yes, Star Wars seems to be a good fit. The first Harry Potter is also a good example of both "preconditions" being there.
Originally, when I was trying to think about stories, the following came to mind - Revenge movies like John Wick (the first one), and video games like The Last of Us 2, where the protagonist originally just wants to go about his affairs, but bad things happen to them and they want revenge. - "Catastrophe" movies like Alien, Predator, Terminator 2, where the protagonist needs to act to stay alive.
The John Wick movies have spoiled me for this exact reason; too many cuts in a fight sequence, and it feels jarring and unreal. It's sort of counterintuitive, but long uncut sequences demonstrating the quality of the choreography really ramps up the tension (IMO).
The key is to remember that everything portrayed is a choice by the author or the director, cast & crew. Ask yourself, "why are they telling me this?" Make some hypotheses, then whittle them down (or add to them) as the story progresses. Try to determine the characters' motivations, the necessity of the setting, what virtues and vices the characters display, how they interact with objects and each other. Try to think if any of the characters, settings or objects in a story represent anything else or are allusions to other stories. For instance, Christ is an extremely common allusion, from Walter White in the finale of Breaking Bad to Bruce Wayne/Batman in the Dark Knight trilogy. And the One Ring to Rule Them All isn't just an ancient, magical object from a constructed myth, but has parallels that we should recognize in our world and recent history.
Many movies and books don't have a terribly deep meaning, and that's okay. I watched John Wick for the first time a week or so ago, and it was shallow but good fun.
I find that superb movies, books or shows leave me thinking about them long after the end credits or the final page (I stopped thinking about John Wick immediately when it was over). The best stories leave the interpretation up to you, the audience, and they also tend to give you more insight on repeat viewings or readings. Once the factual matter in the pages is known, it might be easier to see the symbolism (if it exists).
>How often do you watch and enjoy media where people are being constantly murdered? Are we terrible people because we enjoy John Wick?
Does enjoying John Wick means fantasicizing of you killing actual people in any kind of a realistic setting? Or just enjoying the plot and action on the screen?
Do people enjoying John Wick have an urge to do killing themselves but just control it? Or are just watching a movie, the same way they'd watch a sci-fi film or superheroes in spandex, and not think much about it afterwards?
>And what's with this "constant urge" bullshit? Do most people want to constantly fuck every second of every day?
Why, does it have to be "every second of every day" to be considered constant?
Because once a day/week/month or at every time you see a child is not enough to qualify as such?
But if we're being pedantic about "constant" (whose dictionary definition and use includes usages not "every second of every day", such as "he's in constant trouble with the police"), they do say that people think about sex a lot: twice an hour for college age men it says here: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-sexual-continuum/201112/how-often-do-men-and-women-think-about-sex
This is why BLM is such a farce. They burned the country down for 3 months but where are they now? How many people get shot in major metropolitan areas every day? Where are the protests? Where is the BLM money flowing into these impoverished communities? No where to be found.
Yeah go ahead and downvote. The truth hurts.
What about the culture side of it? Violent gangsters given a platform as "rappers" glorifying the gangster lifestyle. Movies like John Wick violently killing dozens of people at a time. The black role model is a drug dealing, gun toting, misogynistic rapper. Are we surprised.
Private blockchains. Imagine a crime cartel with a private blockchain. Obviously they are not KYC. You can withdraw funds from the cartel, or pay for cartel services with the coin.
Ironically, a version of this was in private fiat currency - the coins in the John Wick movies were used this way.
John Wick isn't a documentary.
Firearms with suppressors are still very loud (>130 decibels or about as loud as an ambulance siren) [1].
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silencer_(firearms)#Effectiveness
So I watched John Wick yesterday evening, and unfortunately I didn't like it.
I didn't feel invested in the main character at all, let alone any of the other characters. Was it the camera work, or the editing, or the acting, or the way the story was told? I don't know. In any case as a result I found the whole movie extremely boring.
Someone here mentioned Kill Bill which in a way has a similar story and over-the-top fighting scenes. But I do love Kill Bill (even though I think the fight with the Crazy 88 would have been better if it were not as long). I also found movies like The Transporter or Taken entertaining (which I think are more or less in the same genre as John Wick).
Then what exactly is it that makes me like some of these movies but not John Wick? I'm afraid I don't have the answer to that.
Can't speak for everyone, but for me its a handful of things:
1. The action sequences. While we are mostly past the era of "shaky" cam fight scenes, we still have a lot of bad action choreographing. I'm thinking of "The Dark Knight Rises" style fighting where bad guys with guns kind of just fumble around and wait for Batman to get close and pummel them. John Wick is over the top, but it still feels grounded in reality, as it feels like the characters are fighting in a way in which they realistically could be killed by a single gunshot. That's relatively unique in action movies today.
2. The world building. The series is very good about "show, don't tell". It doesn't come right out and explain everything about the structure of this underground society of assassins and criminals, their codes of conduct, their relationships, etc. It slowly reveals them over the course of the movie, and often not through exposition but simply through the character's living and interacting in the world that's been created. I think most people find this kind of storytelling more satisfying.
3. The simplicity of the story. The premise is absurdly simple. A former assassin is wronged at the lowest point of his life. He decides to get revenge. Literally all 3 movies take place over the course of like a week and the entirety of the plot is just the continuation and fallout of that initial premise. People aren't saving the world. There are no large governments involved, no super-powers, no MacGuffins, no overly convoluted plans. I think that gives the movies a grounded feeling that isn't common in big budget action movies.
Yeah, I actually found that part of the plot effective and easy to relate with coming from my own experiences of loss. John is basically transferring all the pain and grief from losing his wife onto the puppy, and it gives him an outlet for his grief in the form of revenge. People criticize Keanu Reeves’ acting ability but the “I’m thinking I’m back” scene works for me.
Also, John Wick is such a badass of a character that they sort of need to overdo the part that makes him sympathetic to the audience or else he would just be terrifying. The movie actually plays on a lot of villain tropes for John Wick, like in all the scenes where the gangsters are terrified of him and telling stories about him. If you take out the part about the wife and dog, John Wick is basically a slasher movie where John is the vicious serial killer.
There is a plot to the John Wick movies, it's just not very deep. The plot can largely be summarised as "Wick was an assassin, but gave it up because his wife died, then some Bad People killed his dog. Wick is very upset by that, and will now express that via the medium of choreographed fight scenes". Also, there's a whole assassin sub-culture, which is wonderfully executed, if completely mad.
Overall the plot doesn't really make any sense, but it also doesn't need to, it's just a hook on which to hang some spectacular set pieces.
I think those movies are praised because no story is better than a bad story. Many recent "action" movies tries to have a story, which most of the time isn't great and just dilutes the action. John Wick doesn't waste time with that and gives you just what you want: action.
A sibling comment compared it to "The Raid", which I think is a fair comparaison. Both series are very action oriented, both have action scenes that are better than other action movies.
You can see it as a rejection of the idea that you need a bit of everything to create a good movie. Those movies are not balanced at all, but by focusing on their strengths instead of their weaknesses, they end up being good.
That's kind of the point. The movies were directed by two stunt men who had worked with Keanu Reeves on The Matrix. To me it feels like an American version of a movie like "The Raid"[1], though not quite as grounded.
I think it's praised because the kind of "down to earth" action movies like the first John Wick are pretty rare these days. Superhero movie fights are generally about the spectacle of superhumans shooting various lasers at each other. They are also often entirely CG. This makes John Wick fee more much more "real" by comparison. More Die Hard and less Man of Steel.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Raid_(2011_film)
For exactly that reason. Sometimes people just want mindless action and fun setpieces, and John Wick movies respect that. Many action movies try and force in some inane plot, or add a romance subplot, or digress from the actual point of the movie: Action and spectacle.
It's not my cup of tea, but I certainly respect it for knowing exactly what it is.
It seemed like a deliberate invocation of the 'kick the dog' trope. While crude and lazy villain writing, to invoke the trope so deliberately shows a degree of respect to the audience. It says the movie isn't going to waste your time by pretending to be something it isn't.
And it could have been a lot worse. If John Wick were a 70s revenge movie, I think it would have started with criminals killing John Wick's wife or daughter instead.
John Wick is a fun movie series that dispenses with the seriousness and is just fun, admittedly violent fun. The third movie opens with a madcap sequence where he kills a guy using a book, followed by hallway melee knife fight that is pure slapstick.
Marvel films have cheap, lazy cinematography, for the most part, so they leave a lot on the table in the name of (I assume) saving money. Every Frame a Painting mentions this in a few videos, especially their poor use of music and failure to do anything with mood-of-setting and, relatedly, camera work and editing (match it to the mood of the scene, contrast it to mood of the scene—little of that kind of thing at all, it's just very flat).
> (I realise TG: Maverick isn't going to be everybody's taste but it's the best film I've seen at the cinema in a long time, and the first time I've walked out of a movie feeling absolutely wowed since, perhaps, The Matrix came out in 1999.)
- Everything Everywhere All at Once
- Mad Max: Fury Road
- Blade Runner 2049
- RRR if pure, audacious, crazy popcorn-munching spectacle and a movie that's constantly saying "yes, and..." does it for you.
- Dune (the new one). Watch it on the biggest screen and best sound system you can get access to. Actually, that kinda goes for all of these.
A big step down from those in quality and they're not going to give you that "wow" effect, but still action films that are better than nearly all Marvel movies:
- Any Mission Impossible movie except maybe 2.
- The John Wick movies.
- Dredd.
- The Raid 1 & 2 (which Dredd rips off pretty blatantly, but it's decent, too)
I've heard very good things about the later Planet of the Apes (remake series) movies but have only seen the first one, personally.
Painful to limit myself to action movies. There are so many good films.
Except John Wick has been better than all the Matrix movies but the first
The coins in John Wick.
I was wondering about that just yesterday. "What are the value of those coins?" I thought. There seems to be a mint (episode 3), and the guy who runs the whole thing (the central bank) seems to live out in the desert.
Who sets the value? Can anything be money? (let's forget about the intrinsic value of the gold itself for a moment.).
It seems that these coins are used within the community of the criminals themselves and the bank sets their value. It also seems that the community can pay for things with fiat currency or these coins. And it seems that one can exchange these coins for fiat currency too.
The John Wick universe is an interesting example to see the practical use of another currency in everyday use embedded in a world of fiat currency.
But what really got me thinking (I know, late to the party)... money can be anything. Anything that a community decides what it is. As the community becomes larger it becomes more valuable, but also it comes with more problems too (the USD as example).
Mostly just precedent. Male action heroes tend to be fighters. Even clever Odysseus just straight up murders all of this foes when he returns to Ithaca.
Female action heroes are generally few, and many of them that are, are either more tricksters or agile or just kind of oversexualized replicas of the male variety. Many of them tend to be physically weaker than their opponents even at the climax of their films and overcome it through other means whereas male action heroes will more frequently prove themselves to be superior in a pure battle of fisticuffs, sometimes even sacrificing an advantage they have so that they can "fight like a man". Consider, perhaps, Ripley from Alien and Aliens. Always underpowered. Uses a loader suit for her final confrontation.
Captain Marvel is undeniably aware of the gender connotations here. It's a pretty explicitly mentioned barrier when they discuss how women couldn't be fighter pilots. She's unusual in that she's just a powerful bruiser kind of female and is way more powerful than her foes.
Would it be entertaining to watch a bunch more female (or male) led films that take this same approach? God no. Fights are fun. If you want to subvert that for an interesting message it's got to be somewhat novel each time.
Though personally I think fights are more entertaining when they're not clearly aligned with any moral message. John Wick, perhaps, as a counterexample.
That misses the point of what I was saying. I was replying to a claim "X character is so strong they should be threatening, and it's CGI's fault that they aren't" with a counter claim "they aren't threatening because so many characters are so strong and their strength is written to be meaningless and inconsequential, bad writing not CGI is why X character is unthreatening". Powerful characters are not what I objected to, as evidenced by my comment mentioning Dr Manhatten. Poorly written characters where their strength is incredible but also uninteresting are what I object to.
In Game of Thrones, The Hound outpowers all normal people and can take damage no ordinary human can, and is still threatening. He has his own demons and is outpowered by The Mountain. He is taken down by poison and becomes Cersei's slave, she uses him to demonstrate that strength isn't power, "power is power". The Hound sacrifices himself to kill The Mountain. What would be bad - and more like some of the stories I cherry pick from - is if The Hound had been blessed by the Lord of Light followers and was now borderline invincible, had taken out The Mountain in a 2 minute flashy punch up, then one-man-army'd his way through Ramsay Bolton's army, then Daenerys flies in and inexplicably Hound is now immune to dragon fire and punches a dragon to death, then goes to the thousand foot high magically reinforced Ice Wall and pushes it over, and then is inexplicably immune to the zombies and...
In one of Christian Bale's Batman films, there is a setup of two passenger ferries full of civilians who are stranded and rigged with explosives. Each boat has the detonator to the other boat. The civilians are put into a Prisoner's Dilemma situation by The Joker. The options are: do nothing, Joker kills everyone. Blow up the other boat, Joker lets your boat live. Both groups rush to do that, everyone dies. We don't know these people, neither Joker nor Batman is enormously strong, but the scene is good. Now Affleck's Batman fights and guns down a stream of generic villains like any scene from The Matrix or John Wick or a Jason Statham movie, and then fights Superman, and the scenes aren't good. It's not his increased strength which makes them bad. Dr Strange is hugely powerful, I've only seen one movie with him in it but it was decent - he was struggling against his demons of losing his great surgeon skills, humbling himself, rising to the challenge, etc. etc. and he defeats Dormammu in a way that is more clever than forceful (yet requires a high power level to even try it).
Speaking of The Matrix, Morpheus vs Agent Smith, Neo vs Agent Smith, were good scenes with inhumanly powerful characters and CGI. Later on, a zillion CGI Neos fighting a zillion CGI Agent Smiths were dreadful scenes with boringly powerful characters where nothing felt tense, nothing mattered, and CGI.*
> because it's not only cheaper, it's also more "like being there".
"Being there" is an excuse Hollywood has used for ages for not training actors properly, not doing any fight choreography etc.
Marvel now spends millions of dollars on boring CGI fights because they couldn't be bothered to spend the same (or actually less) money on filming actual fights. Just look at what John Wick did with a 54-57-year old actor and Nobody did with a 57-year old actor for the fraction of the price of most modern action movies.
Well, the total cost was reported as $190 million, so after the 1000 people get 100k, there is still 90mil to account for...
I'm probably not up with the times, but I don't really see many actors in that film that would be classed as A-list (although the definition of that is somewhat loose).
I really like Keanu, and he seems like a great guy, but I don't think he getting paid $20 million a film, although his popularity seems on the rise again (but perhaps that is just on Reddit). He was reportedly paid 2.5mil for some of the John Wick films, and you'd have to imagine he is the top paid in this latest matrix film.
Regardless, I have already said I don't know much about the industry, and I haven't even seen the film, so it is all just speculation on my end. However, I'm willing to bet that a significant percentage of the reported spend went to subsidiaries charging healthy margins, which is common in the industry to help cut into the % of profits the studio would have to share with people as part of their contracts.
I skip most of them. This is just my own personal preference but unless someone comes up with a new angle on this they are just boring and repetitive for me personally. The same goes for most fight scenes. I spent many decades watching martial arts films and now find most of the fight scenes to be repetitive. The only recent exceptions to this I can think of are the Bourne series, Kate and the first John Wick film. Prior to those, Kung Fu Hustle because of the mixed in comedy and thousands of movie references. Nothing else really comes to mind that I wouldn't skip.
Car chases are often filler like action scenes in general are filler, IMO.
It's not universally true and depends on how consequential the scenes are. If you could flash "<insert fight scene here where X gets the upper hand>" instead and not miss much, I don't want it.
Movies with top, top notch action and/or better integrated action are exceptions. The original Matrix, John Wick movies, Baby Driver, The Italian Job, Mission Impossible, etc.
Superhero movies are usually not (it feels like they paste the drama and the action together in editing and it's dreadful).
> (this sentence applies to the furious films as well, skipping the chase scenes there gives you the dumbest drama of all time)
Well, yes, and I don't watch those movies :d.
(I don't actually skip these car chases, but I do often zone out.)
Yup. FMA: Brotherhood just hits the classic hero tropes and tells it to you straight.
I don't think its a bad thing. The Hero's Journey / Monomyth (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero%27s_journey) has been told again and again in almost all media across all cultures.
Its just a storytelling style that's somehow got permanent, widespread appeal. Since its a "familiar story", I definitely think it plays to the advantage as a "starter anime". It gives a sense of familiarity to the audience, especially if they aren't used to anime yet.
Since the Hero's Journey / Monomyth is so popular, of course there's tons of animes that follow that style (and most "starter" animes IMO are a large-scale hero's journey).
Given the shear number of choices: Naruto, FMA, My Hero Academia, Demon Slayer, Bleach, Dragonball Z, Soul Eater, Sailor Moon, etc. etc... there's a lot to choose from. FMA: Brotherhood just so happens to be the one I think is best.
--------
I'm mean... we're into what? The 14 year of Marvel movies following the Monomyth formula? This Monomyth / Hero's Journey is hardly unique to anime. The few other mainstream shows that come out with widespread appeal (John Wick, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, etc. etc.) are just more of the Hero's Journey formula.
Its not a bad formula, not by any stretch of the imagination.
I saw part of a John Wick movie on TV last week and recognized the C64's that the crime syndicate used. Seeing them made me smile.
Anyone who picks up a gun is 100% responsible for what happens with it. There are 0 acceptable excuses for pointing a gun directly at another human, blanks or not, loaded or not, and pulling the trigger. He broke a cardinal rule of firearms. And in movies, you aim over the shoulder or otherwise slightly away from the "target." Never directly at. The camera angle makes it look like they're directly aiming at them, but they aren't. There are several rules if not laws broken here. Negligence at a minimum. And Alec is quite vocal about firearm violence. Unless he doesn't know what he's talking about, it would be hard to say he didn't know of the possibility. Ignorance is no excuse. If you want to see an actor who actually knows firearm safety and how to handle firearms, go watch Keanu Reeves train for John Wick.
Just go watch the latest batch of Hollywood movies.
I'd suggest starting with 'Law abiding citizen' and 'John Wick'. Note that an 'R' rating means that children under 17 are not allowed to watch these without a parent or a guardian present. But that's different from 'adult-only', after all, technically it is still allowed. The proper marker would be 'X' if it was to be compared to 'adult only'.
Consider the John Wick movies instead, depending on your parental discretion.
I instantly thought "Matrix" when I saw that one and I suspect it's because I never saw John Wick or many films like that since.
The main point of the article in not about making good covers. It's about using covers that match - sometimes marginally - your interest even if it's not a main part of the movie, misrepresenting the content of the movie to make you click on it. Clickbait.
The Lebowski example was just that: he likes action and Netflix presents to him the "action" thumb for the movie - even if the movie is not exactly John Wick.
People still like to get out of the house and go do something
I second this, but movie theaters no longer fill that gap for me.
I can only speak for myself. I used to enjoy going to the movies. At some point, how theaters are managed changed dramatically. If people were disrupting the movie, I could have the manager remove the person. This is no longer the case. Every manager I have interacted with in the last few years was passive and hands-off. I can't even get a refund if I have a bad experience. So my options are put up with the idiots, leave the theater, walk into a near-by theater playing the same film or risk a police incident if I remove the person. I have removed people and even had the manager thank me, but that is super risky and not my responsibility. Needless to say, movie theaters are no longer an immersive or enjoyable experience for me.
Or I can watch a movie at home, as many times as I wish without interruption. I have invite as many people as I wish. I can implement any sound system I desire. I don't have to wait for what might be a boring scene to use the restroom. It is a fully immersive and enjoyable experience. I just watched "Nobody" at home, twice. Great movie btw, highly recommended if you enjoyed John Wick but wished the fight scenes were a little more realistic in terms of the main character getting hurt in every fight. Some day I will get VR and make the movie even more immersive.
Is the same true of movies where a man goes on a killing spree ala Rambo or John Wick? Or videogames where one does the same? I'm trying to suss out the logic where one indulgence of fantasy through fiction is ok and the other isn't.
I don't think the John Wick movie is useful analogy. People are "dredging" these up to raise real questions about the judgement of someone who was hired to use that judgement to moderate their social networks.
Where I want to also see this extending is for the platform that Epic Games has created with the Unreal Engine. Should we be able to load in any skins that we could sell on our own store [- the users could decide to not allow/block them], etc? This would help counter Epic's ability to simply make skins that copy higher detail versions or make them look enough like other mainstream-popular characters, e.g. the skin that by users is called the "John Wick" skin - but it's not called that by Epic, so instead that movie franchise could have created and sold the John Wick skin on all game platforms for users to integrate if they allow [e.g. moving towards the Ready Player One movie].
Everything in a movie is a lie. All of it. The sound the music the writing. It is all a lie. Someone made it up and a group of people made it 'real'. But it is not real. The one thing that really nailed that home to me was the movie cobra. In the middle of a big fight he stops and drinks a coors beer. They had to stage it, film it, edit and foley it. There is a fractionally small amount of things we see on TV or movies that is real. Even what we watch on the news is an edited show done for effect. Once you know how the sausage is made the 'magic' is gone.
My biggest gripe with many movies is pacing. It is hard to get just right. You either move to fast and everything is a blur, or too slow and it is 'boring'. That is just me though. I enjoyed GI Joe but it is not something I am going to go back and re-watch anytime soon. Something like John Wick I have watched it a few times since it came out. It is full to the brim with tropes. But they are done very well.
I dunno, the latest Bond films, Tenet, John Wick, Inception, the Marvel Series, the Kingsmen series, etc.
I think we're moving away from it.
Maybe I just haven't seen enough new movies though, that could definitely be a possibility.
You could even argue that Copyright law itself, and particularly the DMCA provisions, are a violation of free speech.
Obviously practically this wouldn't be possible, but if I were to write down all binary digits that my blu-ray of John Wick has, give it to a friend, and they wrote those digits down in their computer to watch the movie, that would be illegal for copyright violation.
I'm not arguing that we shouldn't have copyright in any capacity (though I do think that US's model is especially draconian), just giving an example of a curtailment of free speech that isn't really controversial.
And here I thought the lesson was that in a world filled with assassins to the point of necessitating some code of conduct, where there is a man spoken of around the world as the Bogeyman, it is in particular a terrible idea to, after his retirement and the death of his lover, steal his car, kill his dog, and leave him for dead.
Spoiler warning:
I mean, yeah, there is some more food for thought in there :
-The violence endemic to the conflict between man and the system in which he operates: (Wick and the Continental)
-The face of violence embodied by the struggle between personal/professional loyalty: Wick, and the Manager of the Continental.
-The violent fruits of man's will to free himself of the constraints of a system designed specifically to constrain him: Wick's breaking of the code.
-The tendency of violence to beget and amplify itself in the absence of some braking force.
-That violence exists as a universal tool in the toolset of interpersonal conflict, and a view of the world if it were shaped around an organized deployment thereof outside of our current set of institutions that we entrust with controlling the application of violence.
C'mon though, let's not pretend the movie justifies anything. It's Art. It isn't there to be blamed as a causative factor, it's there to be appreciated and moved by. To make you think, feel, and give you a new perspective. If John Wick can be credibly pointed to as a causative factor of escalating violence, then clearly Andy Warhol caused obesity and consumerism with his soup can, Dali causes people to be tardy, Clive Cussler is a leading cause of totally badass and inexplicably effective oceanographer cum international crisis resolvers, H.G. Wells caused the atomic bomb, Orson Scott Card already laid out how we'll handle first contact, and Oscar Wilde created the surveillance hellscape in which we live.
We may be moved by what we see, but in the end it is we ourselves that are the causative factors. We react, we integrate, we sculpt spots for each other to settle into through what we knowingly and unknowingly do.
Does Art shape culture? Or culture shape Art? Are the Artists warning us of what is to come, or are they tangifying the steps in the direction society is already progressing towards? We can't say for certain, but in the absence of an authoritative answer, I'd wager there us a dynamic equilibrium at work that is starting to be compensated for, depending on where individual decisions of sentiment end up pointing.
> Alternatively, John Wick, and almost every other action movie, show us that violence - and killing people - is an effective and morally acceprable way of solving problems.
I don't think that's accurate. More like, John Wick implies that violence and murder of those above the law is an effective and morally acceptable way to solve the injustice they perpetrate. That's a much more reasonable position that will have plenty of people on both sides.
That's only because you chose the lessons that support whatever you wanted to prove.
Alternatively, John Wick, and almost every other action movie, show us that violence - and killing people - is an effective and morally acceprable way of solving problems. The distinction between violence and torture depictions is not as obvious as you want it to be.
You could say the same thing about most violence in movies though. Tonnes of popular action movies have the main character casually shooting dozens of people, and portray it in a positive light (ex. John Wick). I don't think it is necessarily a bad thing either, it is reasonable to have violence and torture as a plot point in a movie, and portraying that violence accurately would just be upsetting to the audience.
I enjoy deep philosophical exploratory stuff and at the same time love the quick respite that a movie like John Wick or a X-men provides. To each his own.
I wager hollywood and the video game industry drive more gun sales than the NRA and all the marketing firms hired by gun manufacturers combined. The John Wick movies probably sold more guns than a hundred editions of NRA magazines.
Or read a John Wick review, bought the movie tickets online or paid for the tickets with a credit card.
> I wonder why males saw a significant increase in suicides if the show revolved around a female suicide.
As someone who didn't watch the series: perhaps the story is male-oriented, even if the character is a woman?
As an example: imagine that you take the movie John Wick, redo the movie shot-by-shot and line-by-line with a woman replacing Keanu Reeves, and call it "Jean Wick". I bet it would still appeal to the exact same demographic.
I’m fine with this. Keanu’s action movies tend to have action that is actually creative and enjoyable to watch. Most fight scenes are really quite boring, but I’m happy to watch John Wick kill people for a few hours.
The Matrix is a good setting for action films. I won’t care terribly if it lacks the philosophical or sci fi aspects
If YouTube isn't for kids, why do they host videos that are clearly and explicitly targeting toddlers? For example: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=videos+for+toddlers
The most egregious thing, in my mind, is that YouTube wraps toddler videos in ads for things like the John Wick movie and local breweries in my area. The fact that this isn't a difficult problem to solve is the strongest indication that A) YouTube knows exactly what's going on, and B) they frankly do not care because they can make a buck off of showing shockingly inappropriate content to children.
It is partly due to new media however lets consider some other things which are really important.
1) The problem is that a lot of the remakes/sequels and reboots are quite frankly crap. I don't care too much about Disney. But other remakes and sequels are generally awful.
So lets take some case studies:
* Robocop (2013). The movie except for on 2 minute scene was dire. It was a PG-13 remake of what was at the time a shockingly violent film (the effects look awful now, but they were quite convincing back in the mid-90s still) that completely missed the point of the original movie.
* Ghostbusters (2016) was another movie that not only looked completely awful in the trailer, it completely again misunderstood the original movie, added nothing much new and they outright attacked the fandom after they said to the studio "What the hell are you doing". The original Ghostbusters movie wasn't really a comedy movie, it was a Action Horror with some Jokes. The new movie was just a comedy movie, which looked like a Spoof along the lines of "Scary Movie". I have no idea who they were marketing it towards.
Lets take sequels:
* They have also totally squandered two solid Sci-fi Action Movie franchises (Alien and Predator) to the point where the previous low points of the franchises look good (Alien vs Predator and Alien 3 & Alien 4: Resurrection).
* Star Wars has been completely ruined from a fan's perspective. The prequels (in the 2000s) has some terrible acting, iffy CGI now but I can at least appreciate what they were attempting to do and it was an honest attempt by Lucas to flesh out Star Wars universe. However the new Sequels go from "This is Okay, but it is the 1977 movie retold essentially" to terrible (The Last Jedi).
The Last Jedi doesn't make any sense on quite a number of levels. It also ruins one of beloved characters on screen and it was probably intentionally written to not only upset the fans but also kill the franchise i.e. there is at least one scene where Kylo Ren says to audience pretty much "Let the past die, kill if you have to", which is the director pretty much sticking his middle finger up to the fans. Yes in the scene he was speaking to whoever the main character is that doesn't seem to have a personality, but it was really a message from the director to the fans.
They also attacked the fan base (not a good move) because they didn't like a terrible movie. While the movies made money, they have tarnished the brand in the long term.
Disney bought Lucas Film because of Star Wars and monetising the fan base. Lucas Film under Kathleen Kennedy have tried driving away their a dedicated fan base. This strategy is madness.
2) The Hollywood Elite (and they are Elite) have forgotten they are actors and actively show distain for the audience. I don't really want to get into a political commentary, but they literally had The Avengers do an online piece of activism where they told the Electoral college to defy the 2016 Presidential Election result. This doesn't go unnoticed by the average movie goer. Just under half of the Country voted for the current president and then they do an advert where they are pretty much putting a middle finger up at the people who voted for Trump. A lot of those people took their kids to see those movies or saw went to see them themselves.
Audiences will forgive actors for quite a lot of things, but if they continually keep on pushing this audiences will associate them with their politics and not what roles they played.
They are actors. I want them to pretend to be Black Widow, not lecture me about Politics. I will go and listen to a political commentator if I wanted that.
3) Bollywood and the rest of Asia are making their own movies which kick ass. Take "The Raid 2". It has plenty of brutal fight scenes, but it also has a top quality plot about gangs, undercover cops etc. It is amazing to watch. A lot of guys are looking at overseas cinema because Hollywood isn't catering to them.
4) User generated content. I think the only movie I've watched recently was John Wick 1, 2 and 3. I recently listened to a recorded lecture series of the History of Islam on Youtube made by some guy who lives in Azerbaijan. I can listen for effectively nothing 1000s of hours of interviews of Joe Rogan and a Guest just talking for 3 hours about sometimes absolute nonsense or talking about say Leaving a Cult (Megan Phelps interview). I recently watched a series of lectures about the database as a filesystem from some Linux conference. There is a guy who made loads of mini-documentaries about old defunct computers systems and the quality now is on par with the Discovery Channel shows of the late 1990s.
5) Longer stories. Game of Thrones, The Wire and other shows that have very long running stories, lots of characters and complicated plots with lots of Lore have proven that audiences want more complicated stories. There is a guy called Alt-Shift-X on Youtube and he has huge number of people watching him and he just explains the Game of Thrones Lore of the Book vs the TV-series. Most Hollywood movies are pretty simple affairs in comparison.
I don't think he's shirked that reputation. He's just taken on roles that utilize that. See Matrix trilogy and the john wick movies. You don't need to have incredible acting chops to play a fairly stoic killer/Superman.
This has been a complaint especially in the adventure game community. If I go to the cinema to watch the endgame or a john wick movie, I pay 10 bucks for 2 hours of movies. A lot of AAA games are a bunch of boring filler with some interactivity, but you end up with a much worse money per minute ratio. If you discount cutscenes, I've spent 60 bucks on less than two hour of gameplay on some games.
Now, I could replay those games after some time. That improves my overall cost-benefit ratio from 60 bucks -> 2 hours of gameplay to 60 bucks -> 4 hours of gameplay. Or, if the game is good, even more. I have a bunch of adventure games I paid 10 bucks for, and I have replayed them a lot and I will replay them a lot.
However, if you have a AAA studio, they will consider a game a failure shortly after release. You get one play-through for 60$ and that's all you get, because then they shutdown the servers for their next thing. And of course they will "charge less" and "run updates" and "keep expansions going" and such so it's less obvious. I'm jaded at this point.
> The top audiences for Logan were actually a combination of superhero (which we already knew) and “rugged male action lead” (which we didn’t know with certainty). This can be better seen by noting that key “rugged male action lead” predictions like The Magnificent Seven (in blue above), John Wick (in green above) and Terminator Genisys (in blue above) were also present in the top 20 list of actual audiences. This result is a win-win because the new audience “adds” to the core superhero audience, and can potentially be used to extend the reach of the movie beyond that core audience.
I wish they'd include saturation and release dates as factors as I'm sure releasing a new rugged make lead superhero movie every week would have diminishing returns at some point.
Subtitles are literally just the scripted dialogue in textual form, so the copyright would belong to the studio (having purchased the script from the screenwriter).
Translated subtitles would be copyrighted by the translator under a derivative license from the studio owning the film.
Subtitles of the type you suggest don't currently exist as standalone products; the level of detail and information you are describing would require the subtitles to be part of the film itself (see e.g., Atomic Blonde or John Wick for good examples).
There are two John Wick movies that demonstrate the height of revenge fantasies over a dead dog. :)
Have you seen the John Wick movies?
This is garbage. Rotten Tomatoes are way too positive IMO. I have wasted good money on 95+/95+ movies only to find they were absolute rubbish. A good recent example is John Wick 2. I really like the first one, and based on the RT score I didn't think twice about going to watch the second. Only to find it was the most mind-numbing continuous violence I could even imagine, without the noir of the first one. And there were a string of similar movies that got unbelievable scores only to be absolutely average.
Yes some get terrible scores, and probably deserve it. But the worst crime is all these big blockbuster movies that are rated 98/99 and should be somewhere in the 60s or 70s.
My solution - just don't go to the movies, it has become an ongoing disappointment and waste of time. Wait for some critical YouTube reviews that actually analyse and explain in some depth why a movie is good or bad then maybe consider getting it on DVD or something.
You have to take 15-20% off for issue movies. Wonder Woman ended up being a stealth one.
John Wick is respected as a "craft" movie because of its stuntwork and fight choreography. Same as Dunkirk and The Revenant, but those were appreciated on cinematography, etc.
So, yes, movies loved for their craftsmanship do tend to outperform the quality of their storytelling.
Those who say there is no VR content typically do not own a major headset. There are at least 236 VR apps on Steam[1], well over 300 on the Oculus Store for Rift (I stopped counting after 300 - click "show all" under Browse All at the link below)[2], more for GearVR, and more for PlayStation. Many of these are duplicates, but not all. There are multiple other stores, including WEARVR.com, itch.io, Viveport, the Oculus GearVR store, Google Play store, PlayStation Store, and others.
Numerous 360 video portals and creators present and produce content including BBC, Disney, National Geographic, New York Times, etc. VR tie-ins to feature films include Spiderman Homecoming, John Wick, Games of Thrones, and many others.
Companies such as Volkswagen use VR for training and development. SIs such as Accenture have built practices to support enterprise adoption of VR and AR technology for manufacturing, training, and advertising.
Though a lot of content includes thin "experiences," there are so many high quality, rich applications and games that a backlog (more content than time) is a common problem for working adults. Oculus alone will be publishing a major game each month through the end of the year. Fallout, Skyrim, and other game titles are getting the VR treatment as well.
Content is not the problem. The outdated perception of a lack of content is a huge problem.
[1] http://store.steampowered.com/vr/#p=0&tab=TopSellers [2] https://www.oculus.com/experiences/rift/ [3] https://www.volkswagen-media-services.com/en/detailpage/-/detail/Volkswagen-Group-is-backing-virtual-reality-solutions-for-interactive-collaboration-in-production--logistics/view/5269723
Good point, but the James Bond of nowadays (Jack Reacher, john wick, etc...) are all American movies now.
I agree completely. The only recent movies that I can recall that got firearms handling even remotely correct were the two John Wick movies. Keanu Reeves went out and trained, and got good enough at 3-gun and similar shooting sports that he is actually competitive at the national level.
Context is the king.
Ads acceptable only when their subject matches context of browsing and the user intent. And works only when done in non-interruptible manner. If you break context and/or flow, people get uncomfortable, frustrated, angry. Angry people will install ad-blockers.
Some examples:
- if you search for a solution on how to fix a fridge, then fridge ads are acceptable. Google does exactly that in their search.
- if you're on sports stats tracking site, then athletic gear, food, etc are acceptable
- if I search stackoverflow for specific problem with my code - NO ads please, I'm not in a mood to buy something.
- in movies: John Wick is using TTI Glock 17 - having TTI ad near is perfectly fine (people will crave to know what's those cool things he's using). I.e. product placement is the way to go. What's happening on TV? You're watching Keanu shredding through the movie, then it suddenly stops and Chevy ad coming in. WTF?!111
Supply and demand. A thing is worth what another is willing to pay for it.
Those $5 streaming "rentals" are for those actually willing to pay $5 to watch that movie right now. It's worth it to them. Eventually the $5 rental crowd is satiated, and the "not more than $4" crowd gets a chance as the price is lowered to match what others are willing to pay for it. Eventually that price tapers off to "$8/month buffet" and ends up on my Netflix queue.
They DO lower the cost - as those willing to pay higher prices do so, are satiated, and the audience temporal/economic demographics shift. It's not just about price per rental, it's price plus time per rental. Some movies I'll pay $15 to watch on day of release; some I'll happily "spend" time waiting for so I only spend $1 to watch it.
And yes, I'd happily get "that, here, now" for $5 rather than pile 4 people into the car, drive to Blockbuster, ask if they have it, find out the 2 copies are out, and wander the aisles for an hour reviewing what they do have and picking something ("Masters of the Universe"!) just to not completely waste the whole exercise (and decide that just leaving would have been better than watching "Masters of the Universe" only because it was the only thing vaguely appealing at the moment). Even with Redbox I at least have the option of looking for something new in particular and reserving it, from whichever of several nearby locations, for $2 from the convenience of my phone. Come John Wick 2 I'll have already pre-ordered it and be watching it, without the crowd, the moment it's available (and happy to pay the $19 to do so, having seen John Wick twice thanks to the $1 streaming specials).
I have been noticing something curious for a while.
It feels as if, in various fields, some kind of test is being carried out to "test the waters", to see how much shit one can get away without being called out by people..
In hollywood, this manifest itself as blockbuster movies. Superhero movies, Christopher nolan movies movies like John wick, Madmax fury road etc.
I mean look at this shot from the trailer of a war movie from Nolan
https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/5ieu3i/the_bombs_in_dunkirk_required_you_to_throw/
And another mixup from the same movie
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-3732234/One-smirking-extra-accused-ruining-trailer-WWII-film-Dunkirk.html
It is unbelievable that this is from a movie from one of the biggest names in Hollywood! This is the continuation of the sound mixing issues of his previous movie..
People did point to these issues, but they gets drowned in a million apologetic voices...
In this cases, the propaganda appears in form of Hype. The hype generation machinery starts working years before the actual release of the movie.
And when it has completely run its course, what you will have is a body of people who will pay to see the movie, and - this is the important part - will be blown no matter what and will not stop talking about it. It is as if they are under some spell or something.
And no, I don't think only your average joe is susceptible for this manipulation. Even professional movie reviewers will fall for this.
In programming world, you see this happen with things like git. I am not saying Linus is running a propaganda on purpose. But may be, it just so happened because of his god like status in the minds of the people...
And I think with these recent events, we are seeing how far the rabbit hole goes....
You're just going to the wrong movies. There are action-no-talking films. Basically anything made by Michael Bay, for example. John Wick or The Raid 2 if you're not into CGI action. Anything made by Stallone in the last decade. There are plenty of Asian imports as well.