***SPOILERS for JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 4 ahead***
Breaking the rules has its consequences.
John Wick learns as much by the end of 2017’s John Wick 2. After killing crime boss Santino D’Antonio on the Continental’s sacred grounds, Wick finds himself on the run. Suddenly, nowhere is safe for the lifelong hitman. John Wick 3 finds its titular character on the run, evading assassination attempts from every corner of the globe.
Of course, Wick never wanted to break the rules. He thought he had retired from a life of crime, but the senseless killing of his dog — a parting gift from his dying wife — sent Wick back into his old life, digging up blood oaths (and bloodbaths) Wick had hoped to leave in the past. It may seem unfair, but it couldn’t be fairer.
Action. Reaction. Rinse. Repeat. For breaking the rules has its consequences…sometimes.
Wick’s experiences in his eponymous film franchise may represent a perfect balance of rules and their consequences, but surely we are not naïve enough to expect the same from our own reality. In fact, I would posit that John Wick’s appeal stems from the satisfying precision of its universe (the operatic action sequences don’t hurt either).
Across the franchise’s four films, director Chad Stahelski has established an intriguing separation between Wick and the world around him. Even as he engages in extensive combat, Wick’s environment remains rather still. John Wick: Chapter 4 sees its protagonist punch and shoot his way through rooftop clubs and navigate the heavy traffic of Paris’ Place de de l'Étoile. And yet, his surroundings rarely express the kind of interest or bewilderment we might expect. But this is a feature, not a bug. It might be tempting to recoil at these incongruities and label them as plot holes, but they only underscore the ballet that is the Wick universe. At times, the background is but a splash of color, a curtain against which the action in the foreground may unfold. The world is a stage and Wick (or perhaps more accurately, Keanu Reeves) is its star. And in this performance, everything hangs in a careful balance.
For all its violence, the John Wick franchise has maintained a kind of beauty throughout its lifetime. Chapter 4 elevates this visual acuity, merging its silky smooth gun-fu with an expansive color palette. Every frame is soaked in a deep orange or blue hue, rendering the broader experience so seamless and satisfying, it is difficult to extricate its thin narrative from its painterly imagery. For Wick’s storytelling may be thin, but it is never flimsy. Even as Chapter 4 maintains the previous films’ comically sparse dialogue, Stahelski makes his influences more apparent than ever before.
Even beyond its tributes to the samurai films of Japan or the wuxia films of China (not to mention its explicit honoring of David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia in one of the film’s very first scenes), Chapter 4 transcends film itself. Evoking video games, comics, and the fine arts, Stahelski reminds us of the rules that govern them all. The narrative of John Wick may abide by a strict moral code, but the liberties taken elsewhere are easily incorporated into the universe’s logic by virtue of how they are packaged and framed. The absurd physics of this world — as well as Wick’s extreme tolerance for pain — make perfect sense when viewed from the top-down like a game of Hotline Miami or the franchise-inspired John Wick Hex. Indeed, each entry in the Wickiverse is structured like a game. Wick navigates through different “levels”, each of which culminate in a boss fight. He is often sent on side quests in order to gain the trust of others, and these quests are often accompanied by a new weapon or skill. And you ever notice dead bodies in the John Wick universe tend to just disappear? Or is it despawn? For an environment so heavily drenched in blood, the world of John Wick is shockingly good at keeping itself clean.
The system preserves itself. It makes itself possible. Breaking the rules has consequences.
Action. Reaction. Rinse. Repeat.
If only our own systems were that efficient. They certainly aspire towards a similar style of self-preservation.
Capitalism. Government. These are both spheres where bugs are actually features, and inefficiencies are simply a matter of design.
The sheer amount of guns in the John Wick franchise should serve as a sobering reminder of the dangerous imbalance we face every day in the United States. Without introducing a referendum on the role of violence in film — I tend to enjoy it, personally — we still might question how we have grown so comfortable with those onscreen weapons of murder occupying such an outsized role in our own lives. For all their comfort with killing, the criminals of the Wick underworld remain respectfully governed by the Continental chain of hotels. Only Wick himself knowingly violates the rules set forth by the Continental, and he faces the consequences accordingly.
Again, there is a satisfying tidiness to this world — both narratively and aesthetically — that is incompatible with ours. I wrote about the inherent limits of modern storytelling a few years back, but as tragedy and incompetence continue to overwhelm American society at every level, those limits feel especially frustrating. With 125 mass shootings and counting so far in 2023, perhaps the only thing we share with the Wickiverse is the stillness of its backdrop, its populace’s indifference towards the violence right before their eyes. In the film, such indifference serves to propel the action forward. So long as the environment allows it, the show may continue.
Admittedly, rules start to feel a bit less interesting in this context. Made to be broken, and all that jazz.
John Wick defies the Continental’s most essential mandate out of desperation, and who can blame him? The Continental’s set of rules and regulations may guarantee a certain right to ascension amongst the assassins of the underworld, but homeostasis remains the objective. After four films, John Wick finds that he can only find freedom in shattering the thorough equilibrium facilitated by the Continental. He therefore finds that freedom can only be found in death. And what is fair about that?
So even as Stahelski’s style falls in line with the well-regulated world he has created, the Wick films are best understood as exercises in awareness rather than endorsement. Our attention is drawn to various conventions, which are just as quickly circumvented or — better yet — reinvented.
Believe it or not, the franchise shares DNA with a couple other recent releases. The Scream franchise is nothing if not an exercise in awareness of genre tropes and trappings. Scream VI carries that mantle with pride, speaking to a cultural moment in which that awareness isn’t quite as impressive as it used to be. TikToks, Tweets, and Letterboxd reviews have made discussion of these elements more accessible than ever before, and Scream VI tasks directors Matt Bellinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett with developing a fresh batch of insights for a new generation of horror enthusiasts.
Outside of a few good-natured jokes, the duo channels this directive with a strong sense of exasperation. Scream VI is a lot of fun, but it can’t hide from the franchise fatigue that inevitably settles in for a series nearly 30 years into its existence. “You know you’re like the tenth guy to try this, right?” asks Gale Weathers (Courtney Cox) during her phone call with the killer.
Even when the film as at its most innovative, it begs us to put it out of its misery. Scream VI cleverly subverts the franchise’s traditional opening by quickly revealing Jason (Tony Revolori) to be the one beneath the Ghostface mask. But Jason soon falls victim to another Ghostface. Just as bewildered as we are, Jason complains that this is not how the movies usually operate. “Who gives a fuck about the movies?” responds the killer.
John Wick: Chapter 4 is not without this same sense of exasperation. In one of the movie’s funnier moments, Wick climbs the never-ending steps of Montmartre only to be kicked from the top and sent flying down to the bottom once again. The scene embodies the futility of Wick’s existence. He is caught in an endless loop of running and killing. As Chapter 4’s ending seems to suggest, this loop will continue so long as the franchise must continue (even with Wick’s death, Reeves is confirmed to reprise his role in the spin-off Ballerina film).
They may be great movies on their own — and there may be something especially twisted about a pair of films profiting off of our shared frustration with the franchise model they represent — but John Wick: Chapter 4 and Scream VI both implore us to demand better from our cinema. And in doing so, they implore us to demand better from our institutions, rules be damned.
Another directing duo joined this conversation just this past weekend. John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein already exhibited an awareness of the rules that govern both movies and games with 2018’s excellent Game Night, but this year’s Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves embraces rules — or the lack thereof — as its primary preoccupation.
Paying tribute to the tabletop RPG from which it gets its name, Dungeons & Dragons finds its cast of colorful characters constantly introducing, revoking, and rewriting the rules necessary to achieve their goal. If Wick and Scream are all about awareness of rules and regulations, Dungeons & Dragons is about disregarding them entirely. Edgin (Chris Pine) emphasizes the importance of failure, of allowing yourself to disobey and disregard all that stands in your way. It’s a lovely theme, and it leads to several stunning set pieces in the film. But it is also made possible by a film untethered from franchise obligations. The popularity of the film’s underlying IP — not to mention its strong opening weekend — may engender an onslaught of sequels after all, but the film’s success can momentarily be attributed to the liberating nature of standing on its own.
Our films are telling us what they want. Telling us what we need. But our systems are rooted in self-preservation. Bodies despawn, and our collective conscience is kept clean.