How the four ‘John Wick’ movies have used sci-fi tricks to reinvent action cinema

There’s an old fan theory that says that ‘john wick‘ is actually a science fiction saga. Despite the improbability of its convoluted action sequences happening in the real world, there is other evidence that, at the very least, the world of John Wick is a parallel reality. There is, of course, the amazing resistance of the opponents, able to withstand one shot after another without flinching, which makes them metahumans. But also, we rarely see “normal” people: only murderers who circulate isolated in their own world, with their buildings, customs… and even their own currency. We are in a parallel reality.

It is a theory that does not take itself too seriously (it is clear what fictional world John Wick poses and why “normal” people do not appear in the films), but it helps us to understand what resources he has used the franchise to become the highly respected saga it is today. Of course, leaving aside its obvious virtues when it comes to action: there’s simply nothing comparable being done in Hollywood right now. But from a world-building standpoint, what has ‘John Wick’ learned from science fiction?

On the one hand, there is the importance that the saga gives to a lore consistent. Any science fiction and fantasy author knows that what is important is not only to define what we see, but also what we do not see, the background that supports that world that is in sight. The ‘John Wick’ script is so fine-tuned that We understand that every time a coin or marker is exchanged, there is an established meaning behind it.. This is pure construction loreand this is so relevant that when a series has been announced, it has not been made of a “John Wick: Origins’, but is going to try to the origins of the mainland.

And this treatment of the scenario so typical of fantasy creators, who know that they have to give the necessary explanations for the viewer (or reader) to identify as three-dimensional a world that is also, at the same time, different from their own, not only affects to environments. Also the characters. That’s why that running gag that the mere mention of John Wick’s name is enough to let people know exactly who we’re talking about and why it’s a bad idea to swear with his car is not only funny and, at the same time, cool. It is also a way to build a lore from fictional worlds: it’s a quick way to give it a past and integrate it into the context of this universe, even if we don’t know the details.

John Wick, the open world

There is something that fantasy in general and science fiction in particular do very well, and that is to bastardize its elements. Mix them without complexes. When trying to portray a coherent and realistic world in, say, a divorce drama or a serious mob movie, it’s important keep your feet on the ground. Do not get carried away by the temptation of narrative stridencies or excesses: People are people, not movie characters.

However, fantasy and science fiction do not have these limitations: that is why ‘Star Wars’ can afford to have a science fiction setting with elements of medieval fantasy and western drops. And everything works because they are the rules of Lucas and his lore it is firmly established for coherence. ‘John Wick’ knows that we are not in a realistic movie about contract killers, and plays into this mix of elements. The most obvious, those of western, both in the plot (the lonely hero, the refuge that everyone respects) and in the visual (‘john wick 4‘ begins, literally, with a horse chase in a desert).

The John Wick movies take it even further, and go to the bastardization of its very essence: martial arts. What if we mix a guy who does judo with one who does kung fu, another who does muay-thai, a sumo wrestler and a karate fighter? You know the result: the action is refreshing and novel, and everything comes from that lack of prejudice when it comes to mixing concepts and that it inherits from non-realist genres.

All these elements come together in the fourth installment of the saga, the most openly epic and bastard of the entire franchise. There are mob bosses who are like final bosses of a fighting video game from the eighties, and a climax that combines classic violence -almost romantic- with the usual brutality in the saga. And we are allowed to glimpse the operation, the hierarchies of the always mysterious High Table that controls everything. That is to say, the thing acquires overtones of space opera urban, which sometimes plays ‘Dune’ (breeds, monsters, deserts and the mysticism of tiger nuts) and sometimes ‘Final Fight’. Or how to look like everything to look like nothing.

From what was an old-fashioned revenge story in the first film we have come to a certain epic of self-knowledge based not on the character, but on the world that has created himwhich brings us not only to icons like Frankenstein (what is John Wick but a collage human being of the best assassins on the planet) but to the very narrative dynamics of those space operas that we mentioned Science fiction without laser beams, construction of the lore pulling resources seasoned a thousand times in the fantasy of a lifetime

Header: Diamond Films

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