- This shit got weird.
- Remember John Wick?
- The first one?
- Keanu mostly just shot Russian mobsters in that one.
- Willem Dafoe was in it.
- You totally forgot that Willem Dafoe was in the first John Wick picture, didn’t you?
- It was an adorable little action film, well shot and written, that involved a taciturn Canadian murdering half of the Russian mob because one of them killed his dog.
- They made Keanu sad.
- He made them dead.
- That was the whole plot, but sprinkled over the action was some crazy nerd bullshit about a secret society of assassins.
- The revenge was the fine, marbled chop; the crazy nerd bullshit was pepper ground by an attentive waiter.
- And then came the second and third movies, where the waiter removed his pants and started beating your date with the pepper mill.
- First movie: Keanu lives in New Jersey and has a cool car.
- Third movie: Keanu goes on a visionquest through the Sahara and meets the King of Assassins.
- There’s a Ron Burgundy quote that applies perfectly to this trilogy.
- WHICH IS NOT A TRILOGY.
- Spoilers.
- The third one, John Wick: Paramecium, ends on a cliff-hanger.
- At its shortest, we’re talking about a quadrilogy.
- Which isn’t even a word, man.
- The John Wick Universe is apparently just gonna keep going on forever like the Marvel Cinnamon Universe.
- Except instead of dozens of heroes, each with different abilities and personalities, there’s just Keanu in his suit shooting people in the head and saying around ten lines per film.
- And half of those lines are “Yeah.”
- The character is stolid.
- Unforthcoming.
- No chatterbox, he.
- Anyway, there’s some sort of United Nations of Crime going on right underneath our noses and, good lord: the accouterments.
- There’s a special currency in the form of gold coins, the value of which fluctuates wildly from scene to scene.
- One will secure you a hotel room in Manhattan.
- Or buy you a drink at the hotel’s bar.
- Or a magical bulletproof suit.
- These items should not be the same price.
- I don’t how this secret society is making any money; there seems to be a shaky economic foundation to the whole endeavor.
- And there are Markers and Tickets and Tokens, and one can request Safe Passage or demand Parlay.
- And, of course, you got your Hobo Kings.
- Can’t do this sort of thing without attracting a Hobo King or two.
- The homeless are…the underworld’s internet?
- The films were not clear on the specifics of their imagined reality.
- And they might be forgiven this lapse, as this reality is one in which men on horseback are allowed to battle motorcycle ninjas on the Manhattan Bridge.
- Which is illegal even during the Puerto Rican Day parade.
- The John Wick Universe does not run on logic.
- It’s all Rule of Cool, baby.
- Sure, you could ask yourself silly questions.
- “Is there really a market for quite this many preternaturally-skilled, high-dollar assassins?”
- “Does anyone making these films understand how bulletproofing technology works?”
- “Seriously, how long is the man-on-horse/motorcycle-ninja fight on the Manhattan Bridge going to be permitted to go on for?”
- But that would make you a wiener.
- Secret assassin societies are cool, and so there are secret assassin societies.
- Okay, let’s see if I can do the plots to each.
- I will, as you might expect, employ the tenets of Without Research.
- Here we go:
- John Wick I: One
- He was retired, man.
- He wasn’t that guy anymore.
- Maaaaaaan.
- Keanu literally–LITERALLY–buried his guns in the ground.
- He couldn’t shoot them anymore.
- And he lived with Bridget Moynahan in an art house in New Jersey.
- The thing was all glass.
- Philip Johnson would have thought it was too much glass.
- It’s the sort of surfeit of glass that you, the experienced action movie-watcher, just know is getting a rocket launched through it.
- It is also, however, the kind of house that the character of John Wick–the deadliest man in the world–would never in a million years live in.
- …
- Sorry.
- I started questioning the logic.
- The house looks cool, and therefore Keanu and his cool car and his hot wife live there.
- She dies.
- And I recall it being sudden.
- Like, they’re walking along, and she looks all hot, and then BOOM dead.
- Brain aneurysm or something.
- Somehow, though, Bridget Moynahan has foreseen her own death and arranged for Keanu to receive a puppy.
- Just go with it.
- Now, at first, Keanu rejects the puppy, which is unbearably adorable.
- Then–and you’re gonna be shocked when I tell you this–Keanu lets the puppy into his heart.
- Li’l fucker’s dead.
- It’s an action movie.
- Keanu’s wife is already dead, so the bad guys can’t kill her to make him go all shooty-shooty.
- Puppy’s not so much a dog as it is an inciting incident.
- So, you know: he had to die.
- And then Keanu shoots everyone the budget will allow, which is not very many at all.
- John Wick II: The Wick and the Dead
- That Australian lesbian is in this one.
- The super-hot one with the awful tattoos and the ridiculous name.
- Ginger Snaps?
- Diamond Pants?
- Sven Nykvist?
- …
- Ruby Rose.
- (Fine, fine, I looked something up. Sue me.)
- I hold that none of the names I made up are sillier than the one she made up.
- She plays a mute assassin.
- And Common is in it.
- He plays a corny rapper assassin.
- Common is just corporate KRS-One.
- I feel that at at least one point in his life Common has delivered a lecture on Marcus Garvey to Google employees.
- That is how I feel.
- I also feel that, somehow, he and Alicia Keys are the same person.
- The logistics are beyond me.
- The two are seen in the same room quite often.
- I don’t give a shit: they’re the same person.
- Like I wrote, the first one was a taut revenge flick that propelled itself forward via Keanu’s murderous lurch; there was also a bit of crazy nerd bullshit.
- The CNB takes over in the sequel.
- It turns out there’s assassins fucking everywhere, man.
- That guy who just sold you a hot dog?
- Assassin!
- The hot dog itself?
- Also an assassin!
- The assassins are controlled by something called the High Table, which means everyone who works for them works “under the table” hahaha, and the seats at said table are controlled by the heads of the world’s crime organizations.
- Mafia, Yakuza, a nice showing for the Camorra.
- Camorra get no love compared to the Mafia.
- They’re the Dom DiMaggio to the Mafia’s Joe.
- And a bunch of other international syndicates, I suppose; it was not delved into.
- Disney should be represented, obviously.
- And the ‘Ndrangheta.
- They NEVER get any love.
- They’re Vince DiMaggio.
- You didn’t even remember there was a Vince DiMaggio, did you?
- That’s the poor ‘Ndrangheta.
- Just because their name looks like a typewriter had a stroke.
- And, you know, the murders and corruption which have poisoned their home turf of Calabria.
- But mostly the name.
- Keanu kills everybody, but the High Table is pissed at him and sends every assassin in the world looking for him.
- John Wick III: Wickipedia
- Every assassin in the world is looking for Keanu.
- Luckily, he has hidden magickal items in a book at the New York Public Library.
- To get there, he hails a cab.
- “New York Public Library,” Keanu says to the hack.
- “Which of the 92 branches are you referring to, sir?”
- “The big one! With the lions! The one everyone knows!”
- “Oh, you mean the Main Branch. You here on vacation, freakishly-intense man who’s covered in blood?”
- Okay, that didn’t happen.
- But the thing where Keanu got in the cab and asked to go to the “New York Public Library” was, and it was simply so odd.
- That’s not how you say it, Keanu.
- You’re familiar with the area and its inhabitants peculiar dictions.
- You live in Jersey, remember?
- You should know how to give directions in a cab without it getting weird.
- Anyway, then he beats a giant to death with the book he went to find.
- Real giant.
- Boban Marjanović.
- Look him up.
- Eats villagers, tosses boulders around, beanstalk fetish: giant.
- Keanu, as I said, beats him to death with a book.
- Enter: the ninja.
- Ninjas?
- Ninjae?
- Whatever: there are now ninjas.
- I gotta give the filmmakers credit for showing the restraint to wait until the third flick to throw in ninjas.
- Also: killer dogs commanded by Halle Berry.
- She had not done a film with this much action in it, and she took the part to show that women of her age can still not know how to act.
- Honestly: the woman does not know how to act.
- And yet she is given an emotional speech about a daughter or something.
- Yargle bargle, I don’t give a fuck, SIC THE DOGS ON FOREIGNERS!
- Oh, I forgot to mention that Keanu is in Casablanca now, because in the Wickiverse, Casablanca is a sanctuary city, but it’s also not.
- Again: don’t think too much about it.
- It is at this point where the John Wick Cinematic Universe goes completely, glorious, angelically insane: Keanu takes a visionquest through the Sahara Desert to find the King of Assassins.
- Arab Satan, basically.
- He doesn’t have the pointy shoes, but he’s got everything else: flowing robes, and the turban, and the tent open to the four winds.
- Rugs like you’ve never seen before.
- And he makes Keanu chop off his own finger.
- I’ve watched too many movies where dudes get their fingers chopped off.
- Arab Satan is like, “You can live if you go kill Al Swearengen.”
- And Keanu’s all, “Yeah.”
- Oh, Ian McShane is in these movies.
- He’s in charge of The Continental, which is a hotel for super-villains.
- Both he and it are very dignified.
- Wood and marble and decanters of scotch every ten feet.
- Walls of books.
- Club chairs.
- The help is deferential in precisely the correct way.
- Swanky place, braj.
- And then Keanu shoots people in the head with a shotgun.
- Which is a nice change from his usual pistol.
- Gotta switch it up.
- And then Al Swearengen shoots Keanu, who falls off a six-or-seven story buiding onto concrete.
- He’s fine, though.
- Remember before when I mentioned Hobo Kings?
- Yeah, a Hobo King rescues Keanu.
- This all started out with a dead dog.
Musings on the Most Ridiculous Band I Can't Stop Listening To
© 2026 Thoughts On The Dead
Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑
SWEGEN! WU!