(major spoilers for John Wick and Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica)
I did not enjoy John Wick.
There were definitely some good moments. The introduction of a dog that the film gave plenty of screen time to allow the audience to attach to it, and its subsequent death was genuinely sad, and it really didn’t feel as cheap as it ought to for such a contrived inciting incident — making a really strong start to the film. I really loved the inclusion of Marcus, someone who initially appears to be a friend of Wick and then later is hired to kill him, a task Marcus agrees to without hesitation. However, there’s this excellent scene where Marcus has his sniper sights on Wick from the rooftops where he sees another sneaking up on Wick. Marcus misses his shot, alarming Wick and causing him to notice his assailant behind him. Here the audience is left with a fascinating moment of ambiguity; did Marcus miss because he hesitated a bit too long recalling his relationship with Wick and so he needed to rush his shot so he could kill Wick before the assailant struck and claimed the bounty, or did he intentionally miss to alert Wick to his assailant? An excellent dilemma foreshadowed by his appearance in the funeral scene at the beginning of the film and foreshadowing Marcus later saving Wick’s life again (in a far less ambiguous manner). His later conversation with Wick about how his old life never left him is one of the few instances of the much needed thematic content of the film (the other being the scene where Wick is captured).
But the rest of the film? It lacks these themes, moments of genuine character, and emotional core that makes stories interesting. Almost any given scene of the film could be replaced with the simple words “they fight” flashing across the screen without making the other scenes incomprehensible. Everyone besides Marcus has barely any character, the audience immediately knows how any given character will react to any given situation within 5 seconds of seeing them. Wick will coldly kill whoever is in his way in pursuit of revenge. Viggo will act in his own self interest and like a generic mob boss (except for one scene at the end when he starts breaking down and laughing, the one moment where his character was genuinely interesting). The rest of the film is simply a power fantasy watching an emotionless man make muzzle flashes appear on the screen. The entire film is mindless action.
But what makes good action? Generally, I like to classify action in two ways — systems action and character action. Systems action is when the fight is treated am a puzzle with laid out rules and systems, where the audience asks “how will the protagonist pull through this situation” and watch as a character does something creative to gain the advantage. The most extreme example I can pull of this is magic systems, such as those in JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, in Brandon Sanderson’s novels, or in the traps of Home Alone (where the magic system is simple physics). Here the rules of the system are laid out clearly, and the character must use their powers and tools in inventive ways to succeed, and seeing these inventive ways is extremely exciting. Alternative, there is character-led action, where the action is treated almost as a simple dialogue scene, revealing more about the characters and helping them communicate their ideology or themes. One of my favorite examples is from Puella Magi Madoka Magica, where we see Sayaka Miki (after discovering that her contract with the spirit Kyuubey has trapped her in what is effectively a living hell) attack the monsters she fights with a brutality and anger completely unseen prior in the series, a brutality completely uncharacteristic of Sayaka. Her emotions and character (the pain she is feeling and the violence she inflicts to vent it) is communicated through her actions in the action scene.
Or, for one of the best examples in modern anime, we can look at Midoriya’s fight with Todoroki in Season 2 of My Hero Academia, the singular best battle in the entire series. Here Midoriya is trying to get Todoroki to accept his relationship with his father and the influence that has had on him, something eating him inside. This is symbolically communicated through Todoroki refusing to use the fire powers he inherented from his father, instead stubbornly only using the ice powers he inherited from his mother. A ton of characterization is communicated through the various aspects of this fight, but when Todoroki uses his fire power to win the battle against Midoriya, this battle marks the first step to Todoroki reconciling with his father. Cutting this battle would have significant ramifications on Todoroki’s character.
Almost any fight scene inevitably uses some combination of these two lenses, but the problem is John Wick is extremely low on both. We can see Wick’s character through the action, he’s a cold blooded assassin so he shoots his enemies quickly and rarely misses, but that’s it. There’s no depth, no growth, nothing to make his character interesting and nothing in the action that pushes his characterization at all (contrast this with how much character Marcus’ actions showed and how the audience’s understanding of him changed through that action scene). And the action doesn’t fair much better from a systems lens either. The vast majority of the time it’s simply just Wick pulling the trigger and shooting a guy in the head. Sometimes there are moments where he’s overpowered on the ground or in a choke hold and the audience wonder how Wick escapes, wonder that is usually met with the boring response of Wick punching someone for the hundredth time before then shooting them. This isn’t good action, it’s uninteresting. This stems from other aspects of the film putting the action in a tight spot (such as Wick not being a particularly interesting character, him not having other interesting characters to bounce off of, and the focus on semi-realistic gunplay the basic premise brings about). But these issues could’ve been avoided, or at least the action could be cut down to compensate for its lack of quality. But so much of the film is simply this mindless action, with little else to truly elevate the material.
