Morgan Rowland, Stu220082@apslearns.org
Imagine this: you get shot, stabbed, shot again, blown up, hit by a motorcycle, stitched up by a shady doctor, shot numerous more times, stabbed again and then to top it all off you're betrayed by your friend and shot THREE more times after all of that to then fall off a building. You’d assumed you’d already be dead but not if you’re John Wick. John Wick is the main character of the John Wick movies which take place in a sprawling world of deceptions, assassins and criminal underworld galore. As far as I know these movies are not satirical, they’re meant to be real nitty gritty action dramas which they’re fine as but they would be 100x better if they were taken as satire.
What sets John Wick off on his rampage of violence is that some Russian brats who work for his old boss steal his car and kill his dog right after his wife died of cancer. Which is just perfect commentary about how in action movies it usually takes very little to set the men in them off and the catalyst of their crime is usually a woman who rarely exists as a character outside of being the wife of the main man. After this there is a whole story about how Wick killed 3 men in a bar with a pencil which is an amazing way to mock the otherworldly skill assassins are usually given in these types of movies with no formal explanation of how they came to acquire this talent. Then there is the excessive, often over the top level of violence coupled with continued abuse and violence that is enacted upon wick yet he gets up and is still always ticking. Again, the man gets shot and falls off of a building and he’s not fine but he’s alive and able to walk which is not how most people would have ended up in that same situation.
But even with all that the things that would most make John Wick work much better a satire is the Character of Perkins. Perkins is an associate of John Wick known only as her last name whom he meets when he goes to the Continental for safe haven while he plans his next move. Perkins is originally set up to be a possible love interest of John Wick until she tries to kill him while in the Continental, which has no violence on the premises rule, and it’s revealed he’s working for the enemy. Wick then leaves her to be babysat by another colleague whom she then killed to escape. After this she helps kill a couple more people including a friend of Wicks but tis then called by the person who owns the Continental. She goes to meet him and is immediately shot execution style after being told her membership to the continental has been revoked. The sole and entire purpose of her character was to demonstrate what the Continental will do to you if you break your rules which is relevant since the enemy that Wick faces in the 3rd movie if the COntinental for killing a man on Continental grounds.
Perkins is barely a character; she doesn’t even have a proper name, which is a perfect example of how women are treated in action movies. Ornament, barely functional only as plot devices or tools of the male main character advancement and Perkins falls so heavily into this trope that if these movies were satire she’d be amazing commentary but they’re not. THese are actual serious movies and all of these beautiful commentaries aren’t commentaries, they're things that somebody seriously wrote and was like “yeah, this is it.” It’s honestly almost funny how tone deaf and just poorly written these movies are and how much potential they could’ve had if the writer really understood the faults of the action genre. All this being said I’m still going to see the 4th one and it’ll probably be just as “good.”
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