John Wick's Secret Weapon...

or, how to give the audience something very new by offering them something very old

I’ve been meaning for awhile to start writing on films I admire and how they influence my own screenwriting practice. These will be less reviews than snapshots of shit I’ve observed in films I love. Some will be short, some will be more extensive.

I think the John Wick phenomenon is sometimes underrated as just being this fluke convergence having to do with our continual love affair with Keanu Reeves and our enjoyment of amazing practical stunts and cool cinematic visuals and our love of our dogs. That's all at play, of course. But I think there’s also this: it's a rare modern story that’s ultimately about honor.

In the first film, John loses his wife. Then a gangster's idiot son kills the puppy she got for him and steals John's car. Then John seeks revenge.

Because of this setup, I think the Wick franchise can be mistaken as being about grief. Or revenge. And sure, it is about those things.

But in my view, John Wick goes on a four film killing spree not just out of grief, but because the sacred code of honor that he upheld was profanely broken. It would’ve been simpler and easier in the first film for John’s wife to have been killed by a rival assassin, or by the relative of someone he’d killed in his former life. Hell, the gangster’s idiot son could’ve killed John’s wife while stealing John’s car.

But that’s not what happens. His wife dies of illness. Her departing act of love is to gift John with a puppy, which becomes a symbol of her and the worthiness of life itself. If he hadn’t crossed paths with the idiot son, John would’ve been willing to go on with his grief and his peaceful life. But the idiot son kills the symbol of his wife’s love: the dog.

In the movies, a dog dying is more impactful than a character dying most of the time. So there’s that motivation from a storytelling POV. But I also think there’s something else going on. I think the killing of a symbol introduces us to the inner logic of this whole world. The John Wick universe operates on the exchange of symbols, tokens, oaths. You are either in that system, or you are out of it.

I think John goes on a four film killing spree not out of just personal grievance. He’s not a modern man in that way. His mentality is older, pre-modern. Therapy talk doesn’t apply to him. He doesn’t talk about trauma. He talks about honor and codes.

Now, I don't think an average viewer sits there watching John Wick films and contemplating codes of honor. But I do think the filmmakers have expertly constructed a cinematic world which leans very heavily on ceremony and codes of honorable behavior. A world where two men can try to kill each other out of obligation, but then stop on a dime because of the professional customs of their world and share a drink together. I think many of us desire for such a world.

I've seen complaints that the Wick movies don't offer properly grounded psychological motivations or stakes to inspire characters’ actions. I think that misreads the storytelling modality. With its commingling of violence and codes of honor, genre-wise, the Wick films are more samurai films than anything else.

To understand a samurai’s actions, you don’t just have to understand their individual psyche. You have to understand the codes and customs of their world, because those codes and customs dictate actions as much or more than their personal psychological desires. (In fact, a lot of the drama arises from the conflict between personal desires and collective codes in John Wick.)

Like say the great Lone Wolf & Cub series, Wick characters aren't guided by a mindset that adheres to modern notions of individualized psychological motivation. Trauma, lust, childhood memories: things like that don't really come into play for most Wick characters. Rather, they are guided by loyalty, oaths, codes.

As John Wick’s friend says in the fourth chapter: “Friendship means little when it’s convenient.” Whether symbolized by a blood oath or not, characters are tied together by honor and loyalty, and are willing to die in order to maintain fidelity to this agreement of codes. And I think that’s a significant part of the franchise’s appeal.

And it’s why I say Wick characters by and large have a pre-modern mindset. Characters aren't guided by individual motives so much as by a connected network of agreements. This is why an air of courtliness permeates everything, even in the world of the homeless Bowery King. I once heard a person involved in the Wick franchise say something like: “we’re not that interested in characters who talk or act like they see a therapist.”

Now, I don’t take this as a repudiation of psychology, therapy, etc. I see it more like this: they’re tapping into a type of mindset — and the attendant collection of values — that predates our current default assumptions about motivation, agency, individuality.

And I think that’s a huge part of the John Wick appeal. It’s not necessarily even nostalgia for this earlier mindset (though I think there’s some of that). It’s also just sheer novelty. This courtly, honor-driven universe operates with a logic that’s totally different than the operational dramatic logic of 99% of the other stories being told right now.

It’s the operational logic of samurai films and westerns. The Lone Wolf & Cub series is kicked off when the the Shōgun's executioner is betrayed despite his loyal bloody dutifulness. It's not the personal loss that motivates him so much as it is the betrayal of a code of honor that holds the social world together. That’s John Wick logic.

When the outlaws of The Wild Bunch decide to march together towards certain death, it’s driven by their sense of oath and loyalty to a deceased member of their group that they didn’t even like very much. Peckinpah’s Western takes place on the precipice of modern society and these inarticulate outlaw men sense that their mode of existence has no place in this world. Mass slaughter and a nearly ceremonial ritual of bloodletting offers them an honorable exit. That’s also John Wick logic.

I don’t want to give away spoilers for John Wick 4, but I’ll just say that the filmmakers found the perfect way to resolve John’s story. My two favorite films in the Wick franchise are the first and fourth films. The first film introduces an ancient-minded honorable warrior whose world is shattered by a spoiled modern idiot who doesn't understand who he is dealing with, or the codes of honor right under his nose. It’s fun. But also mythic.

The fourth film is the apex of the series for me. A big reason why is that it surrounds our ancient-minded honorable warrior John with proper, similarly honor-and-loyalty guided peers — Winston, Charon, Caine, Shimazu, The Harbinger — who likewise operate according to codes of honor, or who at least understand and manipulate these codes (The Marquis), or seek satisfaction for personal grievances through coded actions (Akira).

I don't think it's a coincidence that Shamier Anderson's tracker character Nobody — whose name is reminiscent of both The Man With No Name western trilogy and The Odyssey — starts off as a purely money driven modern mercenary but gradually transforms into a pre-modern man of honor.

The fourth John Wick chapter offers a ceremonially proper resolution to his mythic pulp odyssey. His warrior code of honor is profanely broken in the first film. In the fourth film, through ceremony and the honor-driven actions of supporting characters, his bloody sacred coded cosmos finally finds restoration.

I foresee a lot of scripts and franchises trying to replicate the success of John Wick by stringing together a bunch of cool practical stunts with cool visuals and providing an entirely original, convoluted backstory and lore. But I’m guessing a lot of them will feel a bit empty, a bit amiss. And it might be because they’ll fail to approximate the other great achievement of this franchise, which is to tell a modern story that’s completely infused with an ancient understanding of honor.