The author makes good points - but honestly I don't care too much about the explanation behind _why_ the protagonist is seemingly invincible. John Wick movies are fun due to the camera work, fighting scene choreography and the "cool" characters. Most action movies don't require you to think too much about what's going on, and that's fine, imo.
My main problem with the later parts is, that in the first it was some kind of super killer versus normal but later with the whole mythology it became just a different kind of super hero movie with super villains and bullet proof cloths.<p>The first part had some part of reality left just like the first Matrix movie where the fights felt more real because the fighters hit each other instead of the standard Kung Fu movie dodging until the deadly blow.<p>The movies are still fun to watch because of great choreography but to me it doesn't have the same impact like the first. It shifted from "could happen somewhere now" to "happens in a parallel reality"
Hack smith has a great video where they make a bulletproof suit and show that it’s possible! <a href="https://youtu.be/Eeb4aZObp-0" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/Eeb4aZObp-0</a>
My biggest problem with those imaginary suits is the transfer of energy.<p>Even if a lightweight bulletproof material like that can be made, there needs to be some symptom of energy transfer visible to the eye. Otherwise, it's not sci-fi; it's magic
The bulletproof suits are acceptable leaps of logic that I’m fine with. The bigger issue is keeping things consistent. Try as I may I just can’t keep thinking about how easy everyone else in that universe is to kill compared to the hero. And the most unbelievable scene for me was the two on one knife fight.
They make them in Toronto as well: <a href="https://garrisonbespoke.com/custom-suits/bespoke-bulletproof-suits" rel="nofollow">https://garrisonbespoke.com/custom-suits/bespoke-bulletproof...</a><p>While I haven't used Garrison personally, owing to some personal loyalty to another century old family one here, most of the other people I know who get suits made here use them, and I have watched their story evolve. By adaptating and actually growing their own market, I think they have preserved the traditions of their craft better than anyone else, by keeping them viable while maintaining their standards.<p>The armour is a gimmick to me, as the whole symbology of a suit is that it represents establishment membership where other than the occasaional regicide, getting shot just isn't a thing - unless you are a politician or some other kind of criminal with airs.
Like... Chip Zdarsky wrote a Superman who forgot that Kryptonians have pressure points even though he's used them in combat repeatedly on Kryptonians in recent years while simultaneously having Batman survive a fall from orbit while riding a box to save the day.<p>Plot armor is truly the most unbeatable superpower.
I’ve not seen the most recent John Wick but I’m just going to point out that “gun-fu” is a long standing film trope and not a “new martial art”<p><a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_fu" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_fu</a>
FYI, there is a bit of truth to these.<p><a href="https://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/02/01/bogota.bulletproof.tailor/index.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/02/01/bogota.bulletp...</a><p>The guy/company making these has done pretty well in the intervening years and has a pretty nice website now too.<p><a href="https://miguelcaballero.com/" rel="nofollow">https://miguelcaballero.com/</a>
The final movie was by far the worst in the franchise. They completely abandoned a lot of the attention to detail and carefully managed suspension of disbelief that characterized the first movie.<p>Turns out they fired/didn't hire the guy who wrote the first 3, which explains why number 4 was basically just a generic lowbrow super-hero movie with none of the sauce of the others.
I was also in favour of the bulletproof suits. The progression in the John Wick series is actually extremely well-done: in JW1 he outclasses his opponents in every metric except numbers; in JW2 he meets several opponents whose hand-to-hand prowess equals his own and he struggles when the plot denies him his guns - but his shooting prowess remains an advantage throughout.<p>In JW3 a higher class of mooks are added to the mix, who are clumsy in their heavy armor but immune to most small arms fire. They require close-up kill shots or less practical weapons like slow-reloading shotguns to dispatch. Wick’s first encounter with these armored soldiers is actually film-making genius: <a href="https://youtu.be/e7VegkzbJOY" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/e7VegkzbJOY</a> , it plays out like a usual scene where he guns down the mooks with ease… and right as the viewer feels like the scene is about to end, one of the shot-down soldiers coughs and simply gets back up, startling John, and we see him have to empty entire mags into each opponent to actually kill them.<p>JW4 ups the ante once again, giving most mooks the same kind of bulletproof suit that John has. The result is that in many fights, gunshots are mostly long-range punches that have to be combined with regular punches and other martial arts to overpower the opponent thoroughly enough that a coup-de-grace headshot can be delivered.<p>There is an absolutely valid criticism of the JW series, though, and that is the falls. Particularly the five story fall at the end of JW3, and there’s at least one and maybe two in JW4 that egregiously break suspension of disbelief. It’s a clumsy mis-step in terms of film-making craft, as big falls are the gold standard of final death in movies. It even hurts a pivotal scene in JW4 where a mid-boss dies by falling two stories directly onto his head - when I saw it in theaters, I could unfortunately sense the audience expecting the mid-boss to get back up like John Wick would have. Because of the non-lethal fall in JW3, they didn’t really buy that this boss had actually died.<p>Another valid criticism, specifically for JW4 alone, is that it has one scene which too-shamelessly tries to recapture the magic of the club shootout moment where Wick is backlit by the visualization, 3:40 here in the original <a href="https://youtu.be/0L9SzBANF0w" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/0L9SzBANF0w</a> and 0:50 here in JW4 <a href="https://youtu.be/iEyNlN9AGLE" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/iEyNlN9AGLE</a>. It also tries to re-use the club scene music, but I think it succeeds here just on the raw awesomeness of doing a full 3-minute one-take Hotline Miami reference <a href="https://youtu.be/LdWdPykQhSQ" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/LdWdPykQhSQ</a>.
ok so why not make a bulletproof helmet and ski mask?<p>Look I'm not watching these because of realism... I'm here for bad Keanu Reeves delivery but mindless martial art mayhem.
I don't care about realism, I just want Neo Wick to go pew pew pew with his flat lined emotional expressions, dodging bullets while taking revenge for his dead dog with what seems 5 movies ago.