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This week, on The Usual Bang Bang:
We’re celebrating John-uary with a puppy-avenging assassin who’s also the emotional victim of car theft. Keanu Reaves has to return to a luxury murder hotel to drop some gold coins (Chuck E. Cheese-style) again. Keanu called his favorite stunt guys, David Leitch and Chad Stahelski, who say they’ll only do the stunts if they can also direct for the first time. You know what all that makes? A game-changing new era of Great Bad Movies.
Keanu Reeves delivers the most emotionally devastating “Yeah” in cinema history, and funniest line in this movie is “Oh.” Twice.
So it’s time to start Dafoe-ing and check in with Joe and Greg, who have the conversation that needed to happen about a movie that slowly but thoroughly changed the lives of everyone in the GBU (Great Bad Universe.) They ask the important questions. create unique drinking games just for this movie… Basically everything you’d need to live a better life. Let’s get to the show!
Joe’s Back of the Box
After Russian mobsters kill his dog and steal his car, John Wick, comes out of retirement to exact his brutal revenge. Suffering the heartbreak of losing his wife, John Wick (Keanu Reeves), crosses paths with Russian mobsters. They kill his dog, the last thing his wife gave to him, and steal his car. With nothing to lose and a lifetime as the greatest hitman ever, John Wick rains down his vengeance
The REAL Back of the Box
It is rare to witness a new genre’s beginnings. But John Wick will join Die Hard, Jason Bourne, and the Fast and Furious (from 4 on) movies as a Zeitgeist moment. The new action style combined with the right actor at the right time with a plot people could connect to makes this not only the start of the John Wick-averse but also brings about a new breed of action directors that came up as stunt coordinators and 2nd unit directors. The resulting movies have helped to propel the action genre forward.
Note: This transcript has been auto-generated, so… You know… It’s not our fault.
Joe: So Greg, in the movie we just watched, one of the characters goes to a bar and hasn’t been there in five years, but the bartender automatically knows his favorite drink because he’s been a regular there for a long time. So if there have been any places where you’ve been a regular where the bartender would recognize your face five years later?
Greg: I don’t think I’ve ever been recognized by a bartender, but there was a small window of time where a good friend of mine, a band mate of mine, Justin, who was the bass player in the Pale Pacific, he was a bartender at a place where, when I walked in, I feel like he would start pouring a Guinness when I walked in the door, which is just the greatest way to say hi to me, is to have you come back in as anything.
Greg: So yeah, I think that did actually happen. But the reason I say I don’t feel like bartenders recognize me is because when I was a server at a restaurant for a little while, I would never recognize people who came in regularly. And one time there was a table of guys there like, I don’t know, 21, 22, 23 and they were their drinks.
Greg: And they said, can I see your IDs? And the whole table starts laughing. They said, what are you guys laughing at? They said, you’ve asked us to see our IDs every Wednesday for the last 18 months or something like that. And I just told them flat out I was like, listen, you all just look like faceless assholes to me.
Greg: I’ll be honest.
Greg: How about you, Joe? I’ll turn the question back to you. Have you ever had, like, a regular drink just ready for you when you walked into a bar.
Joe: At several places? Yes, but I was mixing up my drinks. That was like a mood thing. Like sometimes I’d want a gin and tonic. Sometimes I’d want a beer, sometimes I’d want something else. But they were usually watering holes, kind of around workplaces that I had so had a couple places up in Queenan that I would go to very regularly.
Joe: And then the worst was my old roommate, Jessica Jess. She was a bartender and she was a bartender at the bar. I could literally throw a rock to the bar. It was that close to our house. And so we were there all the time. And so she just knew they had a tab. It was like, old school is so awesome.
Joe: Kind of a little divey place, you know, had a pool table that one of the walls, it was like 2 or 3ft from the wall. So I had to use a special cue that was like cut.
Greg: Off.
Joe: To, to play on that side of the table.
Greg: Amazing.
Joe: It was so awesome to go in there. And then I had a pretty terrible jukebox, but I would always play as many annoying songs as I could. And that night I just was like a ballerina level dancer. She also like, danced and taught dance. And I would always play Private Dancer by Tina Turner for her.
Greg: Perfect.
Joe: Death because it annoyed the hell out of her. That was the only reason that song is not a good song.
Greg: What are some of the other songs that you that were in that jukebox that were horrible?
Joe: They had a lot of like kind of that late 90s country and that I remember and like some of, like the older 70s rock, but that’s just not my genre. They would have it, then they’d have weird stuff, like they had the N sessions in there. So they had some, like crazy Seattle bands and, you know, kind of the indie world in there as well.
Joe: So but really my whole point of it was to play music that would annoy everybody else in the bar. I think it was another place we used to go to. Those close to our called The Raise was for the reservoir and they had lots of in sync. And Britney Spears, that’s how I would every single time. Yeah, I was play, you know.
Joe: Hit me baby one more time a shark that.
Greg: Bye bye bye.
Joe: Yeah yeah just to. And I hated it. But I was like.
Greg: I don’t know.
Joe: That’s what you get.
Greg: When you hear those songs. Now. Do you still hate them?
Joe: No. That’s a weird thing that happens. Like there’s this nostalgia that have the old songs and even like from the 80s, some songs that, you know, I hated when they were on. And now it’s like, if my take on me comes on the radio, my song is amazing.
Greg: Yeah, yeah.
Joe: But came on in 1988 and this is Drac. Why are we listening to this?
Greg: Hilarious. Yeah, all of those Britney Spears and sing Backstreet Boys songs, all produced by Max Martin. And so when you listen to Max Martin, songs from that time like this is just another hit from this guy. I love this song now, but at the time, yeah. Not a fan.
Joe: Yeah, not a fan at all. So yeah, but the good memories of being in your early to mid 20s.
Greg: Yeah. And just friends with the bartender.
Joe: Yeah. Friends with the bartender. And it drinks are better.
Greg: Except when Tina Turner is on.
Joe: Except for Tina Turner’s on. Yeah. I mean, she’s throwing a drink in my face.
Greg: A lower shelf of gin. Yeah, slightly less classy. Gin and tonic.
Joe: Yeah. Just like.
Greg: That song. All right, so we get to the show. Let’s do it. All right, let’s do it.
Clip: I’m up, I’m up.
Greg: You have a lot. You. You like that,
Greg: Nice ride. Thanks. How much?
Clip: Excuse me. How much for the car? She’s not for sale, I lost everything. That dog was a final gift from my dying wife. Jonathan. You got out once. He would give so much as a pinky back. At this point, you may find something reaching out to pull you back in. It’s personal. It’s not what you did. Some. It’s who you did it to.
Clip: The nobody. That nobody is. John Burke.
Greg: In the year 2014, directing partners co-directors David Leech and Chad Stahelski, who were action directors like second unit directors, our favorite people finally got to step up to the plate and make their own movie, and they called it John Wick. We are talking about Keanu Reeves, Michael Nyquist as we go. We got Alfie Allen from Game of Thrones, Willem Dafoe, Adrianne Palicki, who is Miss Perkins.
Greg: Bridget Moynahan makes a brief appearance as John Wick’s wife. We’ve got the incredible Ian McShane fresh off of 1990s Die Hard two. We’ve got John Leguizamo, so many incredible people. Lance Reddick I think that’s all the people we need to list. Joe Sky Tucker. What makes John Wick a great bad movie?
Joe: I have to, like, lay all my cards on the table. And if you’ve listened to this podcast at all, you know that I am in the tank. Yeah, John Wick sharing the John Wick verse. Totally. So you should just know that I’m 100% biased. I am not embarrassed about it, and I’m going to keep being biased about what I think of this amazing franchise.
Joe: This is an amazing movie because you have a watershed moment with it where you’re seeing kind of a new style of action, director and direction take shape right in front of you. So you’re kind of in the moment. I kind of liken it to die Hard and Jason Bourne.
Greg: Yep.
Joe: I would even put kind of the Fast and Furious movie, and then I’m also totally ripping off my real back of the box. What I talk about those movies, especially starting with number four for the Fast and Furious franchise, we kind of have a new kind of movie. Yeah, and so you have that. So it kind of captures the moment.
Joe: And I was thinking about this kind of in comparison to taken as well.
Greg: We could.
Joe: Have a moment where you have that speech and taken and this, you have the bad guy giving the speech basically about John.
Greg: Wick. Sure.
Joe: You have Keanu Reeves who is now kind of a beloved actor and person and just kind of philanthropist in the world.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: And so it’s like the right people at the right time doing something different. And so the movie is one of the more shockingly brutal, violent movies I’ve ever seen.
Greg:
Joe: And I’m I loved every second of it. And I seen this movie many times, probably 6 to 7 times surely. I was a little late to it so I didn’t watch it. When I first came out I heard everyone talking about how great it was. I was like, I’ll be the judge of that. And then I watched it and it was one of those low expectations.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: And it blew it out of the water. And I was like, probably on my phone or working. And then all of a sudden I’m like, wait, what’s happening? What am I watching? And so it’s a new kind of action. It’s kind of it borrows heavily from, I think, the Indonesian films The Raid and the Raid two, that style in later films.
Joe: Some of those stunt coordinators that worked on those films are in are in the movie and also do some of the stunt coordination. So they kind of pay homage to that. I’m going to stop talking and turn it around on you, Greg, because I could spend the next two hours just going down the list for me. So, what are your feelings on John Wick and is it a great bad movie in your mind?
Greg: I mean, this is the perfect kind of great bad movie where you go in with low expectations and it’s it’s just so much better than you thought it was going to be. A lot of the movies we talk about, we walked in thinking it was going to be incredible, and then it was kind of hilarious. Yeah. So it’s that other direction.
Greg: This is the perfect, great bad movie direction where you watch it and it just comes up conversationally with all your friends for the next couple weeks. Like, have you have you watch this movie? You’re a little bit embarrassed that you said it. Yeah. You know, and that you saw it. And then you kind of it’s it’s on HBO right now and it’s it’s way better than you think.
Greg: That’s all I’m going to say. You know, I think I watch this movie well after the fact as well. And I want to say it was kind of at the same time that I watched the Jack Ryan movie with Chris Pine. I get a shadow agent, whatever that one was called. Yeah, yeah. Which was just such a ho hum movie.
Greg: I was just like, oh, what is this? And John Wick was like, oh, okay, it’s more violent than I want it to be. But the kinetic action and the way that they made it, there’s just so much craft to this movie. They finally gave these two guys who had been coordinating the action. They were stuntmen. And then they kind of started creating the stunt scenes for Marvel movies, DC movies.
Greg: One of these guys was like Brad Pitt’s stunt double. The other guy was Keanu Reeves stunt double. They worked on The Matrix films.
Joe: Yeah, I.
Greg: Think they specifically worked on two and three. And so, yeah, it’s a game changer. It’s like Radiohead putting out okay computer. For me, it’s like the Flaming Lips putting out the Soft Bulletin. It’s like the Beatles putting out Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band or even Rubber Soul, you know, like, it just they did it a couple times.
Greg: It’s one of those things where you kind of don’t realize it until the next year. In retrospect, you’re like, yeah, John Wick changed everything. Like, we just need more of this. Yeah. So it laid the groundwork for Sam Hargrave to make the extraction movies. We will just go to the mat about the extraction movies. I sure like people we know.
Greg: And people that listen to this show don’t seem to understand.
Joe: They’re amazing. They’re.
Greg: They’re so good. They’re so good. If you want to hear us sound very excited about a movie, listen to our extraction episode. And the same with plane. By the way, listen to the playing episode if you want to hear us. The surprisingly going, you’re just giddy. So this movie is super stylistic. It’s doing some big swings, and it’s not entirely successful with every swing, but by the end, the action scenes, the craft, the cinematography, the performances by these actors, you know, turning it into something that I don’t know that it was on the page is just incredible.
Greg: Where do we start with this movie? Should we just start at the beginning?
Joe: I think so, and I think, you know, I kind of want to piggyback a little bit on what you talked about as the action feels different. They don’t give the scenes a lot of time to breathe. So one of the things I really appreciate about this is like Keanu Reeves is John Wick is the greatest hitman in the world, and there’s this whole kind of world building that happens.
Joe: But the speed with which he he moves, like in lots of movies, they kind of pause for dramatic effect. And this is just like he just is killing everybody as brutally and as quickly as possible. There’s a scene where it kind of towards the end, when he kind of gets the person that he’s been tracking down, there’s no moment where they, like, stare at each other and you think, is he going to kill him or not?
Joe: He just walks up, shoots him and walks away, and it’s so perfect. And it’s like what you want. It’s like everything that I’ve ever wanted when I’ve been frustrated by watching action movies, I feel like they were also frustrated by our like, this is our time, this is our shot, and we’re going to just do what we want to do.
Joe: And so this is like they made a movie for me. That’s what I feel like. I was like all the different pieces of action that I want to see, and it just is awesome. So I enjoyed it. Yeah, I think we should start at the beginning and kind of walk through it.
Greg: We should talk about where action movies were before this came out. We were still kind of in the shaky cam universe, right?
Joe: Yeah, yeah. Jason Bourne reverse.
Greg: Right. Not in the first Jason Bourne, but Bourne Supremacy Bourne Ultimatum. The director, Paul Greengrass, had decided I’m going to shake the camera to what’s he trying to do, make it more kinetic, but also like it’s a great script by Tony Gilroy. You’ve got Matt Damon. Paul Greengrass is an incredible filmmaker, and so it’s like a great movie.
Greg: And then they’re also shaking the camera. But I heard Chad Stahelski talk about this in an interview this week on The Light The Fuze podcast, the Mission Impossible podcast. We should give them a plug. They did a, series called Light the Wick, where they talked to a lot of the people, the editors of the first three films, and Chad Stahelski was somebody that they talk to.
Greg: He’s directed he co-directed this first one, and then he’s single handedly directed two, three, and four. At this point, they decided, we’re not going to shake the camera. We are going to hold the camera pretty still in a lot of cases to capture. They called it four quadrant action. They wanted to see where emotion was coming from. They want to see the motion like like a punch hit the person.
Greg: And then they wanted to see the reaction to the the hits all in the same shot. And part of this was he wanted to bring more focus to the performances that were happening in the action, because that’s what they did. But also he was like we didn’t have the cash to film it at every angle. We didn’t have five days to film that one fight.
Greg: We had two days. And so after that second house attack, I guess there’s that long hallway shot where they move through like 8 or 12 choreography moves and the camera is slowly moving towards them and that is the moment when I watched this movie. I was like, hold up, we are doing something different here. And he said, we didn’t stay on that shot because we liked staying on that shot.
Greg: We stayed on that shot because that was the shot we had of that scene.
Joe: That’s awesome.
Greg: And so, you know, it’s purposeful. They filmed this in like 50 shooting days and it has enough action to be shot in three months.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: So anyways I just want to say that it’s it’s not a shaky cam movie. It’s a whole new thing. And we were ready for a refresh at that point.
Joe: Yeah. And I think what I have found with these movies is the more times you watch them, the more you appreciate the craft that goes into them. And what happens, because I think the first time that I watch it, I even like the second and third, and I think I’ve only seen the fourth one once. But I remember thinking the first time I saw the second one, I was like, oh, it was all right.
Joe: And then I watched it again and again and I was like, oh, this, this is amazing because you can see how much love that they have to put the stunts front and center. And it’s clearly, I mean, when you learn that they’re, you know, stunt coordinator and former stuntman. Yeah, it makes total sense of what they’re trying to do.
Joe: And, the intricacy that they do and the kind of even taking David Leitch as the fall guy, which is just a total love letter to. Yeah, stuntmen, what they’re doing is putting the action front and center and also building really good stories and, and kind of worlds around that. And so this really was something different. And I do really want to give some credit because if you’ve watched The Raid movie, The Raid one and The Raid two.
Greg:
Joe: That style, it’s they’re also incredibly brutal. They are also spectacular action movies that John Wick, I think really borrows heavily from and benefits from. And so that coming here and then it just like it is, it’s one of those that I sort of like the right movie at the right time. Yeah. I was like, yeah. And I don’t, I don’t know when it was released, but you know, like taken and taken is released in like a dead hour of the, of the movie cycle.
Joe: Right. But it has that great trailer, that monologue. And then people were just all in, you know, and this is, you know, they kill his dog and, you know, steal his car. And it’s like forever for everyone who has ever said, if someone touches my dog, I’m going to kill him. Yeah, well.
Greg: You.
Joe: Have John Wick, who has a particular set of skills, right? He can make that happen. Right. And so it’s so awesome.
Greg: Yeah, I guess, and take in Liam Neeson sells himself with that speech. And in this movie everybody else sells John Wick. Yeah. They sell the good guy a lot in this movie, which I appreciated. Something so obvious about this movie is that it really comes from the matrix world. These guys worked with the water skis on a few movies, those two matrix movies, they eventually did The Matrix four as well.
Greg: I think with the Witch skis, Speed Racer, and I want to say there was maybe one other, but so much of this movie is basically, I think what they learned from the witch House guys and also people from the matrix movies are in this movie as well. Like agents from that movie are the bad guys in this movie.
Greg: And the key master is the Continental Doctor.
Joe: I miss that. That’s awesome. Yeah.
Greg: So it’s like it’s just kind of but also it’s in the commentary. Chad Stahelski and David Leitch spoke nonstop about how they were trying to make it look like a graphic novel. They were they storyboarded the whole thing. They pre visualized everything. And they worked on this movie for about five months before they started shooting. Keanu Reeves prepared for four months on the judo jujitsu and then just kind of like, gun stuff.
Greg: And they invented something called gun Fu for this movie, which they had pitched to directors time and time again, and directors just weren’t into it. And they just said, all right, well, we don’t have the money to film fights. So what if he just shot people? Yeah. So Gun Fu was invented almost by necessity. You know, they didn’t have the cash to do everything else.
Joe: Those are the moments that I appreciated where you’d be watching other action movies, and some would have a gun, but instead they’re like having a fist fight. It’d be like, he’s got a gun to shoot him. And this movie is like. Like he’s got a gun and he shoots them. And it’s so refreshing and shocking. And the first moments and then there are some parts that are a little hard.
Joe: I can’t really watch the part where they kill the dog. I don’t really show it, but that’s, you know, that’s a little hard for me. And there are a couple scenes or like when he stabs someone is like slamming his hand into the back of the knife. But it’s also, you know, like, oh, this is showing us who John Wick is because you have, I think, before the second house scene, you have the greatest selling of the good Guy speech ever.
Joe: This is one of those moments. It’s like Linda Hamilton and are like, you should stop this and go watch that scene or listen to it because it is the most every time I watch it, I laugh. And I just think it’s so perfect in every way.
Greg: Are you talking about Viggo talking to his son?
Joe: Yes.
Greg: Okay. The thing I love about that speech is it starts with John Wick walking down the steps to his basement with a sledgehammer. Yeah, it’s like a classic horror movie shot of him going down a stairwell. And, you know, you’re watching a great bad movie so many times during this movie. But when he’s walking down the steps and it’s like, gush, gush, gush, and he’s walking down in slow motion as they sell the good guy, I was like, that’s just it’s perfection, right?
Greg: Yeah. Should we listen to Viggo sell the good guy for a minute? I think we need to. Okay. Starting with Keanu Reeves. I think walking down the steps, gushing.
Clip: He once was an associate of ours. We call him Baba Yaga.
Clip: Boogeyman. Well, John wasn’t exactly the boogeyman.
Clip: He was the one you sent to kill the boogeyman.
Greg: Oh, that’s the second oh, in this movie. That’s, Viggo son saying. Oh, just like his dad had prior. And we played that clip in another episode. But, you also heard John Wick sledge hammering the concrete in his basement, literally digging up his past, basically getting his guns and his gold coins, which is the currency of the underworld that he used to be a part of.
Greg: Yeah. Unbelievable.
Joe: It’s so perfect. And it’s it starts with his wife has died, right?
Greg: It starts with the Pixar movie up. Yeah, a super emotional. Basically. John Wick and his wife, Bridget Moynahan, have a lovely marriage, and then she gets sick, and it’s it’s basically the movie up. Great bad up. We’ll call it great bad up. Yeah, great bad up.
Joe: And then he runs into the house of, vigo’s son getting gas or something like that. Yeah. His wife has given him a dog to get, like, you know, remember her by and to love something else and, you know, move on. And they talk back and forth, and he wants to buy the car from John Wick and he won’t do it.
Joe: And then they come to his house, they kill the dog, and they beat up John Wick. And steal his car. And then you have a great scene with John Leguizamo where they try to, like, sell the car. And he was like, whose car is that? And there’s another like, sell the good guy moment. It was like, you know, it’s John Wick’s car.
Joe: He punches the sun. Viggo calls him that. Did you hit my son? And I said, yeah, because he’s.
Greg: Saying he stole John Wick.
Joe: Car and killed his dog.
Greg: Oh, great. Amazing. So I don’t think in that scene they ever say the name John Wick, though. John Leguizamo knows what’s going on. The whole time. He sees the card, says, where did you get this? Yeah, yeah. And for like the first 20, 25 minutes of this movie they’re building up, they don’t actually tell us who John Wick is.
Greg: Yeah. We just have this really sad story about this grown man whose wife passes away. There’s a funeral. And then as he’s cleaning up after the funeral party at his house, which was an interesting moment, they’re just showing John Wick cleaning up after a party that happened in his house, and he’s super sad. And then a delivery person arrives at the door and gives them, gives him the dog.
Greg: And by the way, when he’s signing like for the package. I love how ardently left handed Keanu Reeves is in movies. It’s so noticeable that he’s left handed when he does stuff, and I’ve never seen him be right handed in a movie. Maybe I only notice when he’s left handed, I don’t, right, but I love it. I also love that he kept the pen and he said, can I get the pen back?
Greg: And the second time I saw that, I was like, oh, he was keeping that as a reflex. Like, he might need this pen to kill somebody sometime.
Joe: Yeah, yeah, because he killed someone with a pencil. Three people with a pencil in a.
Greg: Bar, you know. Right? That’s right.
Greg: Yeah, totally.
Joe: It’s so good. And. Yeah. And so they build it up and he’s got to have like, you know, nice shots of him and the dog and they’re cute and all of that. And then the incident happens. Right. Then you have that speech or like you said, this is what you send to kill Baba Yaga. Right. And then he calls John Wick while he’s in the basement.
Greg: It’s such a good scene on an old phone. Yeah, there’s all kinds of old technology in this movie. And yeah.
Joe: And he’s like, are we are we okay? Yeah. We just, you know, whatever. And hangs up the phone.
Greg: Doesn’t say anything the whole time. Yeah.
Joe: This is so like written perfectly for Kino plays to his strengths like he’s got three pages of dialog in this whole movie or something crazy. You know, it’s like.
Greg: He talks more in this movie than he does in any of the other John Wick, right? It’s kind of bizarre. His performance is much bigger. I feel like he takes out most of his dialog in the rest of the John Wick movies. Yeah, yeah, he says nothing. And, Viggo is kind of like trying to have, like, a civil conversation.
Greg: I heard about your wife. Sorry about that. And then. And, you know, he hangs up and the guy from the like, when is it Allstate?
Joe: Yeah. Mayhem and O’Reilly from Oz. If you ever watch that show on HBO. He was on that show.
Greg: He’s like, Vigo’s right hand man. Yeah. And he says, what did John Wick say? And he says, and Viggo says, enough.
Joe: It’s perfect. So perfect.
Greg: Yeah, I mean, that’s proof you’re watching a great bad movie there. Yeah.
Joe: And then they sent lots of people to kill him at his house, and he kills all of them.
Greg: And he that’s.
Joe: Our first. And that’s where like, we see. Yeah. So this is the kind of movie we’re.
Greg: Watching, man. There are so many mile markers in this movie where it’s showing you the craft of the people who are making it, but also you have to hand it to this script. You know, the way that they slowly show you the world that is out there, this underworld that John Wick was a part of, of assassins and whatever that’s operating in plain sight in New York City.
Greg: But after he kills everybody in his house, I mean, like, immediately after he finishes killing the last person in the hallway, there’s a knock at the door and there’s, like, police lights outside, and I really want to play the scene. Jimmy the cop shows up. Let’s listen to the scene even, and John.
Clip: Even, and Jimmy Noise complained. One noise complaint about that. Sorry for you, working again. Know I just ordered some stuff out and know a little.
Greg: How long have you been?
Greg: That. John. Goodnight, Jimmy.
Joe: It should be noted that Jimmy can see a body.
Greg: In the hallway right in them. Yeah, I cut a lot of the, like, dead space out of that clip. It’s just the slowest thing. But the whole time you’re like, wait, what? I don’t know what the cops understand, but there is some sort of understanding here. And that’s kind of like the first time we’re aware that things are not as the real world is.
Greg: And in John Wick. And it just continues to kind of we go deeper and deeper into this world that is happening entirely in plain sight, which I just thought was so cool about this movie.
Joe: Yeah. And everybody loves John Wick. Like, everyone is basically happy to see him except for a few people in it. But like when he gets starts going back into it, right? Everyone starts to recognize him, right? You know, he’s asked out, are you working again a few different time?
Greg: Right? Or are you here on business? Yeah. Like when he, holds up the guy in front of that club. Francis. And he says you look like you’ve lost some weight in a different language. Is it maybe Russian? And the guy says in the other language I’ve lost about 60 pounds. And then they say this.
Clip: Are you here on business? Fraid so. Francis, might you take the night off?
Clip: Thank you sir.
Joe: Yeah. He does let him go. And it’s like that’s the respect that he carries in the world is so immense.
Greg: There’s such an old school, like, gentlemanly classiness that happens. And that stems from the writer of this movie. He wrote this movie. He had, like a full time sales job. Still, Derek Kolstad wrote this movie as if John Wick was in his 60s and John Wick was the name of Derek Cole’s dad’s grandpa. Oh, and and he was his Polish grandpa and Chad Stahelski, his grandpa was also Polish.
Greg: And so they really bonded over all of their grandpa’s gentlemanly ways. And they tried to have that, like old school gentlemanly. Are you here on business? You know, everyone talks like they’re 60 years old in this movie. It seems like it’s very classy and very throwback. You know, anytime they can throw in, like the old rotary phone, they do, because that’s what their grandpa would have had in their shop or whatever.
Greg: It’s so noticeable how nostalgic it is for kind of a prior era, which I really liked, because it’s also this harbinger of like a new kind of moviemaking.
Joe: Yeah, I can see that’s got shades of like movies from the 40s and, you know, like that, like some of the noir films and the, you know, everybody kind of knows each other and, you know, but everyone’s kind of got a job to do in an angle that they’re playing. And so, yeah, you’re working, but thanks for letting me live this time.
Joe: You know. That’s right. It’s it’s very awesome, as they.
Greg: All seem to know that they will die in a heartbeat if John Wick wants them to be dead. Yeah. He’s like the greatest assassin ever. Yeah.
Joe: Yeah. And like, everyone. But apparently Viggo son, the Augustus.
Greg: Yeah.
Greg: Totally. How amazing is it? The way they show that his wife has passed away once she has died, he has this, a funeral. We have to just say it. The umbrella game and his wife’s strong, strong to very strong. It was incredible. Everyone knew to bring a black umbrella. Yeah. John Wick is holding a black umbrella that is small.
Greg: While he’s standing over her grave, as her casket is being lowered into the grave. And then immediately he has a an umbrella that it’s, like, twice as big for the next scene. It’s just like, of course John Wick has. Yeah, a massive umbrella, a magic umbrella. So, I mean, you can see how thick the pole is for his umbrella when he’s talking to Willem Dafoe, because it’s like right there in the shot.
Joe: It’s like like a baseball bat or. Yeah. Yeah.
Greg: Unbelievable. I guess this is the first time we really kind of get the feeling like there’s some other side to John Wick life. It’s Willem Dafoe showing up and John Wick’s kind of wondering what he’s doing there, you know? And we think Willem Dafoe might be a bad guy. Let’s listen to the scene.
Clip: What do you really do on your Marcus? Just checking up on an old friend.
Greg: And then, like, ominous music starts playing, so we don’t really know what’s taking it. But, you know, a lot of times you ask me that, Joe, like, well, we’re making this podcast. What are you really doing in this podcast? You know what I’m doing? I’m just checking in on an old friend. Okay. On doing I’m Willem Dafoe. Yeah.
Joe: The following, as we used to call it.
Greg: Exactly. This show could just be called following. Yeah.
Joe: Hashtag the following.
Greg: Conversation.
Joe: Another name for the podcast.
Greg: So then after that, John Wick wakes up in the morning, make some coffee. He lifts up his coffee mug and his wife’s coffee mug is still there. Not being used. And it has like a daisy on the side of the mug. And then when the dog is delivered, it’s on a card that has that same daisy. It’s like, man, yeah, the name of the dog is Daisy Weiss.
Greg: Branding here is pretty strong.
Joe: Yeah. Good. Yeah. Good work everyone.
Greg: Good job everybody. Yeah.
Joe: And I didn’t realize that they were going for a graphic novel look, but everything for that fits perfectly. If I’m on the umbrella scene to the shots. Yeah, I have these cool shots of, like, the city at night that they’re doing over. That happens. And it’s, feels like old Hollywood. Yeah. That as you talked about that gentlemanly vibe and the graphic novel look of it and the look and feel of these movies, I think is probably undersold as important in the movie of Almost Like the color story of it.
Joe: I watched this with Gillian and she hated this movie.
Greg: Yeah, just forget it.
Joe: But she was like, look at the colors that John Wick is in. And I’m like, the bad guy, you know Viggo, he’s the only one that wears red. Or the bad guys wear red, right? John Wick, as always in black. White. Then he’s kind of like when he’s bonding with the puppy. He’s basically wearing the has the same coloring as clothes are of the dog.
Joe: This is stuff that I don’t notice when I watch movies. And so, yeah, spoiler alert for a drinking game, I think. And this, that, I mentioned that the color story is really interesting and the, the care and I think this David Lynch has it in his movies as well of like, the world that you’re in feels rich and deep and kind of mysterious in a lot of ways.
Joe: Like that’s, I think, something that a lot of action movies take for granted of like, oh, we’re just going to have great action scenes and we don’t really care. The cinematography is like more of an afterthought is what it kind of feels like, or this feels like the mood of the look of the John Wick movies. Yeah. Is another character, almost.
Greg: Sure.
Joe: And so that’s really important. And that really makes the movie. And for me, you always know you’re watching a great bad movie when everyone is taking it extremely seriously. There is not a wink or a nod to the camera. It’s like we’re playing this as straight as we possibly can, and I love every second of them.
Greg: I think you’re right about the colors. I think overall super successful in like the richness of the colors. Sometimes there are some digital coloring effects happening that are just ridiculous. There’s a couple scenes where it’s like, come on, guys, what are you doing right now?
Joe: Yeah, right.
Greg: Because their first time directors, I think they did kind of go over the line a couple times with that. I’m thinking specifically of when John Wick shows up to like the bath house where Joseph is. I don’t know what they were doing with the blues and the oranges, but it’s it’s clearly like they’re using the editing software to, like, separate those colors.
Greg: And it’s like all blue, except where it’s orange. It’s too much. It took me out of it. But the cinematographer was quite unbelievable. And this movie, they made this movie for $20 million.
Joe: Wow, that is crazy. In this day and age.
Greg: Keanu Reeves, I mean, everybody that was invested in it was pretty much maxed out, including Keanu Reeves. So much so that they were 24 hours or 48 hours away from actually just shutting the movie down because they were out of money. And Eva Longoria, yeah.
Joe: She’s a producer on this.
Greg: She’s listed as a producer because when they were in that moment, some agent kind of reached out to all their people and said, hey, this is an investment opportunity in this new Keanu Reeves movie. If it pays off, it’ll probably pay off pretty big. And so the first dollars that came in on this movie, I think went to Evan Longoria because she had kind of saved it.
Greg: That was the deal that she had. But then it was she said it was like the best money she had ever spent because she made so much more back. Right. But yeah. So they were pretty, pretty tight on this movie. Everybody had given what they could. Right after Jimmy shows up at the house, John Wick makes a phone call and says, I have a reservation for 12 because there were 12 people in his house that had just attacked him, and all of them were dead.
Greg: And then there’s a knock at the door, and Charlie shows up in a van that says, specialized waste disposal. And he’s basically like the wolf from Pulp Fiction. And they’re like these professional cleaners. They get all the bodies out and put them in their van. They’re hilarious shots of like, enormous, musclebound men cleaning windows, which is just amazing.
Greg: But you’re talking about how serious everybody takes this. In that interview I heard with Chad Stahelski, he said for three weeks they were when they were filming this, they were trying to make a humorless movie to prove that they could, I guess. And they were trying to steer all the performances towards something very serious. Once they were happy with the takes, they would kind of like, do a couple more takes to have fun, like on a serious side, when Keanu Reeves is reading that note with the puppy from his wife, they had already filmed one that they were happy with and they just said, do you want to go like 211 on this one?
Greg: And go full tears? I was like, yeah, I could do that. And so that’s the one that’s in the movie, the one where Keanu Reeves just went to 11 emotionally, which is really interesting. He’s like hiding his tears with the card. You know, really incredible stuff. But then the place where they realized they were hindering the amazingness of the movie by trying to make it serious was with vigor, which was Michael Nyquist, who is a Swedish man.
Greg: He was the bad guy at the end of Mission Impossible, for he’s a man who doesn’t speak Russian or English, who was playing a Russian. Awesome. And so his Russian was horrible and his English was really bad. And and he’s a really silly guy, I guess. And so once he had gotten his like serious take, he would do like a funny take.
Greg: And once they realized they needed to start including those in like the filming, when they edited it, they did the serious edit and it was just a lifeless movie, and they went back and they replaced all of Vigo’s scenes with the silly takes.
Joe: I can totally see that in it because he is.
Greg: He’s like laughing.
Joe: Yeah, he’s playing it differently and it’s perfect. I’m thinking of his scenes throughout the movie and they’re he’s that on perfect and every one of them.
Greg: He’s like laughing. But they’re also times where like he could not say his line because he doesn’t know English or Russian. So like at the end when John Wick is like shooting through the windshield of the car that he goes in, he’s like, cool. It could actually cool it. That’s him not knowing his line or how to say whatever it was, you’re supposed to say it.
Greg: He’s saying something else. Instead. They’re like, let’s use the cool it line. That’s pretty funny. Yeah.
Joe: The panic is real in that moment.
Greg: To me, it’s like, I mean, if you’re gonna say cool it, you should probably say cool it four times. Yes.
Joe: Exactly. What’s interesting, as we’ve kind of watched Chad Stahelski or stuff in ski go with the John Wick and then David Lee’s kind of go off.
Greg: Kind.
Joe: Of with the exception of Atomic Blond, which is very much a John Wick with, Charlize Theron.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: His movies have a much stronger sense of humor, from Deadpool two to Bullet Train and to The Fall Guy, where their comedy is. It’s played for laughs at different points throughout the movies. Yeah, and so they’ve kind of diverged a little bit in that I’ll be curious to see as Chad Stahelski starts doing other movies outside of this universe.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: What they look like. I know he’s doing Ghost of Tsushima, which is based on a video game. I’ve played that video game. Oh, it’s going to be amazing. It’s a samurai. It’s one of the most violent, bloody games I’ve ever played. It’s awesome. It’s like an open world. The Mongols have come and invaded and killed all the samurai.
Joe: Except for this one guy who’s got to kill everyone. So it’s one against everyone.
Greg: It’s like it’s perfect for him.
Joe: Like if you said, who’s who’s the director that you want to direct this movie, I would have said, yeah, Chad Stahelski so yeah, but I’m looking to see if he can bring in like 30, change up his style a little bit for a different movie, a different universe, you know? So I’ll be very curious about that.
Greg: So we get to Willem Dafoe and Viggo comes to Willem Dafoe saying, I’d like to open up a contract to kill John Wick, and Willem Dafoe is in his robe and he’s juicing. He’s juicing carrots. Yeah, and that was Willem Dafoe, whose idea he was like, I don’t know. I think I see my guy in a in a bathrobe juicing in the directors are like, okay, let’s do that.
Joe: That’s perfect.
Greg: That’s so good. And then he hands Viggo juice, and Viggo does.
Joe: Like, takes a sip.
Greg: At the hates it. He smells it and doesn’t drink it out of like, amazing. There’s so many parts in this movie in the commentary where they were like, we have this whole set, you know, just amazingly put together. And then Ian McShane said, I think I want to sit in this booth. And it was like at the edge of the set and not what they had lit or decorated at all.
Greg: So they’re like, okay, I guess we gotta put this area together now, right. But they did it because these people are all just incredible. Yeah.
Joe: I mean I think it’s an interesting case of like trusting your actors of like what they know and you know and then you know, directors that well okay let’s try it out. You know.
Greg: That’s totally.
Joe: Make us silly. Take our will, put you over in the corner, whatever it is. So.
Greg: I mean, Chad Stahelski says we had about 70% of this movie planned out, and the other 30% was given to us by the performers and what they wanted to do. Like Lance Reddick shows up to be at the front desk of the continental, which is like the hotel for assassins. No business can be conducted on continental grounds. One of the rules you pay for everything with a gold coin, which is awesome.
Greg: They don’t explain any of this.
Joe: Now you just see it happen.
Greg: You just see it. Yeah. I guess they explain that you can’t do business on continental grounds, but everything else is, just like. Oh, it’s just right there in New York. Oh, okay. But Lance Reddick shows up and said, I’ve been working on an African accent. What do you guys think? They’re like, I guess so. So let’s hear what that sounds like.
Clip: I have you for two nights. Depending on business, it may be more, of course. So. So when the old place get a facelift around four years ago. But I assure you, sir, she really hasn’t changed much. Same owner, same owner.
Clip: Room it 18. And as always, it is a pleasure having you with us again, Mr. monk.
Greg: I love it. Yeah. So classy.
Joe: It’s interesting. So everybody calls them different things. So there’s. He is Mr. Wick with Lance Reddick.
Greg: Sure.
Joe: He’s Jonathan with Ian McShane. Yeah, he’s John with Willem Dafoe. Right. And John with some of the other people that are like his friends.
Greg: Yeah, yeah.
Joe: And then John Wick to other people and he’s being described right in the third person. So it’s a fascinating kind of use of, of his name throughout the movie, right, to denote kind of the relationship between him and that character.
Greg: And they are all asking him, are you back? Yeah. Are you out of retirement? And he won’t answer. Yeah, yeah. That’s interesting.
Joe: Yeah. There’s many times in the movie and a spoiler alert for one of my drinking games where he’s asked a question. By many different like I think John Leguizamo asks them a question Willem Dafoe.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: Jimmy like and he just doesn’t answer it.
Greg: Right.
Joe: You’re working again or whatever it is or what are you going to do. And then he does. He either doesn’t answer it or says something else and leaves and you’re like, oh, okay. Yeah. Getting serious.
Greg: And as a person, did you want him to be back in?
Joe: Yes. You want him 100% back. You do.
Greg: I don’t want him back in. I want him to be like happy and retired. Now.
Joe: I want him killing everyone.
Greg: Oh, interesting.
Joe: All.
Greg: John, I think that’s a great tension of this movie, is that I personally did not want him back in. Yeah, I liked his life better. He had this amazing modern house. He respects up lighting and his landscaping at night. All the trees looked incredible. It’s it’s unbelievable how good a house can look if you just have a couple landscaping lights on right in front of the trees.
Greg: It’s like $60 goes a long way for the next ten years of your house. And yeah, John, when it comes to Ian McShane, Ian McShane calls him Jonathan. He’s looking for Yosef to have a talk and Ian McShane says a talk. You say, yeah, super gentlemanly.
Joe: And then he sends him a drink. His favorite drink, right?
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: With under the napkin is where he is, right. And that’s where everyone is at the bath house. And then they have that great action scene. Totally. Which is fun when you get to that action scene. So the bad guys are there, you know, and they’re scantily clad women and all of that. And then someone’s there is in the bathroom shaving, which to me was a really odd choice of like, you’re out.
Joe: It’s like, I was you would think it’s like a Friday night or whatever it is, right? Who goes out and like, shaves at a bath house? I don’t know, maybe I’ve never been to one. So maybe this is just that’s.
Greg: Just how you do it. Yeah. Yeah, it’s a victor.
Joe: Yeah. Who then is drowned by John Wick and, like, half an inch of water in the sink.
Greg: Or two in the sink, they shaving and. Yeah, in the script, he was supposed to be drowned in a toilet, but they didn’t have the cash to put together a toilet where they could film that. And they were like, you know, we’ve actually seen that a lot. Maybe we should do it just out of sync. And so they kind of put together that saying.
Greg: So maybe that’s why he was he was shaving because they were trying to figure out why he would be at that sink. Probably.
Joe: Probably. Yeah. What it feels like. And this is why I appreciate this. And like kind of this new second unit stunt coordinator is like, yeah, I feel like they’re like, what haven’t we been able to do that we’ve always wanted to do? Yeah, sure. And as in an action movie. Yeah. And they’ve just made they’ve done it. And it’s that’s what is so refreshing and fun about this movie for me.
Greg: Well, and also they’re working with people that they’ve known and employed forever through 8711 their company and their company got famous because they would not only coordinate what the action scenes would be, they would actually film it, like at their office and show like suggested camera angles and whatnot. Like, here’s what we think this fight should be. And that pre visualization became a total game changer.
Greg: And their calling card people started like saying can you make us one of those. And then they would bring them in to actually film it and perform it. So the people all the stunt people in this movie are like their employees or their favorite people that they’ve ever known from around town. Yeah. And the commentary, both of them just like shout the person’s name when they walk in.
Greg: Like, that’s one of the most impressive stunt people in the Los Angeles area right there, you know?
Joe: Yeah, it’s very clear to me that there are like 15 stunt men on this movie, and they find different ways to scare their face.
Greg: Totally. They all show up with beards. Yeah. And then the next one, it’s the short beard. Yeah. And then the shaven. And then they have a helmet on.
Joe: Yeah, exactly. At the scene in John Wick three or in, like, they’re in, like, full body armor. All the bad guys coming in, that’s like.
Greg: Right.
Joe: These are the same ten.
Greg: People every shot.
Greg: It can’t be overstated that the inciting incident of this movie is someone steals his car and kills his dog. Yeah, and that is the whole thing. And there’s a sense of humor to that. Like, this is ridiculous. Why would somebody, like, dive back into this world of crime for those two things? Yeah, let’s listen to the John Leguizamo call when he calls Vigo from the shop.
Clip: I heard you struck my son. Yes, sir, I did it. May I ask why? Yeah, well, because he stole John. Which car? Sir? And killed his dog.
Greg: Oh. But, man, I’ve got to say, I really love, as I’m watching this movie, that these are the things that were very important to John Wick. And obviously they speak to the dog, speaks to how he was grieving the loss of his wife. So it’s it’s not just a dog. Yeah. But even if it was just a dog.
Greg: And throughout the movie, they’re like, it was just a dog. I feel like being reminded that small things can be, you know, important to an outsized degree to anyone around us. I feel like this is a movie that reminds us that, like, we should be curious what is super important to the people around us and be sensitive to that.
Greg: Yeah, it’s a very cool movie about empathy. Honestly. Yeah.
Joe: And Jillian, my wife, is a dog person through and through. So like if someone hurt her dogs, she would for sure go John Wick on them. Like, this is like nod like she understands. So for dog people like, it’s like they will kill everyone if you hurt my dog. So. But it is also a metaphor for the love of his wife and the loss of these just had and all of that.
Joe: And then I think there’s a line in the letter that he gets when, you know, you can’t just love your car, which, you know, he drives around. And then there’s that scene with inextricably wet streets, beginning when he goes to the airfield, and he just nods at the person at the gate, and they let him in, and he just drives around, you know, it’s so incredible.
Greg: Incredible. Do you think we could do that at an airport someplace? Have you ever driven around, like the landing spots and and so when I was training to be a bus driver, we got a part of the Bellingham airport, like, currently unused runways. Right. And we were allowed to learn how to drive the bus on these runways. And they were trying to teach us the weight of these busses worked.
Greg: And there was one point where they said, try and tip this bus over like fast five style, right? Try and roll this bus. It can’t be done. And once you try, you’ll understand what it is that you’re dealing with here. My instructor got off the bus when he challenged me with this. He’s like, actually, can you pull over?
Greg: I’m gonna get off the bus because I feel like you’re going to embrace this a little bit too much, but it’s so much fun just in the wide open. So I get it, I get it. John Wick. Yeah, 90% of the shots, by the way, that actually is, you know, Keanu Reeves driving when you see Keanu Reeves driving.
Greg: He’s really he’s a he’s a motorcycle enthusiast that also loves drifting in his car.
Joe: Yeah. For anyone who hasn’t seen John Wick two, the opening scene of John Wick two is basically like, in their way, a synopsis of what happens in the first one. Where he goes and gets his car back from where it’s being careless.
Greg: Jeez.
Joe: Yeah. And it’s an amazing action scene of him getting his car out of a warehouse. And there are some stunts in there that I have never seen before. Like where he’s like, the door is ripped off and his car gets hit and he is pushed, like, knocked out of the car. And it’s so great. It’s like those are the chef’s kiss moments for me when I watch these movies are like, oh, I’ve never seen that before.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: Where we’ve seen people get knocked out of car, but it’s like they get hit, cut. Oh, and then they’re flying through the air. No, literally Keanu Reeves is knocked out of the car in one shot and you watch it happen. You’re like, this is what films for me are made like.
Greg: So oh my gosh, that really makes me wanna watch the second one. Yeah, we should watch it next January. We should. I forgot to mention we are celebrating January 20th, 25 right now where we watched John Wick, because every January needs to be brightened up somehow. Yeah, make it January. Exactly.
Joe: We have three more to go. Maybe another one. I know that there are conversations about John Wick five, but we also have the ballerina coming out this year, which is in the same universe. But it’s and at the arms is that right? The protagonist at that and the cameo by Keanu Reeves, we’ve heard.
Greg: Right. Len Wiseman directing three from Fremont, California.
Joe: We’ll see. I’m I’ll watch it.
Greg: Of course you can. Was there any question?
Joe: There’s no question. There was no question that I’m going to watch that. But it’s hard to see. There’s like The Continental, which is a show that they’ve done, which is kind of a prequel, which two seasons? I think so. Not awesome. It’s okay. All right. But it’s kind of the story of Winston and him. Right. Take the condo.
Greg: Yeah, yeah. Ian Mcshane’s character.
Joe: So that’s okay. I haven’t watched all of it. But out of the hands of Chad Stahelski, is it is it going to be the same?
Greg: And I’ll say.
Joe: I’ll give it a shot.
Greg: I think he is the person in charge of the universe. So if something happens, it’s because he has been a part of it and agreed to it. That gives you a little bit of trust. But yeah, we’ll see how it goes there. Actually some news this last week I think with Keanu Reeves talking about John Wick five.
Greg: He said my heart really wants to make John Wick five. I just am not sure that my knees want to do something like that.
Joe: Yeah, I get it.
Greg: And in this movie he’s a 30. He’s a 49 year old man. In this movie, it’s 49.5 when they filmed this and he had a bad shoulder and a bad knee. So all of this going on and, his knee is killing him and his shoulder really hurts. And actually, in the nightclub scene, he was, like, throwing up in between takes because he was deathly sick.
Greg: But for, like, two days on that set, he just kept going.
Joe: That’s awesome. And these are not. I mean, if you watch this and you’re listening to this podcast, you’ve probably seen this movie.
Greg: Yeah, yeah.
Joe: He is not covered. It’s not like a stuntman can really do the work. It’s Keanu Reeves most of the time with, you know, kind of some exceptions when they get like falls down off the balcony and stuff like that. But so it’s pretty hard to, like, film around an injury. And all four of the movies are the physicality of the character is basically the is the character in a lot of ways.
Greg: There’s a scene in taken three where Liam Neeson is running and it is so embarrassing. He’s running so slowly. It’s actually happens in Die Hard five as well, where Bruce Willis is running. It’s like this, his or his knees. Okay, I’m kind of like Arnold Schwarzenegger was walking in Terminator Dark Fate. Yeah, our last episode, actually. Just like, is he all right?
Greg: Should he be walking? Yeah. You can’t make a John Wick five and have Keanu Reeves knees not working. Yeah. That being said, I’ve got some patience. You know, he can get new knees. Yeah, absolutely. So we’re fine.
Joe: You know I will I will 100% watch John Wick five. But I also you know I don’t know that we need it. You know, it’s it’s been a good arc on it. You can kind of the way it ends for four. You can kind of. Does he live does he die at the end of it. They don’t really make a they don’t really say I.
Greg: Mean they say he died, right.
Joe: Yeah. Yeah. But if they’re talking about a John Wick five, you know, this is one of those universes where it’s like.
Greg: No one’s really dead.
Joe: Yeah, no one’s really dead. So.
Greg: Let’s talk about that dance club scene. You know, as Keanu Reeves is getting ready, they kind of intercut. It’s very much like that rave that was happening in The Matrix two. I think that like down in the cave, the Xi’an, it was that Xi’an.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: I thought that was really dumb in the Matrix two. That’s like my least favorite part of the matrix. There’s also my least favorite part of this movie, but I also think I need to ask you. This goes all the way back to when we were roommates. I think that there’s an aspect to John Wick that says Joe Skywalker.
Greg: To me, that does not say Greg Spiner to me. Let’s talk about the music of John Wick. What’s your take on the music of John Wick?
Joe: I am all in. I hear all the soundtracks. So there’s, there’s an artist on the John Wick two and John Wick three soundtrack. I didn’t mind, but the nostalgia is her, like, artistic name.
Greg: Yep. She’s on the first one.
Joe: And then she’s in the second one and this and another club scene. So like, that’s kind of like, a trope now within the John Wick, a verse of the the rave that’s happening. I’m in on the music. I like the music. Yeah, I’m all for it.
Greg: So there are a couple needle drops in this movie. The main one is by Marilyn Manson. Killing strangers. Is that is that the name of the song? Yeah, they kind of go back to the song a few times, and this song sounds like what all truck commercials sounded like in 2014 as well, and have since then. Yeah, this was our maybe our biggest disagreement when we lived together.
Joe:
Greg: Could be you were a Marilyn Manson fan and I just could not get there.
Joe: Yeah I have to say it was before I knew that he was a terrible, awful person and I do not listen to him anymore because he is just an awful person.
Greg: Oh, I don’t think I know we don’t need to get into it.
Joe: We don’t. Just if.
Greg: Just.
Joe: Google Marilyn Manson, then you’ll see, okay, okay. He’s not a he’s not a good person. But yeah, I he was under the Interscope label. He was the his first couple albums were produced by Trent Reznor and I’m a it was a huge Nine Inch Nails fan. Right. And I wouldn’t say that his music is accessible, but it is, especially in those early albums.
Joe: It’s a little experimental and like, I’m going to say the most shocking thing I can think of to say, right? I was kind of in my late teens, early 20s, like, yeah, this is awesome.
Greg: He said it.
Joe: Yeah, I do. For full disclosure, have seen Marilyn Manson in concert twice. Sure. Once up in Vancouver in like 96, 97 and once when he was touring with Courtney Love. And that second show that I saw him and it was at the Key Arena in Seattle. It was one of the craziest shows I’ve been to.
Greg: He’s big.
Joe: Yeah. He, opens the show crucified on a flaming crucifix of TVs.
Greg: Okay, okay.
Joe: And it just goes crazier from there.
Greg: That’s awesome.
Joe: So and that that tour with him and whole and Courtney Love 1 or 2 shows after that basically disintegrates and they stop touring together. So, yeah. Anyway, I’m, I’m a little embarrassed about my fandom back then of it and I the song works in John Wick, but I don’t I wish it wasn’t in there because now we know that he’s a a terrible person.
Greg: I like the score of this movie, and I think maybe the score is his modern producer, I think. So I did not Google that, but that was my understanding of it. But that song, I didn’t realize it was him when I watched this movie and I was like, this song sounds like a truck commercial. This sound is really taking over, I think, is what I was thinking.
Greg: Yeah. And a few of the other needle drops in the movie, I’m just not a fan and something feels hollow about it. Yeah. Like I think the, the central tension here is when we live together, you’re a big Nine Inch Nails fan. I was I’m not a 90s Trent Nails fan, but I get it. The guy is super creative and is really emoting something.
Greg: Marilyn Manson just felt a little bit like I’m going to phone in something and get famous for it. I could, I just could not get there with him.
Joe: I think that that’s pretty much everyone’s view of him as well, is that he is just like he’s just in it for the fame in a lot of ways. You know, famously, he and Trent Reznor had a falling out pretty quickly, okay. Because, you know, he just wanted to be as shocking as possible.
Greg: Right.
Joe: You know, and there was no there’s no depth to Marilyn Manson music. Really. You know, maybe his third album is probably his best album. He got kind of pretty big right around Columbine as well, because the shooters were listening to Marilyn Manson, and so they were like, oh, now is Marilyn Manson causing or this is this kind of music.
Joe: You know, that was kind of a conversation around it. So yeah, it’s.
Greg: Tough.
Joe: Because I think he’s also one of those people that’s pretty intelligent. If you see him in interviews, especially kind of around that time, he’s very, you know, well-spoken, eloquent about it. But yeah, I do think that his art is just for shock value, and there’s no depth beyond that. And and then for me, Nine Inch Nails was like, that was the band that I listened to that was like my angsty teen years.
Joe: And I’m still I’m just angsty and older now. But I was like, someone is is, you know, knows how I feel like, you know, that weird when you’re a teenager, you think you’re the only person that has ever felt this way.
Greg: Yeah, yeah. It’s nice to feel not alone.
Joe: Yeah. And like, I listen to the to pretty hate machine. I was like, somebody understands me. And so.
Greg: It’s like life.
Joe: Altering for me. And then I was like, wow, Trent Reznor likes Marilyn Manson and it’s shocking. And you know, there’s some decent songs on it. So that was kind of my, yeah, way into it. But I agree with you on the artistic side, for sure.
Greg: It’s the shortcut to why I don’t like John Wick is a lot of the needle drops, you know, a lot of and I kind of feel like those needle drops and also some of the gun fu really bothers me. I’m just not a fan of digital blood splatter, you know? And in the in the director’s commentary, they’re like, oh yeah, that CG blood behind that person’s head.
Greg: That was a good call. That read looked amazing and like, no, it didn’t. This movie should have been this visceral and and not this disturbing. Right. But, you know, that’s just not my thing. You know, I know a lot of people that’s, their end of that. So anyways, let me just ask this question to you because as I was thinking about this, I was like, man, I remember I remember you listening to Marilyn Manson.
Greg: And I couldn’t get there. I tried, but then you would listen to Nine Inch Nails and I wasn’t a fan, but I was just like, man, this guy is really amazing. There is something amazing about this person and Trent Reznor. Now with that other guy, they do some of the most interesting music scoring that you can.
Joe: Get.
Greg: Now. How much better with John Wick have been for just Guy Tucker? If they had done the score of this movie versus Marilyn Manson and Marilyn Manson’s producer, I think,
Joe: It would have been different, but I, I think I would have been better. Yeah. You know, it’s interesting, I’ve heard some comments from Trent Reznor that, like, he likes doing soundtracks now better than the music industry because it’s the music industry is just so toxic. And so, yeah, weirdly, more freedom within the soundtracks than he does. It feels like for Nine Inch Nails.
Joe: But right now, Atticus Ross is out. The guy and they’re incredible.
Greg: They did the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles soundtrack and it was amazing.
Joe: Yeah, I think the first soundtrack that I remember him doing was Last Highway for David Lynch.
Greg: Oh yeah. Yeah, and a lot of Fincher stuff, obviously. Yeah, they’re really talented. Yeah. Really incredible. You know, that reminds me of Courtney Love was an actor when when whole was kind of big as well. And she said that she preferred Hollywood because it was it was a culture of health, whereas rock n roll was a culture of self-destruction.
Greg: She said, so the better side of me would probably choose to be an actor because I’m drinking like carrot juice and doing Pilates with my friends. Right? And I’m going off a cliff when when I’m in my rock and roll friends. Right. It’s interesting.
Joe: Yeah, that is interesting.
Greg: But you know, the people that Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross are working with, I mean, they’re working with like some of the most creative, high right, top shelf creative people in the film industry.
Joe: Yeah, they’re not doing like some C movie that’s no one’s going to see like a Saturday afternoon. They’re doing. Yeah. First run Hollywood.
Greg: Totally. I bet they base these decisions on are you a good person or not? I mean, they can make those kinds of not like, am I going to get on your radio station? Right. Like back in the 90s for him anyways, can I mention one more thing that disturbs patriotic like I, like I dislike horror movies, I dislike super violent films.
Greg: I love kind of visceral action. So that’s that’s my in on John Wick. Also, a lot of the performances Ian McShane, Willem Dafoe and Keanu Reeves. But I am super hesitant to watch these movies because of the gun violence. And there was there was one kind of horrible mass shooting that happened right before the third one, and I thought, there’s no way this third John Wick is going to succeed, because there was like this horrible.
Greg: I can’t remember which one it was, but there’s a horrible thing that happened. Right? And then it still did pretty well. And I thought, well, I guess that’s good that people feel removed from the real world while they’re watching John Wick. I guess that’s a good sign. What’s your take on the extreme violence of John Wick?
Joe: I think it’s I like the character. I love Keanu Reeves. So it’s like this weird juxtaposition of you have Keanu Reeves, who is one of the greatest people. Like, nobody has a bad word to say about him.
Greg: Yeah, totally.
Joe: I have been in the tank for him since probably Parenthood and Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure and, you know, so yeah, I have also incredibly biased about him, like, you know, and I will never say he’s a great actor, but I will say he’s been in great movies and lots of movies that are some of the best movies I’ve ever seen.
Joe: Yeah. So I think that that kind of helps the justification of it. And it’s kind of cartoony in a lot of ways for me, so I don’t.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: There are other movies that the point of it is the violence around like or the impact of it. So if you watch Saving Private Ryan like that first 20 minutes from the hitting the beach like that is really a challenging movie to watch. And they’re showing the brutality of war. This is just a popcorn movie. This is not something that stays with you.
Joe: These are so I can kind of justify it in a way, you know, it doesn’t bother me. Yeah, I think I probably have a little bit more of a stomach for the violence than you do in some ways. And I, like I said, appreciate the craft that went into it. Of putting this all together like it’s so that I like that of, like when you start watching and go, wow, that’s a really cool scene.
Joe: I haven’t seen that before. How can we top, you know, this scene or this movie?
Greg: Yeah. Me too, me too.
Joe: I think I felt that way about the second one. The first time I watched it, I was like, oh, this feels a lot of the same. And there’s some moments, some scenes in there that are just like, and now I’m just shoot somebody in the head and we’re done.
Greg: Yeah, but.
Joe: There’s some really creative things, especially when common is in it. Yeah. And you know, and there’s some great scenes of them fighting each other and rolling down stairs and you just like watching, like you just have to like there are those moments you’re like, oh, there’s no way that anyone could survive. This is like, why are you even asking that question?
Joe: Why are you even saying that? This is like the end of fast five? Oh, there’s no way that, you know, this safe can do all. It’s like, what the hell are you doing? Just enjoy the fact that this is people trying to do something crazy, right? And having fun doing it. And that’s kind of my justification on it.
Joe: I can see that there are some moments where it can be a little bit repetitive, especially when it’s like the hand-to-hand stuff where it kind of feels like the same thing over and over and over again. Yeah, but to me, this is the evolution of what John Woo started with The Killer and Hard-Boiled and some of his other stuff 100%.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: You know, because to me, he’s the originator of gun fu and especially the killer. And so to me, this is like a natural evolution of of that.
Greg: Yeah. I was so shocked when the credits rolled on this movie. I was like, man, I can’t believe I loved that. But at some point it’s just like, yeah it’s not. It is kind of like a video game. I believe that everyone involved in this movie is not trying to like promote violence. No. Yeah. So if you can keep that disconnect there you’re you’re fine.
Joe: Yeah. And I’m totally fine. Like I literally will say mean, you know, when I’ve watched two and three and like I was like, kill them all, John. Just kill them all already. And and I’m here for every single one of them.
Greg: That’s why I’m here. Yeah.
Greg: But this movie is the shortest John Wick movie. I mean, this movie is like it, it’s like an hour 33 in credits roll or something. It’s crazy. Yeah. It’s a half hour 40. Yeah. Yeah. But I was entirely in the tank for this movie in every single way. It, it checked every single box. I thought it had anyway.
Greg: But then this line happened.
Greg: Yeah. If your chopper. What? Has there not been a chopper in this entire perfect movie? No. Oh my gosh, we are. It’s like bonus points. It’s like we’re you’re getting a 4.2 GPA in this movie now because they just feel that the chopper.
Joe: Was beautiful is that we don’t even see the chopper. We don’t even get the job.
Greg: It’s once in the background. Yeah, we hear it a lot. Yeah. And that chopper, I mean, they had a chopper for two days, it turns out to do all those aerial shots, and then they landed it for a second so that they could show it in the background. And they made it seem like it was flying all around you, but you never see it.
Greg: Yeah. Perfect. Okay. I really appreciate that. This included a helicopter, even when you only see it once.
Joe: Yeah, I think this this movie and kind of proves that sometimes the limitations of a movie or a budget.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: Make the movie.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: You know, if you had that all the budget in the world, you would have done everything differently, but you didn’t. So you had to kind of make it work. And I think sometimes the best things come out of limitations of, well, we can’t do this because of the venue. Well, all right, we’ll do something different and we’ll make it work.
Joe: And then within that, you’re not trying to, like, make it perfect. You’re trying to make it work. And that kind of tension. Right, I think can bring out the best in people.
Greg: So I just want to point out to every filmmaker and aspiring filmmaker out there that even if you can’t afford a helicopter in your movie, your movie should still have a helicopter.
Joe: Absolutely, yes. Reference a helicopter you can have.
Greg: Absolutely. You need a bad guy who’s just going to do whatever he wants and laugh his way through the movie. He’s going to take off his coat constantly. Did you notice that? No. He’s constantly taking off his coat and putting it back in. And every scene.
Joe: I didn’t notice that one. And then like that for a minute scene where he’s like, takes it off and he punches this on twice and gives him a drink and.
Greg: Then puts it back on in the commentary. They’re like, they literally were just like, if you want to have fun viewing this movie, just count how many times he does this.
Greg: It’s just incredible for me.
Joe: Why this is a great bad movie. Is there a couple moments and some of the like the tropes, and I’ve added some new tropes in here. Oh, it’s just kind of a running list, but there’s a moment where he’s captured by the bad guys.
Greg:
Joe: After the church shootout. Yeah, it’s pretty, it’s a pretty fun little scene.
Greg: Yeah. He’s walked away from everything. He set on fire in slow motion. Yeah a lot of turning into slo mo in this movie.
Joe: So awesome. So perfect. He’s captured. They have an opportunity to just shoot him. They’re like five people with guns pointed at him.
Greg: We.
Joe: Have we do have a little bit of the ringing in the ears because he’s just been hit by a car, right? And, like, flown through the air.
Greg: Yep.
Joe: And instead of just shooting him, they take him to a warehouse and, like, interrogate him. And again he’s about to be killed. And instead of just shooting him they like put a bag over his head and they’re going to suffocate him. And that’s when Willem Dafoe saves him. Sure. And that’s a kind of a fun little scene.
Joe: But this is like one of my pet peeves in an action movie is of when the protagonist is captured and they don’t just kill him right away. Like, I know the movie would be over.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: But it’s still annoying that the movie should have just been over. John Wick should have just died right there. You know, there was no what possible questions could they have had for him, that information that they needed to get out of him, right, is none. No. And so that’s just like a trope of while the good guy has been captured, but where he’s got to get out of it and he’s like.
Joe: And so that that to me, those those are the moments in these movies and these kinds of movies that push it to the bad, you know, that’s like, oh, come on, he’s just shooting. Everybody were indiscriminately killing. You’re bad. Your team, you capture him and instead of just killing him instantly, you let him off the hook with the bad guy monologues, giving the good guy the opportunity to escape.
Joe: And so those are moments that drive me a little crazy.
Greg: It kind of takes you out of it.
Joe: Takes me out of it, and it’s not just John Wick. It’s many, many, many, many great movies that I love dearly that do this. And yeah, every James Bond movie has these moments and, you know, those sorts of things where it’s like, you know, you have a gun, like, right, like literally that guy that’s standing next to James Bond has a gun and shoot him in the head.
Joe: And they’re sure your all your plans to go forward taking over the world would be fine.
Greg: So.
Greg: Yeah. Why is he like handcuffed to the chair or whatever. Strapped to the chair. But then Viggo has that incredible kind of synopsis. It’s not a great bad movie until the bad guy says you and me, we’re the same vehicle. Yeah.
Clip: When the other one died, I lost everything until a dog arrived on my doorstep. A final gift for my wife. In that moment, I received some semblance from. An opportunity to grieve on the you and your son took that from me. Who stole that from me? You got from me? People keep asking if I’m back and I haven’t really had an answer.
Clip: But now, yeah, I’m thinking on back.
Joe: That’s so perfect. I’m back in. I’m glad that they tied him up.
Greg: Yeah, totally. I’ll be honest, I don’t really buy that he’s back. I don’t think he wants to be back, but it’s the it’s the one thing that this movie kind of hinges on or the rest of the movies hinge on. Yeah, I kind of don’t buy it. I think he liked life. I have to ask you this as a dog person, I have to go back to the beginning when he has the puppy.
Greg: Is that what puppies are really. Are they really that ecstatic to see you all the time.
Joe: Yeah. Really. Yeah. They’re also really obnoxious and like destroy everything and like bite everything and chew everything up and, but yes they are that excited to see you in the morning maybe even more. I mean so I know that they had to put, like, bacon grease on his face to get the dog to lick it and stuff like that.
Greg: They rubbed bacon on his beard.
Joe: But yes, they are. Puppies are that cute and probably ten times more obnoxious than that. They’re they’re one of those things where like, they’re they’re lucky they’re that cute because of all the stuff that they do that they didn’t show that puppies do. Yeah, that they did. You to have like a two hour movie where people like, I’m never getting a dog.
Joe: So.
Greg: You mentioned that you like Keanu Reeves as a person. He seems like everybody has a good, you know, word to say about him, because John Wick didn’t really know how to take care of a dog, and he was supposed to be kind of, like, apprehensive to the puppy. He decided he wasn’t going to connect with the dog on the set.
Greg: And they said that that lasted 12 minutes, but Keanu Reeves could not, you know, hold back and just have the greatest time with this puppy. The whole time they were shooting with them.
Joe: Goddammit. That tracks.
Greg: Yeah.
Greg: That’s so awesome. Well, Joe, there’s a chance I realize that people haven’t seen John Wick, and so I feel like we should probably give him some sort of synopsis, similar to back in the day, when you would walk through the aisles of Blockbuster Video and you would pick up a box of the movie, whether it’s a DVD or a VHS or whatever, off the shelf, and you would read the back of the box, it’s time for the back of the box.
Joe: Awesome. You all are in luck. I have actually two different back of the box and then my reel back of the box. Okay, so I’ll read the the longer version. Honestly, I really want to do the shorter version of it. So I and I, I wrote it and then I was like, it’s too short. It’s not. But I’ll give you the second one first and then the first one that I wrote right after it.
Joe: So here we go.
Joe: It’s the back of the box. Suffering the heartbreaking loss of his wife, John Wick, Keanu Reeves crosses paths with Russian mobsters. They kill his dog. The last thing his wife gave to him, and steal his car. With nothing to lose and a lifetime of the greatest hitman ever, John Wick rains down his vengeance. So that’s the back of the box.
Greg: That’s a solid back in the.
Joe: Box on the back of the box. Yeah, I have one that’s a little shorter, a little bit more to the point. Okay, so.
Greg: It’s after.
Joe: Russian mobsters kill his dog and steal his car. John Wick comes out of retirement to exact his brutal revenge. That’s really the movie.
Greg: That’s pretty good. Yeah, yeah.
Joe: So, I don’t know. I wanted to keep both. I was trying to merge them together. I couldn’t figure out how to do it.
Greg: I think that second one, the shorter one, is basically like the movie description you would see on IMDb or something.
Joe: Yeah, exactly. I struggled with writing up this one. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because I love these movies so much. I was trying to be. I couldn’t find the cliches that I usually put into this. So. Okay, okay, I feel like, maybe phoning this in a little bit, I don’t know, or just John Wick has got me.
Greg: A little.
Joe: Off my game. So here’s the real back of the box. It is rare to witness a new genre’s beginnings, but John Wick will join diehard Jason Bourne in the Fast and Furious movies as a Night Guys moment. The new action style combined with the right actor at the right time with the plot, people connect to make sense not only the start of the John Wick verse, but also brings about a new breed of action directors that came up as stunt coordinators and second unit directors.
Joe: The resulting movies have helped propel the action genre forward. That’s the real back of the box.
Greg: Nice, nice, more earnest than usual for the real back of the box. Yeah, you mean it.
Joe: I mean it. I like I said, I’m in the tank for the John Wick verse, I apologize. I cannot find the usual snark that I have for this.
Greg: Do you like friendship and fun? Do you care for other people and want the best for them? Why don’t you watch a John Wick movie with them?
Joe: Absolutely, yeah. I’m in.
Greg: So, interestingly, Chad Stahelski, this is just totally, totally random. But I have to say this. He said that the hardest thing to directing a movie is keeping its tone in place. And like he said, for those first three weeks when they were shooting at, the tone was wrong, and then they had to start fixing it with funnier takes.
Greg: He says, though, that the closest movie tonally to John Wick that he can think of is The Good, the Bad and the ugly from like the 60s with Clint Eastwood by Sergio Leone. So I watched a little bit of it on, on YouTube, but I could not watch enough where I got the feeling, tonally, of what he was talking about.
Greg: But I do feel like if there was like a franchise of the good, the bad and the ugly, I’m assuming the fourth one was good, bad and ugly. They took all the dust out, right? Fast and furious franchise.
Joe: No articles at.
Greg: All of them. That’s so. Anyways, I totally want to watch that movie now though. Like if you’re going to watch the most classic Western.
Joe: Yeah, absolutely.
Greg: So it’s pretty incredible. Okay, Joe, should we talk about some of the box office and kind of the critical reception of this movie before we get to drinking games? Yeah, let’s do it. All right. Let’s do it. This movie’s budget was $20 million. You’re just not going to believe the multipliers of money that John Wick has made with every film.
Greg: This movie cost 20 million worldwide. It made 86 million. And that’s pretty consistent with all four of these movies. They make four times the budget, which is just incredible. So everybody makes money. Theaters make money really incredible. What do you think the critics score on this movie is, Joe on Rotten Tomatoes?
Joe: I mean, it feels like a 70.
Greg: Yeah, it absolutely does.
Joe: But I feel like I got I 83.
Greg: 86. You’re good at this. Yeah. That’s incredible. And the audience score. What do you think the audience score is on this. Higher or lower I.
Joe: Feel like it’s higher.
Greg: Okay.
Joe: This is where my bias comes in. But I feel like it’s probably close to a 90.
Greg: It’s an 81. It’s lower.
Joe: Really interest.
Greg: Yeah. Critics like this more than the audience on Rotten Tomatoes and, you know, is an imperfect science. But 50,000 people have rated it on Rotten Tomatoes, 81%. Okay. Let’s talk about what some of the critics have said about this movie. This movie came out not like in a January like Plane. This movie came out mid October of 2014.
Greg: Nell Minow movie mom gave one of my favorite reviews of this movie on Rotten Tomatoes. Surprisingly sharp and witty touches lifted above the usual bang bang which again could be the name of this show. The usual bang bang.
Joe: Usual bang bang. Yeah, I like it.
Greg: But she says there aren’t many movies where the funniest line is, oh, twice.
Greg: David Sims of The Atlantic, who also co-hosts the Blank Check podcast, which is in its 10th year right now, I think incredible podcast, everybody should listen to it, he says. It’s not perfect, but it is special, especially for a mid-budget Hollywood action drama. And it has stuck firmly in my mind since that late night screening last Friday. I think that is John Wick in a nutshell right there.
Joe: Yeah, absolutely.
Greg: The New York Times said, harboring few ambitions beyond knock your socks off action sequences, this crafty revenge thriller delivers with so much style and even some wit, that the lack of substance takes longer than it should to become problematic.
Joe: Yeah, I say, that’s fair.
Greg: My favorite negative review from Newsday, Rafa Guzman, said imagine a combination of Unforgiven and Men in Black and you’re getting close.
Greg: I love that review. That’s awesome. There was this really incredible review of this in New York magazine. I think it was in vulture, actually, by bilge, a Beery. He said, John Wick is a violent, violent, violent film, but it’s artful. Splatter is miles away from the brutality of taken or the gleeful gore of The Equalizer. It’s a beautiful coffee table action movie.
Joe: I like that. I think that’s fair as well.
Greg: I really like that. And I had forgotten that this movie had come out after Take In, which was, what, 2008, 2009, something like that. Yeah, this is six years after that and after The Equalizer. And I really did when this movie came out, I was like, oh, Keanu Reeves is making his old man action movie now.
Greg: But he was 49.5. Yeah. So not quite as old as you know Liam Neeson and Denzel Washington in those other movies. But this was firmly a thing. But then it quickly became the beginning of another thing.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Love it. All right. Here is my one of my favorite reviews, the last one from Peter Travers of Rolling Stone, one of my favorite reviewers of movies, Mr. Travers.
Joe: Also, we should just thank Mr. Travers.
Greg: Thank you. I’m so sorry, Mr. Travers. He says John Wick is the kind of fired up, ferocious B-movie fun some of us can’t get enough of. Totally just giving voice to people like you and me, right? Yeah, absolutely. So thank you, Mr. Travers. All right, Joe, I think it’s time for us to get to drinking games.
Joe: I think so. Oh, I love that. I love that intro. All right, so our stock drinking games and a lot of them are covered in this so silent helicopter. We don’t have a silent helicopter. We have like one shot of a helicopter. And then we have fueling up the helicopter.
Greg: We have an invisible helicopter. We can hear it’s the it’s the it’s a reverse silent helicopter.
Joe: Exactly. So you can drink or not. That’s kind of a dealer’s choice for you on that one.
Greg: It’s a loud helicopter in nowhere. Yeah, not out of this. Not a silent helicopter out of nowhere. It’s a reverse.
Joe: That’s perfect. We have another. I’m going to jump ahead because we have another. We have a reverse. Give us the room. So when Vigo is giving his famous speech, what’s his name is trying to leave. And he makes.
Greg: Me.
Joe: Stay on you.
Greg: Makes me stay? So take a drink.
Joe: That’s right. So we have a reverse silent helicopter and reverse. Give us the room.
Greg: Amazing.
Joe: No pushing it and enhance. No, but we do have kind of a slow motion look. Especially when it’s not really in the middle of chaos. But you can drink when he meets Perkins at the continental. Yep. There’s kind of a moment when they’re passing each other and he’s. And he goes, John. And he goes, Perkins. Yeah, but they definitely slow down the frame rate a little bit in that moment.
Joe: So yeah, I appreciated that. We do have an explosion. We don’t we have silent suffering. We don’t have the explosion, but we have silent suffering, a kind of a ringing in the ears after he’s hit by a car. Kind of as he’s coming to the opening credit scene and the title locks in place with an alarm clock.
Greg: So interesting. Okay.
Joe: We don’t have a flashback to dialog, but we do kind of have flashbacks to remind us who people are. So there’s kind of like a I think they say Joseph and then there’s like a shot of his face from earlier in the movie. So we have kind of some flashbacks in there, and I may be missing some.
Greg: I think you did miss one. I think it’s when he is so filled with rage, he’s going to get back in the game for a minute. I think it’s when he’s like digging up the stuff out of the concrete and in his house. They literally cut back to Joseph’s face and it. I want to say it was within two minutes of the of that house.
Joe: Absolutely.
Greg: Best case scenario for me.
Joe: Yeah, we do have as you said, there’s a lot of CGI blood in this blood splatter.
Greg: And yeah, no like crazy CGI though as far as like bizarre objects flying towards the screen or something.
Joe: So you can drink or not on that one. Great bad shots and anything that there’s a gun that’s pretty much great bad shots. Yeah. There are inextricably wet streets. When he’s on the airfield, I think even when they’re driving in to the helicopter, there might be and then obviously the reverse give us room, but no mention of Interpol.
Joe: So those are our stock drinking game. So I am dying to hear yours. I have a fair amount of drinking games. I’ll.
Greg: I’ll say okay.
Joe: Oh, but hit me with your first one, Greg.
Greg: One of my favorite things about this movie is when John Wick runs out of bullets on his gun. Actually, he reloads and the editor was sure to, depending on the gun he’s using. When that gun uses the maximum amount of bullets that are in its magazine, the editor put in him reloading. So like there’s a certain gun he uses, I think that has nine shots in it, right?
Greg: He shoots nine times, reloads. There’s another one with like 15. So any time John Wick reloads his gun. Oh, take a drink. That’s a good one.
Joe: My first one is anytime he watches a video of his wife on his phone.
Greg: Oh, totally. That’s my fourth one. Okay, I’ve. Anytime Viggo takes off his coat.
Joe: Oh that’s awesome. I have anytime they say his full name, John Wick. Take a drink.
Greg: I have anytime they say Baba Yaga. I have that one too. Okay.
Joe: Anytime someone asks them if he’s working or or back take.
Greg: It’s great that. Yeah, I have that too. Anytime they say the word dog. Oh, take a drink.
Joe: It’s so good. I have anytime someone knows him by his face or they just kind of acknowledge him with a nod or just say his name, John or Mr. Wick. Take a.
Greg: Drink. Great, great. He loses his car, but then he gets a couple other cars in this movie. So anytime John Wick gets a new car, I take a drink.
Joe: I have a couple I’m going to combine because there are a few, actually, that are kind of fun. So I have like shots of the city from above, shots of someone smoking, and every time it’s raining, which are kind of fairly infrequent, but enough that I notice them.
Greg: Okay, nice. Okay. Any time somebody pays for something with a gold coin.
Joe: Oh, I have that one too. I’ve, I have every time he’s asked a question which he does not answer. Take a drink.
Greg: Any time it goes to Slowmo. Nice.
Joe: I have every time blood hits the camera. Take a drink. Oh.
Greg: Interesting.
Joe: There a fair amount. And especially in the opening scene, they’re just really like splattering it everywhere, right?
Greg: And that’s all fake?
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Anytime Charlie shows up to clean up some bodies.
Joe: Oh, that’s a good one. Here’s my last one. And this is the one from Milo, my son.
Greg: When.
Joe: I asked him for a drinking game for this, and he said anytime there is unnecessary sexual tension between John Wick and a bad guy. Take a.
Greg: Drink. Leave it as work. Milo. My last one is any time a massive man clean some glass.
Joe: Take a drink.
Greg: It’s just. I laughed out loud. There’s like a if he’s cleaning the glass between the camera and him. All right, Joe, it’s time for Joe’s trope lightning round, aka signs. You might be watching a great bad movie.
Joe: So I have a couple new ones I want. On a note, we’ve talked about some of these. Not all of these are in John Wick, but we have some of the new tropes are downloading a file under pressure. So I was like, they’ve got to sneak in and download the information. And there’s like shots of like, how for the percentage completed it is or they’re being paid or those sorts of things.
Joe: I have a new line of checking if a gun is loaded, which definitely happens in John Wick, where like someone is handed a gun.
Greg:
Joe: And they will like check the magazine and then close it back up or. Yeah. You know. Yeah a call trace timer. So you know they’re tracing a call and they need to do it with you know they have to keep them on the line for a certain amount of time. Anytime someone disappears behind the bus or truck or like in plane when they’re just walking through the forest and then he disappears behind them.
Joe: One of the new tropes that does happen in this movie is a protagonist is captured but not killed right away, and then is saved by his wiles and how he gets out of it. So when when they’re captured, we have medical care from a partner, love interest, or at a vet’s office where he staples himself up at the end of this movie.
Joe: Amazing, amazing recovery time on John Wick and how he takes a lot of damage and somehow is not affected by it at all. Right, there’s a duffel bag full of guns. There’s the henchmen who are kind of allowed to hurt John Wick more than just kind of a punch here and there.
Greg:
Joe: So we definitely have that. We have a charismatic antagonist. So I love Viggo in this movie. He’s perfect and is also but go at the end of it. He doesn’t kill Viggo at the end of this you know so kills the henchmen. But the bad guy.
Greg: Lives.
Joe: Because I don’t think he kills Viggo. At the end of this.
Greg: I think he goes dead.
Joe: I don’t remember, I don’t remember it well enough, but I feel like it doesn’t kill him. But I don’t remember now.
Greg: Okay.
Joe: As a possibility. So?
Greg: So Viggo might be alive?
Joe: Might be I thought so. Okay. They have, like, the fight and then, like, they’re both pretty banged up, but.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: Oh, and I have one other new trope. When two people are wrestling with a gun, and then it goes off and you don’t know who has been shot for a few seconds. But that’s a new trope in here.
Greg: Does that happen in this movie?
Joe: No, this doesn’t happen in this. That one doesn’t happen this movie.
Greg: But but we’re adding it this week. Yeah, we’re adding it because it’s a totally could.
Joe: Have been added that.
Greg: Sure, sure. Okay.
Joe: We have he’s the best at something. Revenge. As the driver of the protagonist and out of retirement. So that’s our trope lightning round.
Greg: All right Joe, are you ready to answer some very important questions?
Joe: I sure am.
Greg: All right, here we go. Did John Wick hold up in 2014?
Joe: Yeah, I think I totally did.
Greg: Yeah I think it did. Do does it hold up now.
Joe: That still holds up for me.
Greg: So yeah I mean we’re still we just celebrated its 10th, 10th anniversary. And it’s about the same. Yeah. Yeah, totally. How hard do they sell the good guy the.
Joe: Most of any movie I’ve ever.
Greg: Seen. Perhaps.
Joe: I don’t know that I can think of one where they do it more like it might be equal to. But no one is going to top this movie.
Greg: I usually roll my eyes at the selling of the good guy, or the selling, or the bad guy, but in this movie, it’s just a celebration. Every time they say more.
Joe: Every single time I watch this movie, that is my favorite scene.
Greg: How hard do they sell the bad guy?
Joe: Not that hard, but they do a little bit. That’s that’s in there, but not like they sell the good guy.
Greg: Yeah, no. And, I guess we don’t really talk about how Miss Perkins is kind of one of the bad guys in this movie, too. And why is there romance in this movie, Joe?
Joe: It’s so that John Wick’s heart can be broken. That is why there’s romance in this movie.
Greg: Okay? Okay. So you’re okay with this amount of romance?
Joe: Yeah. There’s amount of romance in an action movie is totally fine.
Greg: Are we bad people for loving this movie?
Joe: I mean, I don’t see anyway, we’re not bad people.
Greg: Yeah, yeah, there’s no way around it does. John Wick deserve a sequel?
Joe: Yeah, I yes.
Greg: Many, many.
Joe: Watches. Every single one of them.
Greg: Okay. Does it deserve a prequel?
Joe: No, but I feel like there’s definitely a world and where we have a prequel, a TV show that’s a prequel, and I feel like someone’s going to make a prequel of John Wick when he was, you know, some other actor at the top of his game.
Greg: Okay.
Joe: But it’s not needed.
Greg: You know, when they were talking about John Wick two, which was greenlit pretty fast after this movie came out, they discussed the second movie actually being a prequel. It was going to be John Wick performing the impossible task that Viggo gives him. Yeah, that helped him get out, which would be pretty great.
Joe: I think it would be pretty great.
Greg: Has a happy ending. He gets out and gets to be with Bridget Moynahan. Yeah. So I’m I’m for that prequel.
Joe: I’ll allow it on a technicality that it’s John Wick and I love John Wick.
Greg: Okay, okay. Because then John Wick two could have been John Wick three. Yeah. How can this movie be fixed? AKA who should be in the remake?
Joe: First of all, this movie is perfect, so I don’t know that I think that there’s going to be touch, but I did come up with why.
Greg: Having said that, yes.
Joe: Let’s bring the world of the matrix, Johnny Mnemonic and John Wick.
Greg: Together. Sure, there will.
Joe: Be super smart animals helping Leo Wick fight the high table of AI and machine. That is how you make this movie.
Greg: It’s a simple equation. Yeah. Can we get iced tea in there?
Joe: Somehow I feel like he probably would take the call.
Greg: So. And a super smart dolphin. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Amazing.
Joe: How could we not?
Greg: All right. My answer to this is I would love some different needle drops. I’m okay with the score, but I feel like it could be better. So just in general I would love a different take on the music in this movie. Also, I think they need to like calm down with some of the color effects in this movie.
Greg: Some of the processing that they did is just a bit much. It’s the kind of like first time director kind of stuff. Having said that, I love what they did with the color most of the way through, so I don’t, I don’t know, maybe it’s worth it. I do think that we should remake this movie. This John Wick, of course, is perfect the way it is, except for the color of the music.
Greg: I do think we should remake it with Hugh Grant. I think Hugh Grant is is John Wick and he’s like a proper British gentleman. And instead of shooting everyone, he splashes them with a spot of tea.
Greg: Like in the face. And everyone like grabs their face and there’s like, and they fall down because the tea has just like hurt their face somehow or maybe just hurt their feelings, I don’t know. Yeah. But anyways, proper British gentleman Hugh Grant is splashing people with a spot of tea throughout the movie. And that’s it. That’s that’s the that’s the remake.
Greg: I mean.
Joe: I feel like that could be a remake for the Kingsman where.
Greg: Oh, 100%. And we’ll get to the Kingsman. Yeah, obviously. Yeah. All right, Joe, very important question here. What album is this?
Joe: I spent a lot of time, but I came around to what is an album that signified the end of one thing and began the beginning of something new.
Greg: Okay.
Joe: And so I have this is Nirvana’s Nevermind.
Greg: What it now? Yeah.
Joe: Glam rock, 80s glam rock, hair metal.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: And begins grunge dirtier sound. And so that’s what I feel like this kind of ends that shaky camera, even though it’s still around. But it’s like, yeah, it gave us something new that we didn’t know we needed until we saw it.
Greg: And totally, totally action directors taking the reins. Yeah, yeah yeah.
Joe: What album is this for you? I’m dying to know.
Greg: All right. So I think the biggest influence on this movie was the word tasks. And it’s the matrix crew coming back together to make something new. So for that reason, I looked for a second album that showed a band coming together and becoming something new. So I’m going to say that this is Radiohead’s second album. The bands, oh, when they were making that album, there was this huge tension in the band.
Greg: It was the first time that it wasn’t just Thom Yorke writing the songs and having the band record them. The tension was they were they actually said things to each other that they had never said to each other before while they were recording that, and they the songs benefited from it. And there was also creative tension with their producer, John Leckie, who’s an incredible producer.
Greg: But he was restraining them from some of the crazier places they wanted to go while they were tracking it. But their engineer, who was running the board loved it, loved like the ways that they wanted to push it. But John Leckie wasn’t so lucky. Goes off one night or one day to some social engagement. And the guy, the engineer who was running the board was named Nigel Godrich, and he let them do whatever they wanted, specifically his one song, Blackstar, which lucky I guess didn’t want on the album.
Greg: And they recorded it in this session with Nigel Godrich, and it made it onto the album, but also a bunch of the B-sides for the record were recorded that day that are incredible. They’re so good. Killer cars is one of them. There’s a ton of them. And from that collaboration with Nigel Godrich, Nigel Godrich has recorded and produced all of their album sets.
Greg: And so I’m going to say this is the beginning of Radiohead working with Nigel Godrich and recognizing what was great about the combo of everybody in the room and running with it.
Joe: So that’s end. Yeah, and a sidebar on On the Band, my favorite Radiohead album, the B-sides from, I think, Bishop’s Robes is from that Robin Head Light. There’s so many amazing songs that didn’t make the album, and that album is a near perfect album start to finish. It is. Yeah, there’s Bullet Proof is probably my least favorite song on that album, and it’s still an amazing song.
Joe: Like The Floor Is So High and and the ceiling is so high on that album. It’s just that’s. And I started listening to Radiohead because you told me that you were getting into Radiohead when that album came out, I think you said, I’m gonna, I’m it started little. We weren’t living together, but like, we were. Yeah. Hanging out.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: And we’re talking about music. You’re like, I’m really getting into Radiohead. And that was the only reason I got that album. And it took me some listens. Yeah, yeah. Like like those, like the best albums that you need to listen to multiple times. It’s had a staying power since I listened to it to now. And it’s like Milo is like all over, like he’s playing a couple songs.
Joe: He loves the song Blackstar. Yeah, he’s playing it at the Radiohead show that he’s in for school of Rock.
Greg: Amazing.
Joe: And he loves the bands and he like so that album, the while I understand the other critical acclaim and like maybe I can say that some of the other albums are better. Maybe. Okay, computer is like a concept album is better. My favorite is always the band. I will always come back to that album. It’s like coming home, it’s coming home.
Joe: It’s what that album is.
Greg: It’s John Wick. Yeah, that’s what I hear you saying.
Joe: It’s exactly John Wick.
Greg: I love that bulletproof is the Mission Impossible two of the band. Yeah, yeah, that is a high floor. That’s incredible. I think bulletproof was the thing that sealed the deal for me on the bands. I love that album. But there’s also some craziness you know. Yeah I don’t think I’d made it that far into the album. I think that might be track nine.
Joe: I’m like that is pretty far into the album.
Greg: And I was kind of like, all right, I’m going to I’m going to go deeper into this album than I ever have. And when he goes to those falsetto moments in bulletproof, I was like, this is the greatest band. If they can do this when they’re doing nothing, yeah, they can do anything. Yeah. Oh, by the way, John Leckie, he makes the Elastica album that you love.
Joe: Okay.
Greg: He’s worked on a million. He I mean he worked on like All Things Must Pass. I think. Is that the name of the George Harrison record?
Joe: I think so, yeah.
Greg: He did the McCartney album that same year. Post-beatles he’s on so many incredible British records. So I love the bands, but I also love that Radiohead was bigger than the bands. And Nigel Godrich let them do that. All right Joe, it’s come down to it. It’s time for us to rate John Wick. We have a scale that we don’t use it all.
Greg: Great bad movies. Good bad movies okay. Bad movies, bad bad movies. In the worst case, awful bad movies. We try to watch only movies with. Great. So we kind of stay at the high end of this scale. Joe, how do you rate John Wick?
Joe: To no one’s surprise, this is a great bad movie.
Greg: Yeah, I.
Joe: Can’t I can’t even make the case. I can make it. I, I can’t quite get the great, great movie because there’s enough in it. Right. That misses for me on that. But this is a great, bad movie. What about you? Where do you have this rated?
Greg: Absolutely great bad movie. Sometimes when I was thinking about this this week, it’s not even because of John Wick. It’s because of the world that it created for us in the last ten years. Yeah. With action directors, second unit directors, the people that make the aspects of the movies that I truly love. Yeah. And the stunt performers, the preparation that they put into these movies.
Greg: There’s just there’s a higher caliber of action movie that has happened because of this, these guys. Yeah. And so I have to look back at John Wick and just go create that movie. Yeah, absolutely. By the way, I wanted to say, Chad Stahelski said usually when people are training for stunts, like when actors train for a movie, it’s usually like six weeks and you see in the special features, like, we went to boot camp, you know.
Greg: Right. And and he said, could you just learn French and convincingly be a French character in six weeks? No. Nobody can. That’s why Viggo is like, he can’t speak English or Russian in this movie. And he just did other stuff because he could not learn his lines. He was like, no. So like people trained like Keanu Reeves trained forever for the matrix movies.
Greg: And then he picked that back up and did four months of judo and jiu jitsu and in training for this movie. But even like the DP and the camera people arrived five months early to make this movie.
Joe: That’s awesome.
Greg: And like, got ready for five months before they shot it in like 55 shooting this. So anyways, incredible. They raised the bar 100%. Yeah. So all right Joe, we made it. Yeah, we did it.
Joe: We had the conversation that needed to be had about John Wick ten years later. So you know you’re welcome.
Greg: I was nervous about this one. You mentioned you were nervous about it. I realized I was nervous, too. Sometimes we talk about movies this big that mean this much to us?
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: It’s like I’m going to mess up this episode.
Joe: I don’t think we did. I think we nailed this. I think we nailed it.
Greg: Yeah, it was the conversation that needed to be had. Yeah. And we should say, obviously. Spoilers for John Wick.
Joe: Yeah. Spoilers for John make and watch this movie if you haven’t seen it. Yeah, obviously, because our spoilers are probably all out of order. So you’ll, you’ll, you won’t even.
Greg: Notice. Still being surprised. Yeah. Oh oh my gosh. Listen, this is been great, but, I’ve got to take a sledgehammer down to the basement and see if previous owners of my house have left anything buried in the concrete floor down there.
Joe: Oh, that’s interesting, that’s interesting. I’ve. I’ve got to go practice my pantomime skills so that if I ever get cast in a film, I can pretend to chew gum as a form of character development. This is not about John Wick, but it’s just something that I want to work on.
Greg: Just something you like, I love it. It seems like a great reason to have to leave, to be honest. Yeah, but that works for me because it’s 2025 and I think I want to make a little extra money this year. So I’m going to go see if there’s anything I can do on continental grounds for a higher rate.
Joe: Oh that’s good, that’s good. Someone just gave me a gold coin for a catch and release job. I hope I’ll be okay in the morning.
Greg: I think you’ll be fine. Yeah, that works for me. I I’m actually going to go and get rid of my car and my dog, because if I don’t have them, no one can ever hurt me again. Oh, that’s.
Joe: That’s a really good point. That’s a that’s pretty fair. I’m going to the vet’s office, to staple up a wound while I’m there. I’ll steal a dog, though, thus passing along a new trauma to a different dog owner, I’m sure. Hope it’ll be fine and won’t set off some someone else’s revenge tour, though.
Greg: Absolutely not. Absolutely not. I think you’re good. And that actually works for me, because I’m going to go hang out with John Leguizamo because he seems like a cool guy.
Joe: He does seem like a cool guy. And I’m going to the club anyway. I’ve got this bathhouse. I probably get a shave while I’m there because that seems like the best use of my time.
Greg: So you’ve always shave in public places? Yeah. You know, that makes sense. And I, I suddenly, after watching this movie, I feel like I should probably call a bunch of restaurants that I’ve been to in the past, because now I’m wondering if whenever I’ve made a reservation, they thought I was admitting that I had murdered someone and needed them cleaned up.
Greg: That’s.
Joe: You should probably get some clarification on that. I’m sorry. I’m heading to an airfield that’s going to be inextricably wet, and I’m going to drive my car around for a while.
Greg: So. And just scream and just scream. Yeah. Great. Oh, I’m so glad, because I’m about to call a scheduled call with Evan Longoria to see if I can get the last couple million dollars for something I’m working on.
Joe: She’s she seems to come through in a pinch. And anyway, I’ve got to go get some new outfits so that they match the coloring of a beagle that I just got.
Greg: So that’s always been important to you? Yes. All right, well, that works for me, so I will see you soon.
Joe: All right. See you soon.