Are the ‘John Wick’ Movies Deeper Than They Appear? Plus: What’s the matter with Marvel?

Welcome back to across the movie. I will present it by Bulwark Plus. I am your house Sunnybunch culture editor of the Bulwark. I’m joined as always by alyssa Rosenberg of the Washington Post. Peter Studerman is sadly off today, but we’ll hopefully be back now next week.

Alyssa, how are you today? I am happy to be talking about movies with you, Sunny. One friend, not multiple friends. First up, In controversy and controversy, it feels like the wheels are kind of falling off the mighty marvel machine. In a shocking move last week, longtime Marvel executive Victoria Alonzo was fired by the studio.

Alongside Kevin Feige and Lou Diaz Paceto, Alonzo was considered one of the most powerful executives within the company. Her firing for cause. Like, she was fired for cause. She was she was like, you gotta get off the lot. We’re gonna send a security guard with your boxes stuff.

Rather than, like, being eased out with, like, a golden parachute and, you know, flowery, praise and all that. It was a shock. People were shocked by it. The two sides are currently litigating the dispute in the trades. Sources at Disney told the Hollywood reporter that alonzo was fired because of her work on the Oscar nominee made Amazon produced film, Argentina in nineteen eighty five.

Those sources claim she was told several times that she cannot produce films for another company And then she did this anyway, and they were like, fine. But you can’t go out there and promote it, and then she did that anyway. And they were like, you’re really pushing it. And then she was on the red carpet talking about Argentina in nineteen eighty five instead of Black Panther were kind of forever. And they were like, that’s that’s it.

You’re out. You’re out. You’re fired. Alonzo’s attorneys fired back in deadline and elsewhere. They directly played the diversity card.

They said Alonzo was fired because she’s a gay Latina. Who criticized Disney, and they are gonna have a fight on their hands in in the weeks coming forward here. It’s a big mess. We’ll see how it plays out. Meanwhile, over the weekend, Jonathan Majors, who was playing the big bad king, the conquer in the new cycle of Marvel movies, was arrested on an assault charge.

Majors and his reps claim that video evidence, recantation from the alleged victim, and testimony from witnesses will prove that majors is not only innocent but was actually the victim of this attack. All of this comes on the heels of Ant man and the lost Qantamania’s fairly disastrous box office performance and the underperformance of the last two big marvel shows, She hulk and miss Marvel on Disney plus And it comes as non comic franchises like Scream, Creed, and John Wick are all putting up record numbers. For their respective franchises, there’s a definite feeling that the tide is turning in terms of what audiences want, what studios are producing and kind of how all of this stuff is getting treated in the press. But I I really think that one thing that has been underappreciated really about the first ten years or so of Marvel movies, It’s just how low drama they were. Like, sure there were the occasional bits of entry.

Right? Like, when Patty Jenkins left Thor of the Dark World shortly before production began, you know, like, things happen. But there was never anything huge. Right? Like Robert Downey junior didn’t relapse into drugs mid shoot.

You know? Yeah.

I mean, given the gamble of putting the entire franchise on his shoulders. Like, if you add that in as a degree of difficulty, things went shockingly well. And It’s interesting. I mean, I have a lot of questions about all of these stories. And I think clearly, more remains to be seen.

I

have all the answers. So ask ask away. Ask away. So an

interesting question, why wasn’t Disney producing this passion project of Alonzo’s? Right? I mean, you know, she’s a top female executive at one of their studios. It’s a passion project about you know, the Argentinian regimes, you know, it ends up obviously with Oscar buzz. Like, how does something like that land at Amazon in the first place.

Right? Like, doesn’t why wouldn’t Disney sort of throw her a bone on that one? Too controversial.

Too controversial. UK you know, the last time that Disney got involved in geopolitics, Michael Eisner had to go to China and apologize for making kundoon. Say we will never work with Martin Scorsese again. It was

more electricity. They they’re not in that sort of business. I mean, we could argue that by making, you know, Mulan and Shenzhen. Like, they’re still involved in geopolitics. But, you know, that aside, I mean, it’s just it’s interesting that this was something that she felt strongly enough about to sort of flout her contract and multiple warnings per Disney’s telling and yet, you know, they didn’t sort of placate her by keeping the movie in the fold.

I also sort of wonder where Kevin Feige is on all of this in terms of the, you know, the sort of VFX and production issues. I mean, Lady Liu who, you know, rather the gossip vlog when the gossip points out, you know, I’m sure the only person getting any kind of benefit from the current situation is Kevin Feige, who retains both his position atop the Marvel Pyramid and gaves any criticism or uncomfortable questions about his role in Marfrig’s pipeline problems. Curious that. And I I would be fascinated to know what the sort of internal politics of the Marvel verse are. Right?

I mean, I cannot believe that there is no drama over sort of credit and public profiles. And everything else there. And the person who writes, sort of, breaks open and writes the definitive, like, inside history of, you know, the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Rise and Fall will have an slip a seller on their hands. And then

Well, you know, I can I Yeah? Because that’s actually another really fascinating angle to all this. Is that the the Marvel Machine is a lockbox. Like, there are not catty, you know, back channel leaks all the time in the trades. They do a very good job of keeping a very tight lid on, not just plot details and — Yeah.

— and all that stuff. But everything else, I mean, like, I think I I mean, of it is fear, frankly. Right? Nobody wants to cross Kevin Feige. Nobody’s gonna talk smack about Marvel and and what’s going on there because they don’t wanna get iced out of what is like, currently the most lucrative game in town.

Yeah. I mean, a question I’ve always had about that. I don’t have a lot of sense of how well directors who drop into that universe get paid. I mean, obviously, we know something about actors’ compensation given, again, you know, like, the mega deals for opportunity junior or the litigation over Scarlet Johannes payout for Bulwark Widow. If you’re an actor, obviously, it makes sense.

To, you know, it and you want to do that kind of work and get that check. Totally makes sense to play nice. I have no idea if you’re, like, if you’re clothes out, like, what did you get paid to drug the eternals? I don’t actually have a great sense of that. And I don’t have an incredible idea of how lucrative it is for, you know, the kind of any directors they bring in to have done this.

I mean, I have to imagine that some of heal is both the crowd and the somewhat lower quote. And then, you know, they get the benefit of being able to say, like, I handled this huge production and, you know, was able to work under this to them. So, I mean, I imagine Disney has good legal. And, you know, as Lady points out, it’s it’s pretty interesting that they’ve had a series of these sort of contractual disputes or screw ups. And so maybe they’re just really, really good at writing their, you know, nondisparishment although I guess the National Labor Relations board has thrown those out retroactively and said that you can’t use them.

So maybe we’ll learn a lot about the Marble Machine going forward. I mean, this goes back to my

point though is that it’s not it’s not necessarily worrying about, you know, disparaging them and getting sued. It’s it’s not working with them again. Like, even

don’t wanna

turn off that that faucet. I mean, the substory here, I think, is Marvel has come under fire a great deal recently for let’s say, the shuddiness of how the films look. They you know, you have written about this. I have written about this. But basically, everybody who goes

talked about endlessly. Yeah. We

we talk about it all the time to to the extent that people are probably looking at the description of this and skipping ahead to John Wick four. Like, do we really need more you do. You need more Marvel chatter. But I it was funny. I was talking to a friend last night just on the phone and he was like, yeah, you know, we never really get out to movies anymore, and we wanted to go see the new Ant Man movie, Ant Man and Lost Chlamydia, and we went and we saw it and it was fine.

I, you know, I had a fine time in the theater. And then I went back and I read your review something. I was like, oh, you know what? That was right. The movie did kind of look like garbage.

I hadn’t really really think about it at the time, but, like, it really did kind of look like trash. And, you know, again, the kind of subtext here is that there’s a lot of talk about who is responsible for that, who is, you know, supposed to be keeping an eye on the quality control here. Some people were pointing their finger at alonzo and saying, like, she maintains a Bulwark list. If you complain about conditions, you you don’t get to work for Disney anymore. Other people said, no, that’s ridiculous.

She’s great to work with. So I’m very I’m very curious to see how this all plays out — Yeah. — over the next few weeks and months and years here because I’m sure this will not be a quick fight.

Yeah. But I just think they have produced too much stuff. And that is not a Victoria Lonso problem. You know, I think Iger is, you know, clearly intent on dialing back the cadence of this stuff. Both so it can be better, but also so it can feel more special.

Right? I mean, I think people even folks who like this stuff, you know, are getting a little exhausted by it. And you can’t sustain a world conquering franchise only on the fanboys, which was sort of the insight of the Marvel Cinematic Universe in the first Right? That, like, you could persuade people who had not been reading these comics since they were five years old to come out for this stuff on a consistent cadence. And in fact, to have it be the thing that they would sort of consistently come out for even if they weren’t as interested in other things.

But, you know, the sheer volume of that demand has gotten exhausting. And if this stuff is not good, if it doesn’t feel special, or big, or visually exciting, you know, that’s a huge problem for the brand and for this huge profit center for Disney.

Real question here is, do we feel like there is a change in the air? Look, I mean, we’re talking about this now. Guardian of the galaxy three is probably gonna come out and make two hundred million dollars in its opening weekend and everyone’s gonna be like, Hong Kong movies are back. Maybe but I do think I do get the sense that we are in a much different phase than we were say five years ago when you could have what was it? It was I guess it was two thousand nineteen when Captain Marvel and Aqua Man came out and both of those movies made a billion dollars worldwide somehow even though they’re neither of them is particularly good.

I mean, Aquaman is okay.

Yeah. But

like neither of them is particularly good. Enormous hits, enormous huge, huge hits. And I don’t think marginal stuff like that is going to succeed anymore. I mean, just like a shazam shazam too. Right?

It’s it’s not gonna make a hundred million dollars in the United States. Which is, like, it’s gonna make more obvious money, which is bad bad sign for the state of comic book movies.

It’s interesting. So I almost always see movies at around the same time of day, same day of the week, same theater. You know, I’ve done that for sort of the past couple years, actually. And so it’s been interesting to see, like, how empty or full those theaters are whether I’m seeing a Marvel movie or a superhero movie or something like sixty five, The Adam Driver movie, which talked about a couple of weeks ago. And It’s been interesting to me to see the audiences tick up for these sort of non franchise movies, which I’m generally seeing it like noon on a Friday, so time when most people are Bulwark, and I’m starting to see more people show up for sixty five for Meghan, you know, definitely for creed three.

And so I am feeling that and this is totally anecdotal. Right? I mean but, you know, I’m definitely seeing that audience interest tick back up for the movies that are not the big franchise movies. And no wonder. Right?

I mean, they’re like, they’re surprising. They’re interesting. As we’ll talk about when we get to John Wick, they often look a hell of a lot better than this really, really mediocre or just obviously kind of you know, penciled in stuff that Marvel is putting on the screen. And there’s just a better time at the movies. I think that, you know, if I were Bob Ira, I would scale back to, like, maybe two tentpoles in the TV series a year.

Yeah. I don’t know. Yeah.

And we haven’t really talked about Jonathan Majors at all, and I feel like that’s tricky to talk about because, you know, his attorneys claim there’s a lot of evidence. We don’t know about the sort of We don’t know very much about the accusation yet except for the fact that it includes, you know, a charge of strangulation, which is, you know, anyone who knows about domestic violence stuff. It’s just a huge bright flaring red flag for serious other stuff. But, you know, I mean, especially with the flash coming up where in this, you know, uncomfortable place where you have pretty serious allegations against these two big stars. And, you know, it’s just it’s a reminder that these are risky endeavors.

Right? I mean, if you’re putting, you know, a billion dollar bet on someone’s shoulders, and you better be sure that they can handle it. Well,

yeah, this is not to be

aware that, you know, people in those circumstances are gonna be targets in some ways. Like, I’m not I’m absolutely not saying this woman is lying under like, I do not have the evidence. I cannot make a judgment on this allegation, but In the corporate world, you have things called key mountain clauses at companies that are incredibly dependent on one founder. And the corporate equivalent here would become VIE, but the you have a bunch of sort of public facing key men on these franchises. And, you know, it’s not shocking as these universes get bigger that some of them either would not handle them well or, you know, would have bad relationships.

It’s just given that human beings plus time equals sort of inevitable disaster somewhere and but, yeah, it doesn’t feel great.

Yeah. No. I mean, I I I was kind of conflicted about the the majors news because you know, on the one hand, very serious allegations. I he got arrested. It’s not like it’s not like somebody wrote a blind item.

You know, at Perez Hilton or something. He he got arrested by the police and and went went to, you know, jail. For a little bit. So, like, it’s it’s a serious thing. It’s a real thing.

The instant assumption of guilt bugged me a little bit in the way that all of these stories do. Yeah. Like, I I do think that, you know, trying these things on Twitter with incomplete information is usually a really bad idea. It’s not fair to anyone involved, the victim, or the the perpetrator

Well, yeah. Police who have to do their involvement. Prosecutor who’s gonna bring an eventual case if one happens sense. You know? Yeah.

So, I mean, there’s there’s lots of I didn’t love that aspect of it. But, again, just going back to the, like, the Robert down a junior thing. Right? Like, there you know, they put a twenty billion dollar franchise. What turned into a twenty billion dollar franchise in the hands of a guy who had been run out of Hollywood for drugs alcohol.

Like, it like, went to jail. Like, he was not a safe bet, and it all worked out for them. And eventually, it was not going to work. Eventually, there was going to be somebody somewhere. Who did something.

Yeah.

And the

other thing I will say the other thing I I was a a little taken aback by was some of the

there

was a little bit of glee in the Jonathan majors’ news in the sense that there were blind items before this had happened about like, oh, this this new guy that everybody loves. He’s terrible to work where he’s a monster on set blah blah blah. And then they were like, oh, is this the guy? And and yeah. This is him.

And, like, you’re conflating two different things. Like, I can be a terrible coworker — Yeah. — and not also, you know. Yeah. You’re beating and choking women.

Like, that’s that’s two different things. So I I like there again, social media makes everything so ugly. So quickly. I was I was like kinda put off by the whole thing. But again, like, If he did it, Marvel’s got a real bad, real tough decision to make because he is in everything for them coming up.

I mean, they’re the whole the next, like, five movies and two TV shows are all centered around him. So

Yeah. And, you know, DC did not exactly like set a strong precedent here with, you know, tolerating Ezra Miller seemingly rampage around the United States doing God knows what. You know, it’s it’s a real interesting moment for this industry. And it was probably always gonna come to something like this where it’s like, well if it’s hundreds of millions of dollars or our integrity. You know, we like money.

I mean, there’s a sort of ugly Scrooge McDuck effect here. And, yeah, it’s We don’t know what happened, but it is going to be an interesting moments that is for sure.

Yeah. Alright. Well, I mean, what do you think is are we hitting a new era here as the kind as the age of common books over, or we headed into something even worse, or we headed into the era of video games, what’s going on?

Man, I don’t know. If we’re in the era of video games, I’m like, I I got to dust off some skills or just like, you know, slut myself off to an old age home or something.

Or

you and Peter have to teach me how to play video games because I I am in trouble So It’s

real easy to pick it right up.

Okay. Alright. Well, when this becomes a video games podcast, I will I will, you know, manfully pick up my controller and go after content minds. No. I mean, I think, obviously, both these stories or controversies, it’s probably pretty noncommercial that at some point, the Marvel Machine was gonna develop some loops screws because it involves human beings and huge amounts of money.

Yeah. Volatile combination. Yeah. Certainly certainly controversy. Alright.

Make sure to swing by a Bulwark plus for a bonus episode on Friday. We’re gonna talk about, like, what the best comparison for John Wick and its franchises? Because it is almost SUI generous, just in terms of critical and commercial success. We’ll talk about that on Friday. But speaking of John Wick on to our main event.

John Wick, chapter four, as a heads up. I’m just gonna put it out there now. Gonna be spoilers in this conversation for the movies in this series, including the end of this movie. So if you if you need it, if you wanna catch up on the films, go do that now, pause it. We’ll be here when you get back.

You don’t you don’t wanna listen. So this you don’t wanna have it all spoiled for you. K? So go do that. Alright.

John Wick. Chapter four picks up sometime after the events of the third entry in the series. Which closed with hitman extraordinaire John Wickes, who’s played by Keanu Reeves, getting shot off the roof of the Continental Hotel by its owner, Winston, who’s played by Ian McShane. Recovered from his injuries, Wickes is now out to destroy the high table. Once and for all, he’s traveling back to the desert to kill the elder.

Needless to say, this infuriates the people in charge of this whole world of assassins and a a new force rises from the chaos promising to take Wickdown. This is the Marquee. Who’s played by Pennywise himself, Bill Skarsgard. He demolishes the continental and kills its concierge Sharon who’s played by the great Lance Reddick, r I p. He brings a blind swordsman played by Donnie Yen into the fold and tells him to find him to kill Wicker.

He’s gonna kill Donnie Yen’s star. And he ups the bounty on our hero’s head to unfathomable sums of money in hopes of getting a tracker who’s played by Shamira Anderson to take him down. What follows is almost three straight hours of Globe Trading Action, featuring some of the best action stars in the game, Donnie, and, of course, who is just wonderfully physical and comic in this, Heroki Sedata, Clancy Brown. Most excitingly for action fans, you’ve got Scott Atkins in this. Who’s he’s the king of the high octane VOD action flick.

He shows up in a fat suit as it rains German. It’s lovely. Marco Zarór, who’s a Chilean man and coordinator who folks will recognize as one of the best. I mean, he’s the people in this movie are just amazing. John Mike chapter four is kind of overwhelming if I’m gonna be a little honest, you get the sense that director and one time Keanu Reeves stuntman Chad Stilevsky realized he would never get this much money or this much freedom ever again.

So he just He just did everything. He did everything he could think of. Right? Desert horse chase slash shoot out automobile frogger around the arc to triumph. Endless flaming shotgun battle shot with a single take from an overhead crane that floats around a house like you’re looking down on a floor plan on a Redfin, Buster Ketan style fight up two hundred steps followed by a pathfall down it and then followed by a fight back up it.

It’s everything. It’s too much. Too much in a hundred and sixty nine minutes. I felt like it was overboard. Every action beat goes on a little too long.

There are so many of them that they started to lose their impact by the end. And yet, you still have to admire this for what it is, which is like it kind of genuinely epic Bozzo action movie just stuffed to the brim with ideas, like ideas about action, but also about the nature of human society. Look, I know some folks roll their eyes when I get going on this topic. But the John Wick franchise is I think much deeper philosophically than a lot of people give it credit for. It is fundamentally a meditation on order and the very basis of society.

It tackles a very basic question. From whence does authority derived? Does authority come from a system? From laws, from rules, handed down by elders, judged by adjudicators, pronounced by harbingers? Is the system.

This thing that can concentrate or deconcentrate hotels as places where murders can and cannot happen is the system in charge or does authority come from individual excellence, from the ability to shake off and transcend that system to ignore its rules, this is the question that the last three movies in the series have been grappling with. And I still think the best most important scene in this whole series of films is one of the simplest. It comes at the end of the second movie, where John Wick kills a man who has taken a shelter in Winston’s hotel Wick is saying that the rules do not apply to him. And very interestingly in that scene, Winston himself is is scared and apprehensive when John Wick comes into the hotel because he knows that the balance of power is about to shift. He knows that things are about to change forever.

And it does. And the system basically spends the next two movies that follow insisting to John Wick you have to follow the rules and him saying no, I don’t. And then by the end of the fourth film again, spoilers here, Wick has the freedom he has sought. He has defeated his enemy at the high table and a one on one duel he has free from their obligations. He can live his life, but he’s got nothing to live for.

He has nothing. His wife is dead. His purpose, which is being the best hit man on on the planet, is gone. So he just lays down and dies. For a series that is exuberantly over the top as this one has been the ending is is like straight up melancholy.

This is a melancholy series. In a way that I was not really expecting it to be, it’s not a wet down exactly. It’s just more subdued than we might have expected. John Wick does not have a purpose anymore and a purposeless life is not worth living, so he doesn’t. He chooses not to live anymore.

Alyssa, am I reading too much into this? Am I am I giving this movie too much credit? This whole series too much credit?

No. I don’t think so. Although, I would add a couple of thoughts to it. You know, to the extent that this movie is a meditation on power, It also suggests that outstanding individuals can’t affect system wide change. Right?

Because the setup for this movie is kind of that John Wick is coming for the whole structure of authority of the high table.

But

he doesn’t end up doing that. Right? He ends up in a personal duel with the Marquis. He assures his liberty and Kain’s individual liberty. But at the end, he is still playing by the high tables rules.

Right? Like, you have the harbinger there proceeding over the duel, making sort of rulings on the final outcomes. You know, the elder who is the sort of random manifestation of the high table is dead. The Marquee is dead. But it’s pretty clear that the high table indoors.

Right? I mean, the structure of authority, which is uniformly presented as sort of inflexible and corrupt and, you know, should be defeated and in, you know, individual cases such as John’s. Is defeated indoors overall. And so John Wick’s excellence creates very small individual carve outs for himself, but does not actually fundamentally challenge the entire system. Right?

Am I am I reading that correctly?

I mean, I think that’s basically right. I mean, like, this is what so when I’m watching a movie like this and the hero dies at the end, I often feel emotions. I don’t like feeling emotions, but sometimes these movies make these movies make me feel emotions. Like for instance, at the end of no time to die, the most recent — Yes. You know, James Bond movie.

Again, I’m gonna talk spoilers here about an old James Bond movie. So if you haven’t seen that one yet, you might wanna flip this off here. But at the at the end of that movie, James Bond dies. He chooses to sacrifice himself for his for his his family, his his child. And I felt a motion at the end of that because he’s making a sacrifice.

John Wick is not making There’s no sacrifice that John Wick is making here. He is not he is not tearing down the system. He’s not sacrificing himself to better everybody else. He’s just he just wants to be free, and then he realizes that the the freedom grants him nothing. There’s an emptiness to it.

I mean, there is like nihilistic is not the right word here, but there there is an empty hollowness to to his whole character that I don’t know exactly how how to grapple with that from a series that I really, really love — Yeah. — and really enjoy. And, like, maybe I’m looking at all the wrong things here, and all that actually really matters is clever all of the individual action set pieces are, and they’re very good. We can talk about that as well. No.

I

think I think there is something interesting happening there. And in a weird way, the emptiness of it, I think, increases the melancholy of the movie. Right? Because it is the pointlessness of the quest is its own tragedy. Right?

I mean, with Helen gone, with John back in the game, you know, there’s there’s a line somewhere in the movie like a good death as possible only after a good life. It’s like we have not lived good lives. And this movie in particular really draws these parallels between John and characters who have children, specifically daughters. Right? I mean, both Kane and his friend of Japan who’s name.

I am forgetting at the moment because

My biographies Sonata. You know?

Yeah. Shimatsu. The

the owner of the —

Osaka continental. — both of them have daughter. And both of them are willing to go to extraordinarily lengths to protect those daughters. Right? And Shamato, you know, merely sacrifices himself to save his daughter and to preserve her purpose.

Cain who, you know, in that lovely scene in the church, you know, he and John our friends. There are, you know, these are men who feel senses of obligation, bonds to John, but they also have something else either to live for or to die for. And these are movies about They’re so interesting in the sense both that they are they’re conservative in the sense that they argue that women and marriage are sort of constraining and morally uplifting influence on men.

Right.

To a certain extent. Right? Like, you know, John does terrible things to get out of the game for Helen and to try and be a loving husband and a good person. And when she’s gone, and when his dog who’s, like, the last vestige of his tie to that is killed, you know, he loses that sort of restraining and civilizing influence. At the same time, the movie is, you know, really sort of sad about you know, it it repeatedly emphasizes the sadness of men who are sort of pulled into this, you know, violent world, this sort of protector at all costs.

These men whose talent is primarily for violence in a way that locks them out of domestic happiness. Is presented from over and over again as this really high ideal. And, you know, the the movies make violent masculinity look unbelievably fun, but it’s always at tremendous cost for the characters. And so there is there the movies I think are compelling in part because they’re playing with a bunch of ideas about masculinity from the left and right that are not entirely developed to their full extent in either political system. And so It is tricky.

It is messy. It is melancholy. And I think that’s actually what kinda makes it fun.

Yeah. I’ve watched these movies like once a year now since since the third one has come out just because I really enjoy I’m like, I enjoy the actual physical kinetic Bulwark that they’re doing in this. And this is again, we can we can discuss this. But the the actual stunt work in these movies is amazing. The the fight choreography and coordination, the shootouts, etcetera.

And the willingness to let the fights breathe. Right? I mean, these are not fights that are edited within an inch of their lives to make them work. There are scenes that where you’re gonna have longer shots and see more of what’s going on. Because the choreography and the stunt

workers are so impeccable. Yeah. Though I do think that this movie makes one mistake. I think, which is is particularly in the the kind of arctic triumph frogger scene where there’s more CGI in that sequencing just about anything else in the series, I think. I like, just lots of cars that aren’t there driving around.

You know? Yeah. Like, obviously, you can’t do something like that without see like, that that shot is not safe to do. That move that whole sequence is not safe to do if you’re not using lots and lots of CGI. It’s probably not safe do even with lots and lots of CGI, but

that’s what we pay some n four. That’s what we

that’s what we pay some n four. But, you know, it’s it’s slightly more weightless than most of the other stuff in this movie and the other movies. I will say that there there was a moment in this movie where I literally just laughed out loud at the audacity of what I was seeing. It’s the the kind of overhead crane shot in the the apartment building or whatever that is where John Wick is using the flaming shotgun shells and and he’s just going room to room, like, clearing it out. And it goes on and on.

It doesn’t there are no cuts. I mean, like, usually when in one of these long takes, you can see the cuts. Like, the you can see you know where the seams are if you’re paying attention. On this shot, I have no idea if that was all one one take or what, but it was amazing. One

thing that’s interesting. So I saw this movie with Peter. So even though he’s not here, I can speak to his reaction a little bit. And he responded to that sequence as I think did more strongly than I did. And I wonder if to a certain extent that is a vestige of having played video games or not because I felt like it was felt very, like, gave me to me.

It was, like, watching like John Wick the Sims. And I thought it was, like, clever, but I didn’t find it quite as engaging as some of the other sequences, the two that really stood out for me. I thought the first fight at the Osaka Continental was so great that the movie really, like, has some trouble recovering momentum from that just because, like, the humor and, like, friend of stare like dance qualities that Donnie Yen brings to that sequence. Just like seeing them bust out in that sequence or is so much fun.

But but there are, like, seven different discrete action ideas in that scene.

Yes. I

mean, like, to to the to the simple one that’s, like, what if? Sumo wrestlers versus armored guys with machine guns. Like, what if we did that? What would that look like?

We’re we’re like with the the white sensitive doorbells.

Yeah. Yeah. The doorbells. The door like, how would a blind man actually fight in a place like this? Oh, he’d set up little sound sensors that he could key on?

Like, I like, Again, just the the the number of ideas there. And this is what I mean when I say, like, Chad Stalyski had a hundred million dollars and you could see every penny of it on the screen. And that’s almost to the detriment of the movie. Like, it does there’s a little too much to it. It’s funny.

I I really liked it. I and but I I’m much cooler on this than a lot of our critic friends who have just been, you know, raving about it saying it’s an absolute epic. There’s almost too much. Right? Like, I’m reminded of a scene in an episode of South Park where Kyle Grovlowski goes to see the passion of the Christ and he doesn’t wanna see it.

He like, you know, he’s been told it’s Andy Smadek does wanna see it. And as he’s watching it and you can hear the kind of like torture of Jesus in the background. He, like, throws up on himself at one point. He’s just, like, slumped over in his chair and, like, vomiting on himself. And that’s, like, almost how I felt, but in a positive way, if that makes sense.

While watching

— Yeah. — because

it’s just I’m gorging. Gorging on action.

Yeah. And I think that, like, you know, the fight up the steps to Secer and then having them, like, fall all the way down and having to do it again. It’s like, I get it. I get why they couldn’t resist it. But it’s like, You did it once the returns are just inevitably gonna be diminished.

And, you know, again, like, I would rather have I guess there’s part of me that would, like, rather endure that sort of ten percent that’s too much to have ninety percent of Chad’s house keys, ideas in there as opposed to, like, seventy percent, but it’s like, it’s the extra ten percent. It’s like, I don’t know, getting the refill of the popcorn when you didn’t really need it. Like, it’s good, but it makes feel a little bad. Like, ugh. Yeah.

But you’d rather still have had the popcorn.

Like, you paid you paid for the popcorn with the free refills. If you don’t get the free refill, you’re leaving money on the table. Yeah. And that’s that’s basically this movie in a nutshell. If you don’t get the second fight up the stairs, you’re just leaving John Wick on the table.

You don’t wanna leave any John Wick on the table. Alright. What do we think? Thumbs up or thumbs down on John Wick chapter four, Alyssa. Oh, thumbs up.

Super fun. Thumbs up, thumbs up to this whole series, which is I think almost inarguably the best action franchise of the last thirty years. But we’ll discuss that more in the bonus episode coming Friday because that’s where we do this. We do this there. So go to at m a dot to Bulwark dot com, sign up.

If you’re not a member, make sure you you you become a member so you can listen to it because it’s gonna be great. Alright. That is it for this week’s show. Make head over to polar plus for our bonus episode on Friday. Tell your friends.

Strong recommendation from a friend is basically the only way to grow podcast audiences, and no girl will die. If you did that much, today’s episode, please come in to me on Twitter at Sunny Bunch. I’ll come in to you that this is, in fact, the best show in your podcast feed. See you guys next week.