The John Wick movies are incredible productions of over-the-top action. With each ensuing film, Keanu Reeves’ character has been put through increasingly insane battles for survival. By this point, Wick’s fight to stay alive has become comical in its severity, but franchise director Chad Stahelski says that’s pretty much the point.
Speaking with Inverse, Chad Stahelski takes issue with critics who fault the John Wick franchise for its lack of basis in reality, He says he and star Keanu Reeves are quell aware that what happens in these movies is unreal, and that’s very much by design. He compares John Wick surviving the impossible to Bugs Bunny doing the same, saying…
The subtext of all the John Wicks is supposed to be that ’70s brutal, hardboiled kind of stuff. But I want you to laugh because I want you to know: Keanu and I are in on the joke. We know how ridiculous killing 80 guys over a puppy is. Believe me, we know. (laughs) When you read a critic saying, ‘Well, that’s not real. And John Wick would never survive.’ Dude, neither would Bugs Bunny; I totally get it. We’re in on the joke. That’s why we’re killing 300, not three. We’re in on it.
A lot of movies strive for an element of realism, even when their story is complete fiction. But let’s be honest, you could never accuse the John Wick franchise of that. The films create a world where an entire government and economy of secret assassins exists in plain sight, but entirely unknown to the world that’s not part of it. And it’s brilliant, because once you’ve gone that far, making a main character who is the greatest assassin ever who can murder hundreds of people and somehow survive is not the craziest thing in your movie.
While Chad Stahelski says he’s “in the joke,” the joke itself is pretty brutal. It usually involves people being brutally murdered, or John Wick himself having the absolute hell beaten out of him. This is also by design according to the director. He acknowledges that there is humor in suffering, but only when you really push it to extremes, so part of the reason that the movies go so big is to make that humor work. Stahelski continues…
In a John Wick movie, you’ve got to let the audience know that we’re sitting with you. We want to laugh. But I don’t think you should try for a laugh. I just think the situational brutality of the situation should give you a laugh and a comfort one. If you fall down 10 stairs, it’s brutal. If you fall down 200 stairs, it’s funny. You beat a guy up with a knife, it’s one thing, but then you throw a tomahawk from 50 feet away. It’s the accent. Having a dog attack somebody can be brutal. Having a dog attack his groin is way more brutal, but it’s way more funny, and we don’t know why. I think you need that psychosomatic response to action and violence to make it fun.
Whether we’ll get a chance to be in on the joke again, we still don’t know. Stahelski says in the same interview that they have ideas for the John Wick franchise that could keep the movies coming for years, so John Wick 5 is still possible. This is despite the fact that the John Wick: Chapter 4 ending gave us a place to stop that (while it leaves the situation for John Wick ambiguous) would probably be the best possible place to end things.
However, we do know we’ll see Keanu Reeves at least one more time in the upcoming John Wick spinoff Ballerina, and we can only hope the new film will continue the franchise tradition of going over the top and making us laugh at others’ terrible pain.