Last night, Maribou and I had one of those “you go see your movie, I’ll go see my movie, then we’ll go out to dinner and talk about the movies we saw” dates.
She went to see Rogue One.
I went to see John Wick 2.
First thing I have to get out of the way is that John Wick 2 should come with a *HUGE* trigger warning. The first death of a named character is a suicide and it’s graphic. So if you decide to watch John Wick 2, know that there is a huge TW: Self-harm, Suicide when you buy your ticket.
With that out of the way (and, as I said, it’s the first named character to die, so it happens early), the movie begins in earnest.
The main thing that I remembered is the rather specialized universe in which John Wick takes place. We swim in an ocean of assassins and assassin support. There are hotels (The Continental) that cater to assassins that have nooks and crannies that contain arms dealers that cater to assassins, armor dealers that cater to assassins, and medical care that caters to assassins.
It’s like Final Fantasy, kinda. Go to The Continental and there are several shops and you can also save your game.
Last movie, we established one of the important rules: NO VIOLENCE TAKES PLACE ON THE GROUNDS OF THE CONTINENTAL.
This movie, we establish that there is a second rule: you enter into a blood pact, you pretty much have to repay it. There are ledgers and everything.
Well, after a cold open in which we see John Wick get his car back, we learn of the existence of this second rule for this assassins’ universe and then we see what is entailed in repaying such a marker… and some of it involves learning that there is more than one assassins’ hotel on the planet. (There’s a really funny scene where the owner of the Rome Continental hotel asks John Wick about what he’s doing in town.)
Well, after the first named death in the movie, the movie starts rolling and we start killing unnamed characters by the buttload. You will find yourself wondering “what does the payroll for these people look like?” Not just for the whole issue of how much an individual one of these people would cost, but John Wick kills, like, dozens and dozens and dozens of people. Even if they only got $50k plus some decent benefits (including intangibles like being able to tell potential pick-ups in bars “hey, baby, I’m assassin-adjacent”), that’s still a *LOT* of people to be paying $50k to.
Well, maybe the fact that you’re not paying them for long makes up for that.
But then I think that recruitment would be a problem.
Of course, there are hints of a secondary economy in the John Wick universe, one that revolves heavily on Gold Coins (that’s, apparently, how you pay for stuff like the hotel room and weapons/armor and, apparently, as few as two (top shelf) drinks in the bar) but we only see assassins spend these coins, we never see them *GET* them. Now, we do see some of them leave the hands of the artisan in charge of creating them and they go to the guy running the hotel who pronounces them of suitable quality and proclaims that they be added into circulation… but he runs the Hotel. He’s the guy who *GETS* these coins in the first place.
“Ah, but what about assassin’s contracts? Maybe those are where these things get paid out!”
We see one assassin’s contract be put out. It’s for dollars. Not these coins.
So I have no idea how the economy in the John Wick universe works. I mean, the price for two drinks seems to be one third the price of a tailored Kevlar evening wear suit. I’ll even grant that the drinks are top shelf. How does that even work?
Anyway, this is yet another movie that has massive amounts of style and it feels like it wants to be saying something… one of the final climactic scenes takes place in a museum/art exhibit called “Reflections of the Soul” and that scene involves people descending stairs a lot… but the movie feels like it was written by a film studies major who smoked marijuana all the time with philosophy of religion geeks and pretty much got the gist of it.
I’d say that it was all style, no substance… but there were a couple of interesting things. It might be easy to say that the movie is nothing but a set of reactions of billiard balls but, towards the end, one of the characters is given a choice. The choice is made. So one of the philosophy of religion geeks gave his existentialism speech at some point during one of those late-night bull sessions.
I’d say that the movie had no soul, but Fish (I saw the movie with Fish, I should mention) pointed out that the movie had a dog re-introduced and, in the absence of a soul, I suppose you can have a dog. So since you know that nothing’s going to happen to the titular character, you can instead worry “jeez, are they going to kill this dog too? I know that they’re not afraid to kill dogs in this franchise!” and you spend the movie wondering if the dog will make it out alive.
And then, at the end, you will realize that, of course, you’re not merely watching a sequel… you’re watching the middle movie of a trilogy.
And then, after the trilogy comes out with a box set, they’ll come out with a prequel.
Sigh.
If you’re into heavily stylized violence, interesting characters (you will laugh and slap your leg at at least one of the cameos), and hints at a very interesting universe that makes no sense when you start thinking about it, well… this just might be the movie for you.
But, seriously, you’ll be tempted to call it soulless and describe it as having style without substance.
So… what are you reading and/or watching?
Saw it last night.
The economy question jumped out at me as well. It kind of made sense in the first movie, but this one inflated it too much without some kind of explanation to help it make sense.Report
So I googled it.
The explanation that made the most sense to me is that the coins are not special coins, particularly, they’re just gold coins that cost about $1000 each. When they’re handed to hotel staff, they do two things:
1) Indicate Membership
2) Provide A Gratuity
The suit, the guns, all that. Those weren’t paid for with the coins. They were paid for with dollars.
There. That apparently came off the DVD extras.
The gold coins are useful because they’re worth a lot and they are, effectively, untraceable. At the end of the day, however, they’re just a krugerrand.
Which makes sense.
But is somehow disappointing anyway.Report
That adds quite a bit of subtext to the scene where two drinks are paid for with a coin.Report
Yeah. And it more easily explains the “put these into circulation” thing as well as the whole issue where it seems that some people hoard these while others throw them around like water.
Maybe only certain people (that is, assassins) can purchase them at cost+vig?
So they’re valuable to all, but only not particularly scarce to some.
And now I have to wonder at the $7,000,000 bounty offered in the movie.
Sure, in *MY* life, I’d love to have $7,000,000. But that seems a patry sum in the universe in which they’re hiring bodyguards willing to run forward despite seeing their co-bodyguard just finish having been shot in the head.
I mean, that’s less than the payroll for three-four years of the people who got shot at the dance party alone, assuming $50,000/year plus bennies (not counting intangibles).
And if you’re paying more than $50,000/year, (which I imagine you’d have to), we’re down to two-three years or even one year’s worth of payroll costs alone.
Which makes the sum paltry indeed.
($70,000,000? Now we’re talkin’. Plus they wouldn’t have to change that one monologue, you know the one, that much.)Report
Yesterday I picked up Highbrow/Lowbrow: The emergence of cultural hierarchy in American Culture from the library. Scholarship is a bit old though considering it came out in 1988.Report
Its a cold and rainy day in NYC so I’m staying inside and using YouTube to watch some free movies. Just finished watching Lionheart, a fun but cheesy movie from 1987 starring Eric Stoltz as a French knight. Everybody speaks with American and British accents though. Its actually kind of interesting because a lot of big Hollywood names were involved in making Lionheart but it never made a big impact even as a cult classic that people who grew up in the 1980s feel nostalgic about. The script is solid and well-written, the number of plot holes next to none, and the acting very decent but it seems to have disappeared from public consciousness.Report
Reading Louise Penny’s “The Brutal Telling,” one of her Inspector Gamache novels. I enjoy these because the lead detective in them (Armand Gamache, of Montreal’s Surete) is fundamentally a good person: someone who abhors violence and murders but who also finds himself sometimes challenged and bemused by some of the moral dilemmas he faces in exposing the murders. And he also loves his wife and his grown children, and enjoys a good meal….Penny’s novels, unlike some modern crime novels, are a lot “milder” – the violence is all “off screen,” so to speak, and I’ve not run across any graphic sex in them (graphic violence and sex are two things that quickly put me off an author).
I also enjoy them because of the setting – Quebec, and most commonly a small town near Montreal called Three Pines (which does not exist in the real world) – there’s a lot of discussion of the history of and tensions between Anglophone and Francophone Quebecois, and that little cultural bit is interesting (I have been to Montreal a few times, and have ancestors from that part of the world).
It’s an enjoyable series, and I like series like this, because if you like the characters, you get to revisit them in later books.Report
One other thing that bugs me. You’d think that there’d be a rule that said something like “we are professionals, people… it’s wrong to take hits on assassins. Take the hits on those who hired them. The assassin himself is just a tool.”
Or, at least, a lampshade on why there isn’t a rule that says something like that.Report
Assassins have decided to murder for money though. That does not make them entirely blameless.Report
Oh, I’m not saying that *LAW ENFORCEMENT* should have that rule. Heaven forefend!
I’m talking among those who enjoy the privileges of The Continental.Report
Some people can’t help getting high on their own supply. Normally doesn’t work out when they do.Report
Then lampshade it!
We know that this ain’t personal! They went out of their way to explain that this ain’t personal!
WHY IS EVERYBODY TAKING IT PERSONALReport
“Tell Mike it was only business. I always liked him.”Report
Having seen neither Wick movie, I don’t know if it’s just a plot hole, or a commentary on how it’s impossible to achieve work-life balance in the new economy.Report
I mean, at least Ezio had a union, right?Report
Assassins Lean in.Report
The rule needs to be more specific than that. A privileged member could do something that warrants having a contract set upon them (like killing a person on Continental grounds).
But forcing an assassin to perform a hit by way of a mark (which is public knowledge in the community), and then striking back at said assassin because the hit was done should blow back on the holder of the mark. I mean, it was an open secret who ordered the hit on who and how it was coerced. The guy who ordered it should have had a hell of a lot more trouble from other directions than just Wick. Or at the very lease, considering the circumstances, Wick should have gotten a pass on the Continental Faux Pas.Report
You know what? I agree with that.
I was trying to figure out how to get around the beef that Common had with John Wick given the rule I was proposing and I wasn’t able to.Report
Sigh…
I’m not even up on current movies. I saw the new ghostbusters movie. Meh. Although the old one is a bit tedious after being viewed a dozen times, I remember seeing it for the first time. Wow. The new one? Meh. Cute. Worth it for a DVD rental, not for full theater price.Report
The New Ghostbusters managed to offend everyone that mattered, that’s why it was a flop.
….
Nobody can figure out who the fuck matters though, so we get to listen to SJW and Anti-SJW bitching about the whole thing, when neither side matters in the least.
Props to the person who picked up on the cast spawn-camping a Cancer Ward. Report
Yeah the Continental rooms seem enormously underpriced. As you noted the cost to hire bodyguards would have to be enormous. Why bother? Simply set up shop at the Continental.
My bet is in the 3rd John Wick the Continental system itself will collapse or be in danger of collapse.Report
Good news! Sonny Bunch wrote an editorial on the John Wick Economy in the Warshington Post!
I’m not sure I agree with it, but it does make some interesting points about price signals.
And, for that matter, explains why the coins are so very much worth hoarding (remember how we saw box upon box upon box upon box of them in the beginning? Yeah, that).Report
I like that, the pricing set to serve a larger incentive that regular pricing signals would fail to signal.Report