A few months ago I came across the following headline “Jennifer Lopez goes full John Wick in the Mother teaser.” This prompted me to read the article, watch the trailer for Mother and eagerly anticipate the movie because I would learn Latin if they said it was the John Wick language. Latin actually might be the language of the assassins in the John Wick universe and I haven’t learned it so maybe the measure of my devotion ends at watching a boilerplate knock-off and then writing about it. I saw little John Wick in the trailer for Mother but I still filed away the release date and fired it up as soon as it came out.
Mother was a disappointment. It had all the markings of a John Wick movie, but it lacked the blood, sweat, and sneers that make John Wick so great. Despite this, the comparison got me to watch it, so the filmmakers and Netflix likely don't care. But I cared. I want more John Wick in my life if that wasn’t already apparent by this little collection here.
Renfield was called the “John Wick of Vampire movies.” Meanwhile Day Shift, another vampire movie, included in it’s trailer the factoid, “from the people who brought you John Wick.” Violent Night was sold to audiences as Santa meets John Wick. They referred to Atomic Blonde, Kate, and Gunpowder Milkshake as some version of Jane Wick. John Wick has become shorthand for a certain type of movie. One person skilled at killing people through a mix of hand-to-hand combat and weapon expertise going up against a bunch of other people. You might say, that sounds a lot like Taken and you would not be wrong. John Wick was sold as a Taken knock-off before becoming a much more successful successor.1 John Wick is to Taken as Kendal Roy wishes he was to Logan Roy.
A comp is when someone says “this movie is like that movie.” This is done to sell a movie based on the idea that it is like another well-liked movies. First comps are made to sell a script or premise to a studio and then later to sell the movie to the audience. Some version of X meets Y, “it’s Twister meets Jaws - Sharknado” but when a movie becomes it’s own definition of a type of movie, it’s literally leveled up beyond just comparison and represents it’s own category.
Taxonomy is the process by which biologists categorize living organisms. They group organisms into eight levels based on identifiable characteristics. These groups are domain, kingdom, phylum or division, class, order, family, genus, and species. It goes from largest to smallest or broadest similarities to most specific. Domain groups organisms according to single-cell or nucleus with organelles. That’s broad. That’s amoebas vs chimps. For motion pictures that would be like TV or movie. Class categories humans as mammals so for movies class would be genre. Die Hard is in the class of action movies. Species is the most specific, defined by their evolutionary history, physical and genetic similarities, same number of chromosomes and ability to interbreed. This would be wolves and dogs. Not all dogs. Not French Bulldogs. Those are examples of humans playing god and creating animals that can’t be birthed without a c-section and then go on to barely walk and breathe. In movie terms, species would be the John Wick franchise. They exist in the same world, share the same background and have the same character crossover. The French Bulldog of movies would be Vin Diesel in the Fast and Furious franchise, it’s ability to reproduce requires scientific intervention and technological advancement. What I’m interested in today is the family and genus of movies. They can’t crossover, but they share genetic ancestors and are more related to one another than say The Equalizer and The Pelican Brief.
Genus would be a movie that is ever bit as good as the original without being a part of the original. This would have to be a movie so good that people might prefer it to it’s precursor. I don’t think there’s any Wick-off that people who like John Wick like more than John Wick. So we’ll be looking at the family of John Wick. Movies that go beyond just a retired good guy pulled back in to go after bad guys. After all that’s what Taken is. But what distinguishes John Wick from other movies about older actors playing older characters brought back into action, was that the action was a big part of the storytelling. It wasn’t just the descriptor, it was the soup to nuts of the entire production. John Wick wasn’t in the same family as Taken because Liam Neeson was playing a guy with a very particular set of skills but the camera would cut quickly or a stunt guy would step in to execute said skills. Keanu Reeves on the other hand, was actually the guy with the set of skills. He was doing the stunt work and the camera stayed on him so we could see. That was the primary qualifier for what made John Wick it’s own genus. But as we’ll see, the movie became it’s own family. This is a rare occurrence, but John Wick isn’t the only movie to do this. Coincidentally or maybe not at all, the other franchise that I can think of has mutated and formed it’s own feature family, is Die Hard.
Die Hard worked so well with audiences and the plot seemed so simple and replicable that over thirty years later, it’s still a blueprint for action blockbusters as we’ll see with White House Down, Final Score and Bullet Train. Movies might not use it directly the same way they did in the 90s but it’s certainly still being used to entice studios and audiences. However, simple does not mean easy. Every attempt at replicating the brilliance and tension of the original has only reminds audiences of what they’re missing. Still there’s a lot of fun to be had watching a sardonic underdog beat baddies to a pulp and sour a sinister villains master plan before throwing him off a building or kicking him out of a plane or making him swallow position or snapping his neck or taking his head off. There’s a lot of head and neck violence in these movies.
Seeing how Die Hard is one of my favorite movies and John Wick is easily my favorite movie franchise, it felt like a gift from the ghost of Patrick Swayze that both movies spawned so many directly inspired imitations. The question that seemed most fun to answer is which knock-off is the best of the bunch and then overall which genus had the stronger DNA.
It’ll be a March Madness style tournament with four rounds. Each round will pit a Try Hard against a Try Hard and a Wick Off against a Wick Off. The last round will determine the champion. We’ll also figure out which film inspired the more consistently fun knock-offs and what to do about Bullet Train. We’ll be going in chronological order respectively. This means the earliest knock-offs of each film will go head to head, not the earliest films overall.
I want to get a couple things out of the way that I’m self-conscious about. None of which are that I’m using my time to do this, though it’s arguable that’s the only thing I should have trepidation about. First, this will take a while and I might break it up with some other stuff so if you care at all, I appreciate you so much, but you can care less. That takes the pressure off. Second, they won’t all be thing long. This round includes the introduction so I had to go the distance, but in general I hope to make these relatively short and sweet. Third, I don’t know what I’m doing. I write every morning and sometimes it’s about heavy, sad, uncomfortable feelings and ideas, sometimes it’s fiery indictment of capitalism or consumerism, and sometimes it’s writing about big dumb movies and other rubbish that’s sacred to me. My voice is all over the place. So let’s just be chill and care less. Again I appreciate you so much. Ok, back to it.
To understand what makes a Try Hard or a Wick Off, we have to define what makes Die Hard and John Wick so iconic respectively. Rather than dissect the films up top, we’re just going to let the battle royale of Wick-offs and Try-Hards be the coroner. Autopsy by fire.
Round 1
Both Die Hard and John Wick were slept on movies that changed filmmaking forever. Die Hard came out in 1988 and studios were so worried about Bruce Willis not being a compelling action star that he was not included in the poster. When the movie became a blockbuster hit, new posters were designed with Willis’ mug as big as Nakatomi Plaza. John Wick almost went straight to Video on Demand (VoD) because it was seen as a low-budget Taken knock-off about a guy going berserk after his dog was killed. It was a typical 'expert assassin is forced out of retirement because something was taken from him' story. Liam Neeson was releasing movies monthly and Kevin Costner and Denzel Washington each had one out in 2014 when John Wick was released. Then the home invasion scene happens, and Keanu Reeves’ John Wick takes out ten ski mask thugs in long wide shots and the audience realized they were about to have their domes peeled back.
That’s all to say, it would take the studios a couple of years to get the movie machine calibrated for more Die Hards and John Wicks. For Try Hards this meant Wesley Snipes’ Passenger 57 and Steven Segal’s Under Siege aiming for similar premises and box office return. In the Wick Off corner we have Atomic Blonde and Deadpool 2 for utilizing the director's style with intense fight scenes.
Passenger 57 (1992) vs Under Siege (1992)
Passenger 57 and Under Siege both went very surface level when they copied Die Hard. They both took the premise of a guy trapped in a tight space facing off against a band of baddies. To heighten the premise, they just shrunk the space. Passenger 57 put our hero, Snipes’ John Cutter, on a plane and Under Siege puts Segal’s Casey Rybeck on a battleship. As for which is the better Try Hard, Under Siege eeks out the win because the boat is bigger. Not all boats are bigger than planes and a big enough plane would make for a great Try Hard (see Air Force One), but part of what made Die Hard so great was that Nakatomi Plaza served as both friend and foe to John McClaine. McClaine was cut off from any allies, but he also could use the elevator and air ducts to stay one step ahead of the thieves. The busty centerfold hung up in the mechanical passage is used to help McClaine navigate. He also gets to jump off the roof. Rybeck doesn’t have as much fun as McClaine, probably because Segal was absent the day they taught fun in martial arts school, but he gets to kill guys in the kitchen and on the deck, and in the captain’s quarters and the navigation room or whatever it’s called. A Die Hard needs to feel like a game of cat and mouse. On Passenger 57, Cutter is too confined. He meets the bad guy immediately. There’s no cat and mouse. I think they were subverting the expectation that the hero and villain wouldn’t show down til the end, which could work (see Speed later) but by having them trade threats up top, it takes a lot of the steam out of the movie. They do have fun with the back and forth, another element a Try Hard needs if it wants to be in the Die Hard family. Cutter of course says “Always bet on black.” But McClaine becomes myth before he becomes man and that makes for a great irritant to the villain’s plot. Under Siege sort of drops the ball with this because Rybeck is not an unknown, but it does save the showdown for the end. One of the iconic elements of Die Hard is McClaine and Gruber talking over the radio but not being face to face until they each think they have the upper hand. Under Siege delivers on this. It’s not until the end that Tommy Lee Jones’ Strannix physically occupies the same space as Rybeck. Neither movie packs the same punch as Die Hard, but in round one, Under Siege, like it’s hero Rybeck does to Strannix, holds Passenger 57’s knife in it’s teeth before jabbing a finger into 57’s eyeball and pushing it out of it’s head. Under Siege emerges victorious.
Victor: Under Siege advances to Round 2.
Atomic Blonde (2017) vs Deadpool 2 (2018)
If you can believe it, these were the first Wick Offs. There was of course John Wick: Chapter 2, but that’s building a world around the same character, so it’s species, not family. Both films were directed by David Leitch, the co-director of John Wick. Atomic Blonde was billed as a sort of Jane Wick, whereas Deadpool 2 promised a small-stakes R-rated superhero sequel with lots of John Wick style fight scenes. A John Wick movie is as much about the direction as it is about the story. Arguably more so.
As mentioned, John Wick was seen as a Taken copy, but it distanced itself from the pack when it put Keanu Reeves in the lead and two stunt coordinators behind the camera. Every fight scene in the first John Wick is a work of art. Except for the final showdown where Wick fights an old Russian in the rain. That fight suggests even the people who behind John Wick didn’t know what they had. It’s an anti-climactic fight because it was more about concluding the story than topping the fights before. No one it would seem, not even the producers or screenwriter thought the home invasion or the Red Circle shootout or the hotel room fight with Perkins or the car chase were going to be massive exhibits of stunt choreography mixed with a texture of gun play that would later be coined gun-fu (a term originated by Harlem rapper Big L in the late 90s). The fight scenes in John Wick were not your quick cuts and close-ups, something Taken had mastered, or the handheld shaky cam style of Bourne movies. The camera was set up at a safe distance away and the fights rolled out like a ballet or live sporting event. Reeves was doing the stunts. When some guy got punched, tackled, and shot, it was Reeves doing it. It looked awesome because there were no cameras or stunt trickery to be seen, and the effects that were included were not the centerpiece but the thread that stitched the tapestry together. This style of moviemaking invited audiences to watch choreography that told a story. We were no longer watching a guy make quick work of a lot of hired guns. We were watching a guy put his entire body into every human hurdle between him and the finish line. A great Wick Off knows this.
Deadpool 2 has some very fun visual fight scenes and if you watch the extended cut, there’s a longer opening fight scene in a spa that’s all eye candy, but Reynolds is not Reeves. Ryan Reynolds, who plays Deadpool, sustained a back injury in his career and for that reason (among presumably the fact that his character is super human), he can’t be the guy pulling off the fights. Josh Brolin is also in this movie, and while his fight scenes have their moments too (the prison escape and the truck/train scene), the movie has to keep reminding you it’s a superhero movie so everything needs to be turned up with CGI spice and seasoning. They told a smaller story so the stakes didn’t rest on global destruction, but if they really wanted to accentuate smaller storytelling they could have minimized big set pieces and focused on super humans taking punches and stomping heads. With all the CGI, the direction that made John Wick so visually arresting isn’t there. There’s even a CGI fight scene that Deadpool calls out as being just that, two computer images programmed to brawl. It’s exactly the opposite of what a John Wick film promises.
Charlize Theron is the star of Atomic Blonde and the movie starts at the end with her tending to a hundred wounds by bathing in a tub of ice.2 It’s a compelling start to the movie and one that promises a long journey for our hero. There are really only two notable fight scenes in Atomic Blonde, but they equal something like seventeen minutes with minimal cuts and so it’s worth the price of admission. As the first Wick Off, the movie suffered from too high of expectations. The trailer was amazing, with Theron as Lorraine Broughton in 80s punk, cold Eastern Europe club fights and old gothic postwar apartment brouhaha. Both fight scenes have Charlize Theron doing the physical acting and combat showcasing some creative weaponry of pots, pans, a hot plate, a keychain, a big rope, and a corkscrew. The stairwell through apartment through car chase is shot as one long uninterrupted shot, a oner as they’re affectionally called. The fights don’t have the style and visual elegance of a Wick movie, but rather a brutal, exhausting ugly bone fracturing blood vessel popping gladiator brawl. It’s fun to watch, but it’s also unrelenting and punishing to watch. While the fights do nothing to advance the incomprehensible story, they succeed in cementing Theron as a top-of-class action star who even with this, Mad Max: Fury Road, and sure The Old Guard, is still at the mercy of some misogynistic underrating. I do not know what’s happening in Atomic Blonde story-wise. The plot is an overcorrection of man loses dog, man goes on rampage, which may hurt it in future rounds. While the fight scenes don’t lift up the storytelling the way they do in a John Wick proper, as far as stylized fight scenes of impressive physical feats go, Atomic Blonde kicks Deadpool 2 down a staircase, stomps on it’s self-aware dick and throws a rope around it’s neck before using it as an anchor and jumping out the window to round 2.
Victor: Atomic Blonde advances to Round 2.
Next up in Round 1B
Try Hard: Cliffhanger (1993) vs Speed (1994)
Wick-Off: Polar (2019) vs Hobbs and Shaw (2019)
This is going to get confusing but John Wick as a verb or adjective or name of a unstoppable hitman will not be italicized but it will when it’s the film John Wick.
Actually the movie starts long before the beginning, then the beginning, then the end. The non-linear storytelling doesn’t work to the movie’s benefit, though Leitch doesn’t seem to think so because most of his movies are told this way, but we’ll get to more of that later.