Nobody, or What if John Wick had a family?

Cafe Society
1

So I saw this trailer for a new movie by the writer of the John Wick series and the director of Hard Core Henry. Bob Odenkirk, of all people, is a Wickian ex-hitman who dropped out of the life to have a family. This seems to be escalating both the older guy who is secretly an unstoppable bad-ass, and the secret underground organized crime super killer, with a little Charles Bronsen’s Death Wish fantasy of taking on the punks.

Is this just going to be its own genre now? How many flavors of this particular stew do we need?

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed John Wick, and I thought the first one ended well. The second lost me early, though. Why was he killing even more guys? It seemed like if you took it at face value, he could never rest until he killed every bad guy in the world. I have heard that the third is a lot fun, but what is next? Do we start seeing crossovers? The auditor* and Baba Yaga cross paths when transporter ends up holding the daughter of an ex-CIA agent with a particular set of skills?

*Odenkirk’s character in Nobody

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For what it’s worth, the John Wick character was originally supposed to be an older man . They rewrote it when Keanu Reeves came on board.

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He’s 56. How much older were they going for?
:wink:

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I liked Keanu Reeves before but he was cast as a laid back kinda guy. That changed although his killing is still done in a laconic fashion.

Pretty much how “Taken” changed Liam Neeson into the most bad ass actor on the planet.

I don’t know where the series could go after John Wick 3. He has already taken on the world. Does he go intergalactic?

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I’m guessing the “Better Kill Saul” joke was done almost immediately by everyone. Probably including Bob.

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Wasn’t John Wick raised by the Russian mob?

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This genre has seemingly existed prior to John Wick, but usually it’s the person who falls into the super underground organized crime syndicate and then learns to be the unstoppable bad ass (such as Wanted) or someone who comes to release he’s a bad ass spy, which are almost all apparently super underground assassins (such as the Bourne series).

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It’s a great trailer, so I expect to see it in some format…

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James Bond was arguably a bad ass secret assassin (when he wasn’t a famous assassin). And there are dozens of spy and and hit man movies of various types from Gross Point Blank, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, XXX, Prizzi’s Honor, Leon, etc. The bad ass assassin is has been a hero and villain in many movies, but now we have this specific type of old man bad ass taking over the genre. It isn’t entirely unprecedented. The Equalizer was a TV show about a hit man we left crime to help people. The TV version didn’t kill rooms full of people with his bare hands like Denzel Washington does in the movie version.

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Reeves? The star of Point Break, Speed and the Matrix? He was never really laid back.

Personally, I think he’s one of our finest living action movie stars, if not the greatest of them all. He’s the Gene Kelly of shooting people in the head.

Sort of. Wick (not his real name) is Belarussian Roma, and was raised in a combination ballet and wrestling school, which was also involved in organized crime in some way.

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And regarding the thread title, John Wick had a family, or at least a wife, who died before the events of the first film.

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The “older guy turns out to be retired badass involved in a semi-secret underworld of assassins and spies” trope is really common in wuxia

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And a puppy so much sweeter and cuter than the massive pit bull he stole from the shelter.

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I’ve been a huge Bob Odenkirk fan ever since Mr Show. I’ll definitely be seeing this.

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Now I want to go rewatch Kung Fu Hustle.

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John Wick: Suburban Mayhem is an upcoming film in the series.

It features John and his family shooting down and blowing up loud partiers, neighborhood bullies and gossips, people who park rusted pickups in their driveways and anyone whose dogs poop on their lawn.

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I think it’s time to bubble this one up again. I saw Nobody last Friday. I really enjoyed this movie. Who all has seen it? It was worth my first trip back to a movie theater in over a year.