Hollywood has become hot for video games in 2023, with live-action television adaptations of The last of us And Twisted metal debuting on major streaming services and animation Super Mario Bros. Movie grossing more than a billion dollars in theaters. Hell, there was even a movie about Tetris This year.
And yet few direct adaptations of video game properties preserve the bizarre and specific differences between video game worlds and ours, or the way the psychology of playing through a story differs from that of watching a story . This often requires watching films that are not specifically based on video games, but are inspired by their form or aesthetic.
This inspiration may be obvious, as in the pixels and power-ups of Scott Pilgrim vs. the worldor subtextual, as in the grating repetition of Edge of tomorrow. As generations who grew up with games as part of their regular narrative diet become filmmakers, the influence of video games becomes so pervasive that it may not even constitute a conscious creative decision. Through behind-the-scenes featurettes included in the home video release, John Wick screenwriter Derek Kolstad describes his intention to build a pulpy comic book world of gangsters and assassins. Whether he intended it or not, what he actually created was the most perfect cinematic representation of a video game world, a surreal space governed by a clear, often unspoken set of rules.
The John Wick series follows the eponymous hitman (Keanu Reeves) as he comes out of retirement following the senseless murder of his beloved dog, a parting gift from his late wife, Helen. John himself is a classic video game player character, a man with few words and little emotional growth, but with incredible, superhuman skills and a unique, iconic look. Once John re-enters the secret world of international assassins, neither he nor the public ever leaves. The world under the high table has its own economy and social structures that exist alongside the real world but essentially do not interact with it. The blood feuds and political power struggles that take place under the Table have serious repercussions within their world, but seem to have no visible impact on anyone outside of it, even when logic would have it.
Image: Lionsgate
Aside from Helen, who only appears in the recordings and in John’s memory, almost every character with a name or line of dialogue in the four John Wick cinema is part of this secret society. Like a player character in an RPG, John only interacts with people who are part of the game. The streets are full of people going about their business, but, as seen during John’s frantic escape out of town in the first act of chapter 3, about one in five New Yorkers is secretly a murderer. The others barely recognize the violence unfolding around them and, as is the case in all but the cruelest shooter games, spectators Never catch a stray ball.
No sooner could John Wick injure an unarmed civilian than a Pokémon trainer could have his Arcanine incinerate a gym leader. That’s not how the game works. Oddly enough, although their action and business is presumably the killing of politicians, business leaders, and other non-combatants whom a party would pay handsomely to see die, never once across four films do we see or even hear about someone who is paid to kill someone outside of their own criminal society. As far as the public is concerned, there is no collateral damage under the high table.
Those who serve under the Table have their own currency, the three-inch gold medallions generally called “coins.” Coins do not have a direct or consistent monetary value. A coin could buy you a night at the Continental (the assassin hotel chain that has a location in every major city and the setting for the Peacock limited series of the same name premiering this week), or a drink at its bar clandestine in the basement. .
Image: Entertainment at the Summit
In John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum, High Table treasurer Berrada (Jerome Flynn) explains that the coin represents “the business of relationships.” As with many video game currencies, you can’t just buy a stack of gold coins; you have to earn it by interacting with important people and completing specific tasks. It is also the only currency that we see the characters exchange over the course of the series. Contract killings have real monetary value, which is probably how assassins afford their homes, cars, and non-tactical clothing, but this seems to have no use within their own society.
Not that John Wick’s peers seem to have much use for the outside world: in fact, they seem more at home within the walls of the Continental, where “doing business” is forbidden under penalty of excommunication. In gameplay terms, The Continental is a safe room, the place where the player character automatically recovers from damage, levels up, resupplies, and receives their next quest. Just as combat functions are typically disabled in these types of spaces, as soon as John sets foot (or even the tip of a finger) on continental terrain, the action is over. He finished this chapter. Now it’s time for him to have a refreshing drink and collect new information or equipment from Charon (Lance Reddick) or his mentor Winston (Ian McShane). In Chapter 2, John calls on the tailor (Luca Mosca) and the “sommelier” of the Rome Continental (Peter Serafinowicz), who equip him with the latest weapons and armor. It’s here that John acquires his “tactical lined” tuxedo, which allows him to take gunfire without ruining the sleek silhouette of his suit. This is a wonderful stat buff that, against all reason, does not affect its appearance, such as when a game allows a player to equip heavy armor but disables any cosmetic effect this should have on the character.
Photo: Murray Close/Lionsgate
John Wick’s enemies also progress gradually over the course of the series, with new equipment being introduced to increase the difficulty of combat. Shortly after John receives his tactical suit, we begin to see other characters using it, leveling the playing field. chapter 3, when John angers the High Table, their pumped-up infantrymen wear heavy body armor that is bulletproof everywhere except the neck. (Nothing says “video games” like a villain with a weak point.) Chapters 3 And 4 both feature a climax in which John must fight his way past enemies up several literal levels to the top of a structure, where a final boss awaits him, Donkey Kong-style.
The John Wick series may not have started with the intention of imitating the structure or atmosphere of the video game, but it ended up embracing the comparison. Series director Chad Stahelski quotes top down shooter 2019 The Hong Kong Massacre as a direct source of inspiration for a similar sequence in John Wick: Chapter 4. Stahelski is ready to adapt The Ghost of Tsushimawhile Kolstad develops adaptations of both the recent Sifu and Sega’s classic beat-’em-up The streets of rage.
Still, it’s hard to imagine any of these projects striking such a perfect balance between video game structure and cinematic storytelling. After all, part of the reason John Wick’s surreal video game rules work is that they evolved gradually from the premise, over the course of several films. An original film quietly imitating video games is new, but a video game film adaptation does itself a disservice by trying to be more like a video game. John Wick can get away with using these same gimmicks because most audiences aren’t looking for them. Like the non-combatants in the films, we just don’t look too closely and let the man in the blood-stained suit go about his business.