If you were ranking the great modern action franchises, the John Wick series would be right up there next to The Raid and Fast & Furious and Mission: Impossible. The first two chapters revitalized Keanu Reeves’ sputtering career and gave American action movies a speed boost that rivals anything coming in from overseas. Wick is like a white collar Jason Bourne, if you replace the Bourne franchise’s shadowy government projects with an ancient, massive underworld of theatrical assassins.
When John Wick: Chapter 2 elevated the franchise’s world-building, the anticipation for Chapter 3 reached a boiling point thanks to not just the revelation of a much more elaborate mythology than we’d been led to believe, but a killer cliffhanger ending and a clear demonstration that the original’s terrific action could be sustained across multiple parts. In the space of two movies, we’ve gone from seeing John Wick as a sad widower out for justice to seeing him as part of a luxurious criminal syndicate that abides by its own set of strange and awesome traditions.
Man, what are we doing? Just watch the trailer. Let’s have ten of these movies. That was awesome. These movies are so awesome. There are going to be cool dogs in fight scenes. There is going to be a lot of Keanu Reeves running around, apparently using a book as a weapon? There is even a little bit of Keanu Reeves riding a horse while being chased by motorcycle killers. These are real, true sentences.
Movies rock. John Wick rocks. It comes out May 17. We’re out of breath already.
