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Just back from a business trip to the other side of the pond. This means movies!

New Running Man - not terrible, good production quality, Glen Powell gives a spirited performance, it it has none of the charm of Arnie’s effort.

Predator Badlands - Again, A+ for effort and the cast giving it a solid go, but it’s a weird background to try to build up a buddy movie.

The Gorge - Meetcute assassins vs cosmic horror. The cast are blatantly having a great time, effects and build up are spectacular but I felt like it gave me whiplash a time or two in there.

Ballerina - Ms John Wick (like Ms Pac-Man, but with many more people getting shot in the face). The lustre has faded for me. Exactly the same setup, tropes and general plot development, except there is a bit of character history, and the lead is a woman. In all honesty, one of the best bits about the first Wick film was that it was deliberately devoid of context, and that helped keep it tight.

So all 4 enjoyable watches, but nothing earth shattering. I think I liked The Gorge the best because it was the weirdest.

Caught The Running Man on my flight.

It’s so-so. Most of it is good fun. But the ending was lame. I dunno if it’s true to the book. But Edgar Wright just doesn’t work for me without Pegg and Frost.

 Flinty wrote:

Ballerina - Ms John Wick (like Ms Pac-Man, but with many more people getting shot in the face). The lustre has faded for me. Exactly the same setup, tropes and general plot development, except there is a bit of character history, and the lead is a woman. In all honesty, one of the best bits about the first Wick film was that it was deliberately devoid of context, and that helped keep it tight.

Yep, the first John Wick is a great example of painting just enough for the audience to fill in the gaps themselves.

Just enough little snippets to hint at a deeper world that we are just seeing the surface of.

In little snippets we see how big this assassin underworld is and it's reach. Like, Wick's local policeman responding to the shots fired report from a neighbour, and seeing the corpse on the floor behind Wick when he answers the door, and his only question is "You working again, John?" With that tiny interaction you learn that the police know, but don't interfere, without anyone needing to explicitly say it. We don't know how or why, but we don't need to.

Every film after that first has tried to cement the world into place, and just made it work less and less. Because the concept is stupid, and cannot work when you try and define the details, and won't be as good as what everyone else can come up with themselves to fill in those gaps. Which is why you shouldn't. You don't explain the noodle incident.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Flinty wrote:

Ballerina - Ms John Wick (like Ms Pac-Man, but with many more people getting shot in the face). The lustre has faded for me. Exactly the same setup, tropes and general plot development, except there is a bit of character history, and the lead is a woman. In all honesty, one of the best bits about the first Wick film was that it was deliberately devoid of context, and that helped keep it tight.

Yep, the first John Wick is a great example of painting just enough for the audience to fill in the gaps themselves.

Just enough little snippets to hint at a deeper world that we are just seeing the surface of.

In little snippets we see how big this assassin underworld is and it's reach. Like, Wick's local policeman responding to the shots fired report from a neighbour, and seeing the corpse on the floor behind Wick when he answers the door, and his only question is "You working again, John?" With that tiny interaction you learn that the police know, but don't interfere, without anyone needing to explicitly say it. We don't know how or why, but we don't need to.

Every film after that first has tried to cement the world into place, and just made it work less and less. Because the concept is stupid, and cannot work when you try and define the details, and won't be as good as what everyone else can come up with themselves to fill in those gaps. Which is why you shouldn't. You don't explain the noodle incident.

Agreed, the more they have tried to explain the larger world the more absurd it has got. To the point where im not convinced a single civilian exists in that world.

Still like the movies but stop world building you are making it worse.

Yeah the first he's an exceptional assassin who everyone in one small corner of the criminal world fears.

By the end of the film series he's one of a group of super soldier type assassins who are all exceptional; all feared and yet he's even more feared than all the others and after that it just gets all kinds of messy. Heck I recall at least one of the trailers almost hinting at him being a fantasy-style warrior at one stage.


Basically the cool idea gets a little silly and then suffers from them trying to re-hash the same idea just with ever more increased odds against him.

The fight scenes started out exciting and refreshing but part way through the second they started to get a bit ponderous and by the third i was feeling a bit numb to it all.

First two are excellent primers for Low Gen Vampires in a Masquerade Game. Where a pip in Potency, Fortitude and/or Celerity gives you a real advantage against regular humans.

Plus the whole secret layer to society and strict rules in the Hotel/Elysium.

I think Ballerina suffers for being more of the same. Four John Wicks did a good job of exhausting the original concept. In my opinion a fifth one with John Wick Light was a mistake. They should have done something with the bodyguard thing from the beginning of the movie instead. That could have added something to the franchise in a way the movie we got did not.

 Flinty wrote:
The Gorge - Meetcute assassins vs cosmic horror. The cast are blatantly having a great time, effects and build up are spectacular but I felt like it gave me whiplash a time or two in there.

I liked The Gorge quite a bit. Good fun, that one.

On the John Wick stuff? The prequel TV series was good fun.