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John Wick Chapter 3: Parabellum (Can't Get Enough of Keanu)

🕑 Added 2019-07-02 18:35:08 +0000 UTC

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Michealangleo Waters

I cant find the channel on soundcloud, which the we heart hartnett was on

Peter Theriot

To add to the point Patrick made about the gunfight scenes dragging too long and having no clear goal: I also felt exhausted during this movie and started to zone out during the Casablanca fight, but I don't think it's just the action scenes themselves, it's something different about the scenes in between them. The first two movies did a much better job at taking moments to let the audience breathe. There's lots of down time when John is reelatively safe in the first one, because he's staying at the hotel and he's the one on the offensive. This is also true for the first half of the second movie, as he's preparing for his job, then when he makes it back to the hotel in Rome and has the drink with Cassian, then when he's at the Bowery (you know he's not going to fight his way out of the Bowery because they put the King helping him in the trailer). These moments are like save points in a video game, moments to catch your breath and give your brain a break from being super-focused. In Parabellum, not only are these moments fewer and shorter, but they don't provide the same relief. For starters, there are other sources of tension even when he's not currently fighting bad guys. In the scene at the ballet or with Sofia, we don't know who these people are, so we don't really know if John is safe. And the final "save point" scene after he gets back to the hotel, there's the tension of whether or not he'll kill Winston. Another difference is that these breaks in the action aren't used to slow things down like in the first two, they're instead used to dump exposition. During the scene at the ballet theater, holy shit, we're learning John's backstory, we better play close attention. When he meets Sofia, they're explaining her backstory and relationship with John. When he's talking with the Elder, you're trying to figure out who the hell he is, since he's built up to be super important. This all means that your brain doesn't get a break from the hyper-focus, and eventually gets tired and zones out in the middle of an action sequence.