The Week In A Bad Education Towers #33

Hows you? Made it through another week, and I do mean made it; I figured out that last week was the first 5 day week I've worked since the week starting January 16th. Got to be honest, I'm fully on board on the whole 4 day week thing, that extra day just makes everything nicer.

So you'd think but I did manage to go to the cinema and I did in fact go and see John Wick Chapter 4. My favourite bit was when he shot some guys.

No, thats a bit mean; by now you know how you feel about John Wick as it feels like its gone a fair bit away from the original film. That felt like a direct to DVD cheap action flick elevated by great casting and a stellar stunt team, whereas now it has a much bigger budget and lore and a spin off TV show. A fairly accurate bit of criticism is that they misunderstood what people liked about the first film and went all in on the world building in each subsequent film. So you get lots of stuff about The High Table and Harbingers and stuff that sounds cool but ends up meaning that the film gets in its own way.

Chapter 4 starts not quite from the end of the last film, but close enough; John Wick is out for more revenge whilst everyone else wants him dead. Somehow that gets us through about 2 and a half hours of film which should tell you a lot. And quite why John is still out for revenge is a little unclear as a lot of the threads from the first film get wrapped up fairly quickly. Which, to be fair, the film picks up on with that question aimed at Wick more than once.

But they tend to aim guns at him as well which, to be honest, is what we're here for. And the action is amazing, was there any doubt about that? This stunt team is honed to a sharp edge at this point, now throwing in bow and arrows and swords and nunchakus and Christ knows what else. If there's one thing Wick has done it change up how movies do fight scenes, the last time this happened was post Bourne Identity. Now, thats certainly an influence on the Wick series but Wick also does a lot more in one take with long sequences with not that much cutting. Its a world away from that Marvel style where you don't feel the impact of a fight, which is certainly not something you can accuse John Wick of.

Is that enough though? The first film was built on the back of Keanu Reeves' performance, from buying into that fact that this guy is a stone cold killer. In fact, looking back, you can see how much the film traded on Reeves' movie history; its hard not to look at him and not see Neo and Speed so we already know what he can do. It was the reaction of other people to him that sold that character. But that emotion in the character has been replaced by an almost blankness, of this relentless character who will shoot and punch everyone until he walks off into the night waiting for the next level of bad guy to come after him. You can understand the escalation in the story, of Wick's initial pursuit of revenge growing beyond his control and dragging in all those around him, but you don't feel it.

To go back to a theme from last week, its very much like playing a decent action video game. It would be interesting who has killed more people, John Wick or noted mass murderer Nathan Drake. The film at one point goes all in on this taking a birds eye view of the action which looks like Hotline Miami, which looks amazing but again takes away from the emotion of everything.

Thats probably a good way to sum up how I felt about the film; its like playing an amazing shooting game that have decent at best cut scenes.

Oh, one thing this film does also prove is that Donny Yen is the coolest man of all time. Like, its not even a competition, he's amazing.

Yes. My order from bottom to top would be Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4 and then John Wick, but I feel like I need to watch 2 again to confirm that.

They do, but they love giant monsters even more which means a new MonsterVerse film is great news:

I can't believe these are still going but it makes me so happy. They aren't the best films, but I love Godzilla and when these films get thing right they really get it right. Bring on more destruction!

Yeah, hopefully we'll get a showing of Pacific Rim over here that Del Toro hinted at. Still of of the best birthday presents I've ever had.

Robots has been another theme of the week as I've been working on building Lego Optimus Prime. I've been trying not to rush through it, because he was flipping expensive, and enjoy it which you can follow on Twitter or Mastodon. Actually, I know I can't embed a tweet but can I embed a toot?

https://mastodonapp.uk/@EvilNinjaPhil/110238845003135414

I guess not.

You would be correct, although I have been working on stuff but more fiddling with the style of the videos; growing up in the 80s I love a good title sequence but YouTube doesn't, it wants you to get straight to the point so the audience stays and does that engagement thing that the algorithm loves. So I spent most of the week fiddling in DaVince trying to make a snappier intro. I'm not trying to chase numbers or anything, YouTube is something I treat as a nice hobby more than trying to get a career out of it (though that would be nice) but knowing you're making something that people watch is nice as well. Plus its always good to review stuff every now and then rather than stagnate, right?

Yep, thanks for reminding me. I miss my four day weeks

Very probably. Right, thats me done; off to the cinema again in the week so you'll hear about that and whatever else I get done. If this hayfever carries on like its doing today it won't be very much.

Bye!

Phil Doyle