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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   32866 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025

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I am happy to see this same take I have expressed in the wild, though you feel stronger than I do. I think the first one was definitely the strongest, with everything afterwards having some Marvel-like quality about them, but still with pretty decent action scenes, usually with some stupid gimmick.

It's too bad you hated them enough to stop watching them. I wanted to ask what you thought about the flamethrower fight in Ballerina. I thought it was dumb as hell, but everyone around me and everyone online said that it was awesome. It had a bunch of other problems, too, if you ask me.

It seems to me that every JW flick increasingly flanderized the core conceit to the point of self-parody. It would be sorta acceptable if the choreography kept up, but at this point I wouldn't be surprised if they started running on water and throwing qi balls at people.

I gave up on Chapter 4 before the bit with the Dragon's Breath rounds, presuming that's the right movie (even 2 and 3 are so forgettable that I genuinely can't be sure), but a fucking flamethrower?? That's so absurd that it loop around to being worth watching, in a so bad it's good fashion.

I didn't have any plans of watching the Ballerina, I have cynical views on the fates of franchises that seek to replace an existing character with a Strong Independent Female Lead, but perhaps I'll save it for when I get badly stoned and manage to switch my brains off.

Nvm, faceh said what I was going to say below. Still totally understand where you're coming from though.

4 is indeed the one with the Dragon's Breath rounds. It was featured in a really popular no-cut scene that drew a lot of inspiration from Hotline Miami with its top-down camera view. The visual of John Wick shooting a shotgun at enemies who would blow up in flames was pretty cool, but definitely highly overrated, with the top-down view basically negating the benefit of a no-cut scene which is usually supposed to give a visceral, exciting sense of actually being there in the middle of the action.

I'd say you didn't miss much by missing that, but you did miss the best scene of the film, the long take of John Wick being kicked and rolling down several flights of stairs (the actual gun combat scene surrounding that was pretty meh).

Yes, actually 4 is the one I remember the most because of the stairs part. Sorry, that's just awesome. I did also like the top-down thing because I quite like Hotline Miami. I have now defaulted to assuming most of the things shown in John Wick are not true to life, so the Dragon's Breath stuff doesn't bother me much.

Frankly, I will probably see about every John Wick related film for the foreseeable future, because my family likes to see it, and I still think the action is decent enough. Far above pretty much anything else, anyway. My real preference is for high stakes, high lethality stuff, like the hotel shootout in No Country or the crazy car chase scene in The French Connection.

I would have to try very hard to suspend my disbelief, my understanding is that DB rounds are borderline useless in real life! But the idea of seeing Keanu break his hips rolling down a flight of stairs has some appeal haha.

I thought it was dumb as hell, but everyone around me and everyone online said that it was awesome.

Well, there's the whole problem expressed by OP in a nutshell.

Writing doesn't have to be 'good' if people are that easily impressed and don't think about it too hard.

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