The John Wick movies’ real message: Wealth is violence

polygon.com:

What kind of hero is John Wick? In the Hollywood blockbuster continuum of superheroes and antiheroes, he feels like neither one. He killed people for extravagant sums of money, fell in love, got out of the assassin trade, then went on a four-movie rampage to avenge a personal slight. He’s not out to save the world, and he’s not interested in the morality of his actions. He’s just angry. As the franchise continues with John Wick: Chapter 4, his anger has stumbled into a compelling target: the wealthy. In the John Wick universe, anyone with significant money cannot exist without violence.

In the John Wick films, the business of murder is an honorable one, buttressed with rules and ensconced in luxury, to distinguish its practitioners from “the animals,” as hotelier-to-assassins Winston (Ian McShane) repeatedly says. The rules of contract murder are a big part of the John Wick franchise’s appeal: the biggest surprise of the first film wasn’t necessarily its commitment to surgically precise widescreen action that redefined the action-thriller genre, but the elaborate lore the film deliberately kept out of its trailers, which doesn’t come into play until midway through the movie.

The biggest fantasy element in the John Wick movies isn’t hypercompetent bloodshed, it’s the way people weaponize wealth. In his world, even the lowliest street thugs can compete for multimillion-dollar assassination bounties, but for the actual players — men like John and the assassin elite who want him dead — money isn’t a concern. Entitlement is. The idea being sold from the first John Wick onward is that in his world, someone can walk into a building, slide a token across a desk, and expect absolute deference and premium luxury. Everything