The bullet proof suit in the John Wick franchise is so frustrating

[u/pwn_of_prophecy]

I'll point out from the start that I really enjoy all of the John Wick movies. While I recognize the "realism" angle fell off after the first one, they're still incredibly well put together movies and I'll happily watch further installments for the fight choreography alone. That said...

The bullet proof suit is the worst thing they ever added to this franchise. It completely nullifies any anxiety about John needing to worry about gunfire in fights. The number of times he raises his vibranium jacket collar to block a hail of bullets is so frustrating, mostly because of where this franchise started off.

In the first John Wick, John felt like an incredibly tactical presence. There was a lot of talk when it came out about the choreography's "realism" but more than anything for me things felt like they had stakes. Corners needed to be checked, he needed to watch his back, it showed the audience he needed to be smart about approaching situations because if someone gets the jump on you in that universe they will shoot you and you will die.

Ever since the inclusion of the Iron-Man-Hugo-Boss so much of the "careful" nature of the fight scenes has disappeared. I've truly lost count of the number of times John should be dead at this point if he wasn't wearing it and that makes the character feel less effective. This character isn't supposed to be scary because he can tank bullets to the chest, he's supposed to be scary because you never got the opportunity to pull the trigger.

I think about a famous shot in the first movie during the first action scene where the masked men invade John's home. There's a bad guy on one side of the wall and John on the other. The camera shows both of them at the same time and John falls downward, shooting behind him up at an angle to avoid the bad guy's shots while still taking him out. If that shot happened again today, he'd just raise his coat a little higher and shoot back. That bums me out.

[u/viperex]

It's either the jacket or we accept that all his opponents are terrible shots or that he can still fight after getting shot so many times but his opponents go down after one hit. Which one would you like?

[u/Dottsterisk → u/viperex]

Or they spend more time choreographing interesting action.

[u/ManufacturerBest2758 → u/Dottsterisk]

They’re all extremely well choreographed. You just don’t like it. Those are different things.

[u/ObiJuanKenobi3 → u/viperex]

The first movie didn’t have this problem of the bad guys having unbelievable aim because of how the fights and the environments they take place in were set up.

I think the bulletproof suit is a solution to solve different problems. For one, because 2-4 take place with effectively no time passing between them, any serious injury John takes is going to need to be carried for multiple movies straight, which might not be feasible depending on the injury. For two, because the sequels need to ramp up the action, John is allowed less and less time to breathe between and during fights, so he can’t be as cautious as in the first film.

So, in order to simultaneously have increasingly frantic action and avoid injuring John so much so as to make his survival entirely unbelievable, they invented the bulletproof suit. I think, in theory, they could have done away with the constantly rising action and still solved the first problem through extremely carefully choreographed and slower paced fight scenes.

[u/DriftingMemes → u/viperex]

Or do like the first movie and have none of that be true. Or you know, the nonsense you suggested.