That’s it? Poop.
That’s over double the original’s opening weekend, with only about 500-600 more screens. No idea about the budget on Chapter 2 but the first had an estimated 20M. I think it’s probably being viewed positively, unless they really splurged on the budget. It’s an estimated 40M world wide, incidentally.
I loved it.
Oh, okay, great! Yay!
The budget seems to be 40 million so unless it craters in the second week of release it should turn a profit. The 10 million it made internationally over the weekend had only one major market (Russia) so it’s quite possible that bigger international numbers are still to come.
If any movie podcasters are curious, it’s being released in Germany this coming Friday.
I believe that a certain @triggercut was predicting an opening of about 30 million.
I liked it, but, one question? Why did he keep killing the same dude over and over and over again?
Plus it had a lot of strong competition.
We saw this and Lego Batman - both were just amazing films.
I hadn’t even thought about that. Not just opening this weekend but look at the other movies in the theater. It was a much tougher weekend than what the original faced (Ouija, Alexander and the…Day, Gone Girl, Fury, Book of Life).
Also, the original ended up at 43M domestic and 42M foreign.
So if I just watched John Wick (with high expectations) and thought it was kinda lame, should I skip Chapter 2? The first one was a bit too aggressively COOL™ for my taste. I was imagining a bunch of single dudes sitting in a dark theater strokin’ it to the movie, then going home to rewatch The Boondock Saints for the 69th time. But that’s just me.
Wow. Yes, skip this movie.
Just saw the first film last night for the first time.
And I’ll go crispywebb one further, and say that it went beyond “kinda lame” to “how did this movie ever get made?” territory.
Don’t get me wrong. It was fun, and I finished it no problem, but it has some huge issues that I just cannot overlook. I mean the actors all did fine, the director was fine, the lighting, all that stuff fine. But where in the fuck was the script writer?!? I mean, really. For example, and I suppose I’d better spoiler this:
[spoiler] John Wick, with almost ZERO effort, manages to take out 12 hired assassins, and when he’s done killing all of them, he’s not even breathing slightly heavily. I mean, John Wick is such a super-specimen of a human, that the fucker can even SENSE his enemies THROUGH THE WALLS and take them out by anticipating their every move.
That being the case, I’m expected to believe that this is the same guy that got his ass handed to him by Theon Fucking Greyjoy and his two inept loonies in a scene shortly previous.
Not only that, but FIVE SECONDS after he methodically eliminates the 12 assassins, the cop shows up about a noise complaint. No, I get the bit of humor there, and that the cop knows who he is and leaves him alone. I can appreciate that stuff. What bothers me is that the cop arrives FIVE SECONDS after the fight is over.
Now, the only way I could see this happening is if Theon’s father, knowing his men were going to be killed, had arraged for the cops to show up there to have John Wick thrown in prison on a mass murder charge. That I could have believed and appreciated. But no, they didn’t do that. Instead I am supposed to believe the PD response time is FIVE SECONDS!
Did I miss something? Are these kinds of lapses in logic supposed to be part of the charm? That’s all I can think of. Because while the movie does have its charms, logic is not one of them.[/spoiler]
You guys are odd.
My previous post may come off as somewhat critical of the first film.
That said, the great fight scenes and choreography, along with the sheer fun factor, redeemed it enough that I’ll probably see the sequel as well.
That, and my girlfriend loved it (any movie that rains down vengeance upon the killers of helpless baby animals is a winner in her book), and will drag me along with her.
There isn’t anything in the sequel that will bring you around to liking it if you didn’t enjoy the first movie. I like your analogy.
As someone who thoroughly enjoyed JW1, who has watched it multiple times, owns the blu-ray, JW2 felt flat. Yes, the fight scenes are mostly very good, but the timeline distortion is very big in this movie. There is no sense of time. I understand the scripts need to move to the next scene, but it felt rushed beyond belief.
But my two largest complaints are:
-
The score - the music is just not resonating with me at all. In fact, I was so disappointed, I rushed to see if Tyler Bates was still in charge of Music, because I was sure he had been replaced, but no he hasn’t. For me, in JW1, the music was the best supporting actor. In JW2, the music just felt flat. I listened to a few tracks when I got home just to make sure and it still didn’t do anything for me. .
-
Intentionally or not, I got heavy flashbacks to the matrix. To wit:
When he enters one of the intersection with all the people, I just thought of the training program & kept expecting to see the woman in red.
The subway scene with the bum really got my vibes going again
Then of course fat Lawrence Fishburn and his grandstanding ovation.
EDIT to add: when he brushes the bullets off his jacket
What other references were there? Ugh already
I really liked the sommelier scene. That was nice.
The way it ended, it really felt like they painted the door shut for a chapter 3. I admit my imagination just isn’t there to figure out how a writer will somehow have to create some weird contrivance to give him any motivation beyond survival and we already saw that movie anyway in the 3rd act of JW2.
I liked the first John Wick just slightly more, but I think it’s more a personal preference than a problem with chapter 2. When the action is going, the sequel delivers more of what I loved in the first movie, and the action is the point of these movies, so where it matters, chapter 2 succeeds.
The only difference for me was that the first movie was a very simple revenge story. The Continental and the rules of this world of assassins are fascinating, but they’re just little bits of the periphery.
In chapter 2, to the extent the plot matters (so not a lot), you’re required to care about the made up rules of this world. It’s not as simple and elegant as “these guys killed his dog and he’s going to burn their world down”.
Like I said, not a big problem, but that’s where the first film beats out chapter 2 for me. Depending on what direction a third film takes, it could be a return to the simplicity of the first—John Wick must simply survive!—or it could drag us deeper into the “mythology” if John has to get creative and work through the system to earn his freedom/vengeance/whatever. Either way, I’m down for more of Keanu counting bullets and shooting a hundred dudes point blank.
Interesting review. I can’t wait to see this one as I loved the first one, and looking forward to moar gun pron.
We watched JW1 again and then headed off to the theater to watch the sequel. It was enjoyable, but certainly lost the novelty and the charm of the first one.
Moments I liked:
- The action set pieces were generally competently made just like in the first movie.
- The mirror-laden part made for some nice visuals.
- The part where he movie cuts between him acquiring the maps and keys, the new suit and the weapons.
- Cassian / John dynamic - would have been fun to see more of Cassian in the movie, but I liked their bar conversation, bit where shooting at each other with silencers while casually walking, the build-up to the train fight and that fight itself.
Aspects where it lags behind the first one:
- JW1 had numerous small elements where the script surprised me because something doesn’t happen the way you expect it to. When you see Aurelio (Leguizamo) berate and even beat Viggo’s son, you just know he’s a dead guy because Viggo (or the son and his fellas) won’t tolerate that kind of behaviour. Except… “Oh.” Or the cop (Jimmy) stopping by and actually being in on John’s profession. JW2, in comparison was mostly very predictable.
- JW1 surprised with the kind of world-building you wouldn’t expect from some mid-budget action movie. But then it sets up the Continental, this assassin organization and their funky coins. Now all that’s established already in the second part, but while it adds to the lore buy letting you see the Continental central department, it obviously has a hard to redo the magic trick the first pulled off. And some of the new element weren’t a natural fit. What role does the faction that Laurence Fishburne’s character represents in the bigger scheme of things? It would have been a better fit if hobos or the dove had briefly been a part of the story earlier in the movie or even the prequel so that thing click together for the audience when we reach this part.
- Having watched JW1 and JW2 back to back, yep: the soundtrack in the second one is definitely a notch or two weaker than the firts one.
- The villain in JW2 is such a snoozer, Generic scheming mobster dude where you instantly know that he’ll doublecross John. Did not particularly appreciate the character or the delivery. In comparison: Michael Nyqvist’s Viggo is just so much fun to watch and way more interesting. He’s pulled into the story not by his own choice, but through his son’s behaviour. He meanders between accepting that his son basically is toast, trying to do the impossible and protect his son neverheless, giving up his location and then being so guilt- and grief-stricken that he can’t let it go. He had this small but fun-to-watch quirks - the way he is unhinged and laughing during the final car chase while his right-hand man panics, including the part where he offers him a gun and initially pulls it back as if it was prank.
- Some parts made no sense: John really has to go to Winston to have him (Winston) explain to him that you can’t simply wiggle your way out of a marker that’s placed? The legendary killer wasn’t fully aware of that? Of course, this part was in the script to explain that concept to the audience - and it was a case of the writers assuming the audience to be dumber than it is. I think the marker concept and it being a blood oath is very clear right from the get-go and needs to further explanation. The movie had fully worked without the following explanation - and while I enjoy Ian McShane’s acting as much as anyone else, it made the Wick character look a bit stupid.
- Weird script choice: I wish they had not gone with the “You’re only getting 7 bullets from me” bit. I swear most gamers in the audience this instantly started paying to the bullet count and how efficiently John loots his enemies. And here’s a thing: you’d think he’d grab more guns from the people he kills than he actually does. Hell, the final henchmen John kills has one of these fully automatic rifles which he does not get to fire because John sneaks up on him - and then John doesn’t even pick it up as he runs off to follow evil mobster guy! And I probably wouldn’t have been primed to pay attention to this had the script not made a point of John being not adequately equipped for the final confrontation.
So I went to see this with a friend last night, knowing very little about it and not having seen the first movie. And I mean it was ok, but nothing great. I kind of wish I had known I was dealing with a fantasy world and not something more representative of reality, with all these secret societies and evidently half the population being hitmen. And to be honest, all that shooty-shoot got kind or repetitive. My friend says I would probably have liked the first one better, I’ll probably check it out sometime. Probably pass on the clearly set up John Wick 3 though.
Just wanted to pop in & thank you for writing that down. Nice analysis between the two films.