Why was John Wick assisted in Parabellum?
He’s usually a lone warrior
Question: In John Wick’s climax sequence, he has Charon (Continental’s concierge) and other extras fight against the High Table’s guards. Why?
Answer: Because the contrast highlights John Wick’s skills above the others.
Welcome to Costs Matter, a series that asks different questions all of which have the same answer: to better manage costs. The costs are usually economic though not always. The series focuses narrowly on the impact of costs. It does not claim these costs are the sole cause. To read more in the series, visit https://medium.com/galileo-onwards/costs/home.
If you’ve only experienced the good, you won’t appreciate it. To truly appreciate the superlative one must contrast it with the ordinary or even bad. This is the Costs Matter thinking behind John Wick’s climax.
(Incidentally, and unrelated to Costs Matter, it is also the story behind Siddhartha Gautama, better known as Buddha. He grew up a prince never witnessing any misery or suffering in the world. Once he did, he had no choice but to leave his life and seek enlightenment.)
The hotel gunfight is split into two parts. The first part when Wick, Charon, and gang are under prepared, and the second when Wick and Charon are properly armed.
In the first part, John Wick, Charon, and other hotel staff, face the armed forces entering the hotel. The forces wear armor that protects them from most guns. We first see John Wick fighting them. He shoots the forces, they fall but are alive. Wick is surprised but recovers quickly and finds a way to dispatch them. The magnitude of his feat is not obvious to us until we see how the other group fares. They too shoot the forces but don’t recover from the shock quickly enough and all of them except Charon die.
In the second battle, when both Wick and Charon take the appropriate weapons (“armor piercing”, as Charon describes it), we see the skills contrast when both reload their shotguns. Charon, shown first, loads his shotgun with one bullet at a time. Wick, shown next, instead loads his shotgun four bullets at a time. As someone who knows nothing about guns (like yours truly and perhaps most of the world), the challenges of loading a shotgun are not evident unless explicitly contrasted.
We see a similar contrast when John Wick fighting with a soldier falls into a swimming pool. Wick, unarmed, sees the soldier about to shoot, and moves to the far end of the pool. The bullets don’t move far in the water and Wick is unharmed. Wick then shows us how it’s done by taking the gun right up to the soldier and shooting him.
We gain greater appreciation of a master’s skills when we see the same deed done by a novice. And that’s why John Wick has accomplices in that gunfight.
