Today in fictional murder sprees:

So at 439 kills across four movies, Wick
more than doubles history's worst serial killer.
Which is weird, because he's the good guy?

So I kind of liked John Wick. I mean, as a movie. It was mind-numbingly violent and while puppies are inarguably adorable, and the Russian mob as portrayed in the film--and probably in real life--is monstrous, but killing seventy-seven people is well beyond a proportional response and puts it firmly into war crime territory. And while I've never really bought the idea that movie violence breeds real-life violence, that it sells the way it does is, I don't know, unsettling? But again, despite my qualms about all the murder, I thought it was a good movie.

I mean, at this point, just call it Fast & Furious:
Narratively Linked Content and be done with it.

But then there was another movie. And then another movie. And then--wait for it--another movie. There's also a spin-off series called The Continental, and oh, another movie. This one is also a spin-off and it will be entitled John Wick Presents: Ballerina. Which is both a lazy, and a clumsy way of making sure you know that it's connected to the series, but isn't a direct sequel. Sort of like that time Fast Ampersand Furious Presented some other movie.

"Must...voice...unqualified opinion..."

-me, evidently

I mention all this because there's another, other movie in the Wickiverse just announced today. This one starring Donnie Yen as his character from JW4 (which is what all the kids call John Wick 4*). And no, I've not seen JW4, or JW3 for that matter. Or the TV show. And I don't really have any interest in the movies themselves, I'm just having opinions about things I have no connection to because the internet exists and I find myself thinking about the stupefying proliferations of various CU's. That's cinematic universes I'm acronyming there.

An era inn which everything was in
black and white, and Glenn Miller's
In the Mood played on a constant loop.

This phenomenon wherein all visual narrative media (is that a thing?) has some connection to some other, previously successful piece of visual narrative media. And we as consumers (a term I hate), now use phrases like IP's and Franchises like we're marketing people or something. I think it's generally accepted that this is all Kevin Feige's fault. He didn't invent the idea, like, Universal Studios was doing this back in the days of war bonds and fedoras with their monster movies, but he did, you know, steal it and use it to make twenty eight billion--with a b--dollars. Yes, of money. Can you believe it?

Yup, it takes a real visionary to take a thing someone else did before and apply it to other people's creative works. 

Movie executives are like remora, except the sharks are grossly underpaid.

Pictured: the role Sir Keanu
Reeves was knighted for (source?).

But then I guess that's just business which I suppose is what I'm talking about. Like, we don't need another John Wick. That's not a knock on the movie or the writer and it's certainly not me ragging on Keanu Reeves who, by all account, is the single nicest human being who has ever lived and truly shined in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. But it is an observation--and not an original one--that popular entertainment is, or at least feels (I don't have statistics or anything), more driven by financial factors than creative ones. 

There're not four or five John Wick sequels, or half a dozen new Star Trek and Star Wars streaming shows, or another season of whatever because these are stories that must be told. They exist because an algorithm told the marketing people: "thing=money, so more thing=more money." Is this a bummer or just an it is what is it thing and I should just up and binge X-Men '97?

A secret, unseen world that coexists with our mundane reality and has its own rules,
terminology, and even currency? Is John Wick just Harry Potter with assassins?

*no it's not.