The Bechdel Cast - John Wick with Vanessa Guerrero

Episode Date: March 23, 2023

On this episode, secret assassins Jamie, Caitlin, and special guest Vanessa Guerrero check in to the Continental and chat about John Wick.  (This episode contains spoilers) For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast Follow @nessguerrero on Twitter. While you're there, you should also follow @BechdelCast, @caitlindurante, and @jamieloftusHELPSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey everybody, this is Matt Rogers. And Bowen Yang. We've got some exciting news for you. You know we're always bringing you the best guests, right? Well, this week we're taking it to the next level. The one, the only, Katherine Hahn is joining us on Las Culturistas. That's right, the queen of comedy herself. Get ready for a conversation that's as hilarious as it is insightful. Tune in for all the laughs, the stories, and of course, the culture.

Don't miss Katherine Hahn on Las Culturistas. Listen to Las Culturistas on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017, was assassinated. Crooks everywhere unearthed the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. I'm Joe Gatto. I'm Steve Byrne. We are Two Cool Moms. We certainly are. And guess where we could find us now?

Oh, I don't know. The iHeart Podcast Network? That's right. We're an official iHeart podcast and I'm super excited about it. I am too. I thought Two Cool Moms was such a fun podcast, but now it's even more funner and cooler

and heartier. That's right. It's more iHeartier. I knew it! Check your heart rate. We're here at iHeart. Yeah, you can find us wherever you listen to your podcasts or on the iHeart. Yeah, you can find us wherever you listen to your podcasts or on the iHeartRadio app. On the Bechdelcast, the questions asked if movies have women in them. Are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands or do they have individualism? The patriarchy's effing vast. Start changing it with the Bechdelcast.

Hey, Jamie. Hey, Caitlin. That is a really cool car. And that's a really cute dog. I just wanted you to know. Would hate if something happened to them. I'll say Alan should have said that. I would have liked his character so much better if he had just really laid it on thick like that god i can't it's so wild that um

well welcome to the bechdel cast but just a second it's so wild that like alfie allen is i know a person that exists in the world i watched game of thrones and everything but I confuse him with my crush Bill Skarsgård so easily only to look up future yes only to look up future John Wicks and who is there but Bill Skarsgård I think he's going to be in the next one oh okay the fourth one I was like I didn't see him in two or three

they missed the vibe of the bug-eyed boy they gotta bring it back they gotta bring it back well this is the Bechdel cast my name is Jamie Loftus my name is Caitlin Durante the vibe of the bug eyed boy. They got to bring it back. They got to bring it back. Oh, well, well, this is the Bechtel cast. My name is Jamie Loftus. My name is Caitlin Durante. And this is our show where we examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens using the Bechtel test simply as a jumping off point.

But Jamie, what is it? Well, I can let you know, Caitlin Durante, the Bechtel test is a media metric queen created whoa hello created what if we did a oh this is here's a horrible pitch for our april fools episode baby talk uh um pass it is a media metric created by queer cartoonist alice and be, sometimes called the Bechdel-Wallace test.

Lots of different versions of this test. Here's the one we use. The test requires that there be two characters of a marginalized gender with names speaking about something other than a man for more than two lines of dialogue should be meaningful. Does it happen in this movie? I'm pretty sure it doesn't but but that's why a franchise exists so that that's why every movie needs at least three movies so that by the third movie women might talk to each other yeah you need three movies yeah and i'm not even sure if it happens by the end of the third John Wick movie.

I think they all talk, but not to each other. That is always so bizarre and dissonant where they're like, we got two women in a room. They're never going to know. But yes, in honor of the new John Wick, the Bill Skarsgård John Wick, if you will. We're covering John Wick 1, 2014. I didn't realize it came out so long ago. It's almost 10 years ago. Oh, yeah.

It's been a while. I'm also referring to four, not as the Bill Skarsgård one, but the Rina Soeyama one. Yes, yes. That is truly what's going to get my ass in the seat. It's her acting debut, right? Yes, it is. It's her acting debut, and it's going to be in this major franchise.

And also, one of my all-time favorite action stars is in it, Scott Adkins. So I'm, like, losing my shit. He's the king of the home movie box office when it comes to action movies. He's constantly punching above his weight. And in this one, I fear he might be in a fat suit, but we'll see. I'm not sure. I can't tell from the posters. When will they not do that?

I am very thrilled about the Rina Sawayama element. And I just pray that she is a pop girly who can act. I hope we're getting a Lady Gaga situation situation yeah time will tell i can't wait um but wait who the hell is that talking is that perhaps one of our all-time guests it's just uh it's just our guest who is a host that was not my best transition into introducing a guest of all time but wait what the fuck no i thought it was really good who is the other reena stan in the chat uh she's host of the podcast popcorn and pixels you've seen her on shutters behind the monsters and you remember her from our episodes on made in manhattan raw atomic blonde and bound so this is her fifth appearance on the show

it's vanessa guerrero thank you so much for having me on i love doing the show welcome back your jackets in the mail the five timers jacket that doesn't actually exist but someday someday it will maybe it's a picture of the two of y'all doing a thumbs up and it's embroidered and it's velour. Exactly. And you give it to someone when things are getting serious. Yeah. It's a letter in jacket.

Yeah. We're so happy that you're back. And I feel like over time you've sort of become our go-to action movie expert. I love that, especially because one of my favorite things in the universe is constantly showing up men at things that they enjoy and like It's a beautiful thing I love being an action movie person and knowing that there are several men that are like I wish it was me That does sound very powerful It's a delicious feeling

I wish. I don't think I can do that. I think that I'm just like, I think I'm like, hey, guy, I'm dating. Do you want to know everything about beanie babies? And usually he's like, no. And he doesn't wish. Beanie babies. Yeah.

Well, the thing is, he doesn't wish it was him. And maybe he doesn't even wish that he was in the room. Well, screw him then. Yes, this person I just made up. Vanessa, what is your relationship with John Wick franchise is so indicative of like such a major turning point for the genre because specifically like American action like Korea Indonesia Japan China they'd been they'd been putting out action movies that had been like consistently fantastic for years American action had taken such a downturn especially because of the movies like later jason bourne movies and taken where it's a lot of like frenetic editing and like 21 cuts to get an old man over a fence um like very jumpy very like that 2000 style of like shaky cam footage um and there wasn't as

much like focus when it came to like choreography and really like not even just getting like great choreography and it nailed down but like how we shoot choreography and and really doing it the justice that it deserves and John Wick when that movie came out was such a renaissance for American action fans where you started seeing people care about how they shot action again. And I love that the franchise has also become very self-aware and knows sort of where it stands in like American action history, which is why the casting announcements are more exciting for me than it feels like what I imagine like a football draft feels like to someone where I'm just like yeah we got another one uh yeah that's how I feel about succession casting announcements when exactly when they were like Adrienne Brody you're like what they're like Sana Leighton I was like what or like White Lotus where it's just like oh my god that lineup um that's how I feel about the John Wick series yes also yeah it taps into a very petty core of me that while I've done so much work and therapy and improvement to be somebody that can move on from grudges, John Wick taps into the part of me that wishes I can undo all of that hard work and just be a petty bitch on the trail for revenge.

I do love a revenge narrative. So I love it. Jamie, what is your... I love beagles. that's my history no um my history with the John Wick franchise is very minimal um as I think I've said on this show time and time again action has never really been my uh go-to genre even though Keanu Reeves I would say is one of my go-to people that that I like to look at and engage with the legacy of. Oh, yeah.

Something I've been saying on the show for the entire run of the show is that I used to see Keanu Reeves every Wednesday at the bookstore I worked at. And he'd always get a book of Sudoku puzzles and one of the new hardcover fictions. Always hardcover, not softcover for this guy. He's a millionaire. He's gonna want the hardcover. He'd come out on his motorcycle. It changed my life. He's a good man by all accounts. He's the most

attracted that I've ever been to a cis male in my life. It's kind of scary. Yeah, I love Keanu Reeves. Action movies are a harder sell. I did remember as I was preparing for this, I mean, how much I loved Atomic Blonde. And there are things about John Wick that I did like, even outside of Keanu Reeves. I really liked learning about how this movie came together and how it's like these legacy stuntmen who worked with Keanu Reeves that ended up like directing this incredible I mean it looks beautiful and like as an action movie even as someone that doesn't know a ton about action movies you're like yeah this is a beautiful action movie this is like fucking wild it's all

that bisexual lighting yeah this I feel like this is like kind of gels gels the great stand I can't think of a more bisexually lit movie this may be the golden standard or the blue and purple standard whatever we're calling that yeah uh that entire bathhouse scene could have been like a lo-fi beats yes yes exactly um and then i mean you know watching it with a bechdel cast lens on i i'll admit it was a challenge but i i yeah i've only seen so I've only seen the first movie I watched the first movie to prepare for this episode and I I'm definitely gonna see the fourth for Rina Saoyama purposes and I look forward to being sold on watching the two sequels before then the third is definitely the better of the two. Okay. The first bitchy little thing I am going to say about John Wick and everyone's going to get upset and scream boo tomato tomato.

Opening this movie on deadwife.mp4, I was struggling. And ending the movie also on deadwife.mp4, I got to say, once again, I was struggling. But every time I see deadwife.mp4 i'm like i could do that so if anyone's trying to look for a dead wife i feel like i can conjure that energy quite easily beach breeze in your hair john what are you doing i was confused what you meant at first you mean if someone's looking to cast a role in a movie where they need a character's wife who is now deceased you are available to play that part yeah i understand i feel like i act like a dead wife every single day um i think anytime there's like a if a boyfriend has a phone and it's on and it's

at me i'm gonna act like a dead wife because you never know what are you doing what are you doing stop i romanticize life like a dead wife oh like i wear a lot of like ponchos around the house and i hold mugs with two hands oh you're like kind of like do a lot of hair work oh you're like sort of playfully just like kind of rolling around under the sheets like teehee yeah it's morning and i never i never sweat i would never sweat in that circumstance. Yeah. If I'm at the beach, you know,

my hair is just so, and I'm like, stop. What are you doing? Yeah. That's, that's beautiful. Caitlin,

what's your history with the John Wayne franchise? I had only seen the first one. I don't know why I never got around to the sequels. I liked the first one and I love action movies I am a big action movie head but I simply have no excuse no reason why I had not seen the sequels but I did watch them to prep for this we won't go into a lot of detail but there are a few like noteworthy things that indicate some kind of like evolution as the franchise goes that I want to touch on. But we'll focus on the first movie and I will share a quick

recap of the two sequels for anyone who wants to hear those. But yeah i i very much enjoy this franchise especially now that i've seen the three movies i'm excited to see the fourth one i'm a fan and kiana reeves absolutely national treasure untouchable yeah mr sexy oh my, the scruff, the suits, the fact that he moves like a judo ballerina. Yes. Perfect. I love the, like, I mean, just, I feel like most Keanu Reeves movies have just like X Games level stylistic choices.

And I love that. But how, like, you can just tell John Wick is in bad boy mode when he uses hair gel. But when his hair not gel, he his hair not gel he's good boy he's good boy it's it's helpful for me yeah to know when he's going to be bad and when he's going to be good sure when there's volume he's going to be good yeah when there's when there's volume he is husband he's crying his wife is gone he's like oh my gosh better feed the dog when he's hair gel, you don't want to know. It's the equivalent of like. He's like, stand up, ladies.

Get out of the room. That's what he's doing when he's got the hair gel in. It's the equivalent of the putting your hair up in a ponytail moment in Birds of Prey. In Birds of Prey. Yeah. It's the hair tie. You don't want your hair in the way as you're fighting. You got to slick it back.

You got to put it in a ponytail. Something. John Wick gets it. I also didn't know that Willem Dafoe and John Leguizamo I wish there was more John Leguizamo that's maybe that's one of my big things with John Wick where bring John does he come back in future movies he's in the second one yeah I don't know if he's in the third one I forget I was smiling so much I don't remember him in the third one but I love seeing him in it like Willem Dafoe John Leguizamo Ian McShane those are like my good boys Dean Winters like yes they put Dennis in it that was exciting for me Dennis Duffy man I

really I I love character actors so much and usually I can you know I mean when you look at Willem Dafoe you can maybe you know you would be like that's the Green Goblin or you know you're like oh I understand how actors work that's Willem Dafoe but something about Dennis Duffy I just like he can't not be he was too good at it yeah totally agree yeah um should we get into it let's get into it yeah let's do it. Okay. But first, let's take a quick break and then we will come right back. Hey, everybody. This is Matt Rogers.

And Bowen Yang. We've got some exciting news for you. You know we're always bringing you the best guests, right? Well, this week we're taking it to the next level. The one, the only, Katherine Hahn is joining us on Lost Culture East. That's right, the queen of comedy herself. Get ready for a conversation that's as hilarious as it is insightful. Tune in for all the laughs, the stories, and of course, the culture.

I feel some Sandra Bernhard in you. Oh, my God, I would love it. I have to watch Lost. Oh, you have to. No, I know. I'm so behind. Katherine Hanken's thing. Oh, I'm really good at karaoke.

What's your song? Yeah, what's your song? Oh, I love a ballad. I felt Bjork's music. I just was like, who is this person? I got to hawk this slalom, Luge. Not hawk the slalom. I absolutely love it.

It was somehow Shakespearean when you said it. It was somehow gorgeous. Yee, my slok, you hollum. Listen to Las Culturistas on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who, on October 16, 2017, was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia.

I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhurts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free,

subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. This summer, the nation watched as the Republican nominee for president was the target of two assassination attempts, separated by two months. These events were mirrored nearly 50 years ago, when President Gerald Ford faced two attempts on his life in less than three weeks. President Gerald R. Ford came stunningly close to being the victim of an assassin today. And these are the only two times we know of that a woman has tried to assassinate a U.S. president. One was the protege of infamous cult leader Charles Manson. I always felt like Lynette was kind of his right-hand woman. The other, a middle-aged housewife working undercover for the FBI in a violent revolutionary

underground. Identified by police as Sarah Jean Moore. The story of one strange and violent summer. This is Rip Current, available now with new episodes every Thursday. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Jamie, ask me if we're back from break. Katelyn, are we back from break? I don't know.

We're just sort of like working through some stuff. I'm not sure if we're back. This is going to pay off later, after the next ad break. Just you wait and see. Anyway. I see where you're going, and I'm there. Thank you.

What is the exchange pretty early in the movie? Oh, it's with John Leguizamo, where Viggo calls him, and he's like, hey, why the fuck did you punch my son in the face? He's like, well, because you stole John Wick my son in the face he's like well because you stole john wick's car and killed his dog and then he just goes oh i was like this movie rocks excellent excellent world building like i think my favorite thing about the john wick lore is just characters

reacting to him tells you everything you need to know exactly show don't tell and this is show all the way yeah okay so here is the recap for john wick one we open on a scene where keanu reeves wrecks his car into some concrete he stumbles out he's injured and bleeding from what we will find out is a stab wound. He's kind of dying. And then he takes out his phone and watches a video of his wife. His wife. His wife. He opens deadwife.mp4. just loving you so damn much and she's like stop uh you're loving me too much yeah you're loving what if i'm gone one day that'll never happen okay and then oh but then you see you see the director's cut later of deadwife.mp4 i want to direct a whole movie called deadwife.mp4 it's just all vibes but like you see the director's cut later on and she's like let's go home i'm like classic dead wife talk let's go home anyway so this what was her job john what did she do oh my god we don't need to know anything about her just kidding their house was fantastic so

she had to have done something well i know i was like is that like hitman money or was she like a fucking doctor or something? I don't know. Column A, column B. It's a house built on taking out hits and then trying to save the people that had the hits taken on them. Ooh, that's a good scam. I would love that movie. Ooh, scary. There's a case I read about called, I mean, this is actually pretty evil, but like an evil doctor or like a rehab doctor who bought a hotel and would deal drugs out of the hotel to get people addicted to the drugs.

And then they'd be like, oh, no, I'm addicted to the drugs. And he's like, funny, because I own a rehab center across town. He went to jail. It's very evil. they called him the candy man wow anyways these things happen and i would watch a movie about it yeah let's write it okay anyway this person we've just met is john wick uh we flash back to john wick at home shortly after his wife helen played by bridget moynhan, has passed away from an illness. He is devastated. He then receives a delivery. It's a puppy that his wife, Helen, arranged for him to receive

after her death so that he still has something, someone to love. The puppy is a little beagle named daisy it's very very cute she's so damn cute the fact that it's my childhood dog's name i wanted blood i watched this with my mother and she looked at me and she was like i want everyone involved to to suffer well like yeah that's what that's what this movie is for that's what the movie's about that's I think the only thing I knew I think I think it is kind of I mean we'll talk about this later in the episode I think it is kind of interesting where it's like the only thing I knew about John Wick was that the first movie's thrust was he was trying to get revenge on the people who killed his dog but then I was like oh I mean not to undercut how

horrific it is to lose a pet, especially to a violent act. But I was like, it's interesting how that his wife never comes up in any of the popular descriptions of the movie. Yeah, that it's a mourning dog. Right. It's like he's only so upset about the dog because it's like an extension of his wife. His wife. His dog. Yes, exactly. his beagle so john wick takes the his dog

out in his cool boy 1969 mustang and he stops for some gas where a group of very aggro men are also getting gas and one of them is a guy played by alfie allen who is like hey cool dog cool car how much would you sell it for and john wick is like the car is not for sale and then alfie allen insults him in russian but twist john wick speaks russian they're shaken to their core when he speaks russian yeah they're like what the fuck a person speaking another language you're like it's keanu reeves i assume that he speaks every language he's like a pokedex exactly exactly and john wick leaves after this interaction and alfie allen is like who does that guy think he is and then that night he and the other guys from the gas station break into John Wick's house.

They beat the shit out of him. They steal his car and they kill his dog. John Wick does not like that this happened at all. He's pretty. He's pretty miffed. Yeah. He's freaking pissed. He's P.O.'d.

And so we don't even know what he's capable of at this point we don't we do not because we have not yet gotten the big reveal but john wick sets off he's still covered in blood he gets on a bus he's trying to figure out who these guys are and how to find them so he goes to john langwisamo who tells him that Vigo Tarasov's son, Yosef, that's Alfie Allen, is the one who stole his car and killed his dog. So John Wick gets a new cool boy car, and he takes off.

We also meet this Vigo guy. He's a crime lord of some sort. It's like a mob boss. He's your friendly neighborhood mob boss. Yes. And he goes to his son, Yosef, and is like, you fool. You messed with John Wick. And John Wick is not someone who you mess with.

And this is when we learn that John Wick was was a former assassin he was very good at his job he has a reputation for being baba yaga or the boogeyman and vigo is like i saw him kill three men with a pencil one time i love that this is eventually shown in the series yes oh is it yes that's very fun it's referred to another time and then you do see him kill i think it's two guys with a pencil yeah i learned uh shout out cross promo fellow i heart slash kuzan media podcast margaret killjoy's cool people who did cool stuff we did an episode about baba yaga just as a a um folk tale And Baba Yaga typically coded as a, as being a woman.

So I thought it was interesting that in this lore, Baba Yaga is, I mean, Keanu Reeves is more of an idea, you know, like he transcends gender. Yes. But I thought it was interesting that in,

in this movie, it translates to boogeyman. Yeah. But anyways, there's, there's a lot of different sort of versions of baba yaga um i had something else to say there but it's gone what can you do that's it's baba you're gone oh i was gonna say when uh that whole sequence where we're slowly learning that john wick is

the scariest person in the world it almost felt like the action like the brooding action movie version of that sequence from Mean Girls where everyone's talking about Regina George especially the pencils part like that sounds you can picture a student saying that about Regina John Wick murdered someone with a pencil so then I murdered someone with a pencil John Wick punched me in the face once it was awesome that's great um okay so we're learning about John Wick's reputation but John got out of the business a few years prior because of his wife yeah he's like I'm marrying a normie. Bye guys. Like a YouTuber or something. Yeah. She's an influencer.

Yeah. That's why she looks so good on camera. Anyway, Joseph is like, well, no big deal. I'll just kill John wick. And then we won't have to worry about him anymore.

And Vigo is like, yeah, right. Except John wick is going to come and kill you first. And you can count on that. Gives him a little kissy on the forehead to seal it. So John Wick gets his guns and prepares for a killing spree. Vigo sends like a dozen guys to kill John at his house, but John Wick murders them effortlessly. Then Vigo puts a bounty on John Wick

and he goes to this guy Marcus, played by Willem Dafoe, to be like, hey, will you kill John Wick for me? And Willem Dafoe is like, yeah, I'll do it. Even though we've learned that John Wick and Willem Dafoe are friends. There ain't honor among thieves. Exactly. are friends there ain't my honor among thieves exactly meanwhile john wick checks into this

hotel for assassins the continental oh my god which is run by lance reddick which is so iconic i wish i that's another i was like i wanted more john leguizamo i wanted more lance reddick although lance reddick he's gonna make a meal of whatever it is he's doing. Lance Reddick and Ian McShane in The Continental are two of my absolute favorite characters because they build so much lore in such a short amount of time of like this entire universe. It gives this illusion of like this entire universe that's happening underneath your nose with its own set of like rules and practices and like the continental i'm gonna get on a soapbox for a second the continental specifically

is this point in the movie similar to like vigo that establishes an old guard like somebody a generation that has like learned how to do something before and had to establish a set of rules and guidelines that you have to live in to keep things from becoming total bedlam and total anarchy. And it serves as this really cool foil to like, Ms. Perkins in The Continental is Alfie Allen to Vigo in terms of like, you have this new younger thing that has like benefited from this older system that doesn't give a shit about why the rules are in place and suffer because of that because they think the rules are there just to be restrictive and it's like no they're here because you can't exist in this world without them if you don't respect your elders you're cooked babe you're cooked your membership to the continental is revoked by thine own hand yeah yeah that's an that's a excellent way to put it i don't know i mean

i'd never seen a concept like the continental in a movie and it's so like it's such a simple concept where you're like this is where there are rules if you break the rules something bad will happen to you and it's so good. And the scenes with, the scene particularly with Lance Reddick and Ian McShane towards the end, where I feel like in their scenes together, they're not even ever looking at each other, but it's so good.

Like it's just, yeah. So Lance Reddick is the like concierge of the Hotel for Assassins. And Winston played by Ian Mcshane is the like owner slash manager he's reading at the bar you're like awesome yeah he's cool there's also this like special assassin currency these like gold coins that they're mario coins and that's when you realize that one of the things about this franchise is that assassins belong to this almost like secret society that has all these rules that has all these members and as

the franchise goes you learn that like so many people are part of this secret society and you're just like wow why wasn't i invited anyway i know what if someone drops one of the mario coins and then you're just like what is this that looks fake and it's like no that's assassin money that's assassin coins i i loved i i'm sure someone's done some sort of deep dive on like what is the coin to usd when there's a recession does it hit the assassin coins so many questions well it seems i yeah i can't figure out the high value because they're like oh get rid of 13 bodies that's going to be that's like 13 coins but also staying several nights at the continental only costs one coin so two which is what's it costs one body so it's like a half a body a night yeah i guess i wonder

if it's because they're just like solid gold and they just go by the weight of gold oh yeah that would i mean that would fit in with the old school rules that sort of seem to run this underground world yeah that actually uh vanessa i think you cracked. It's maybe not a per body system like I had been trying to figure out. You never know. Okay. Anyway, so John Wick goes to Winston and finds out that Yosef is going to be at this nightclub called the Red Circle. So John Wick goes there. There's a huge action sequence where he chases after Josef through the club. He's killing a bunch of Vigo's goons along the way, but Josef manages to escape. So John Wick just calls it a night and goes back to the Hotel for Assassins and goes to bed. But then this lady

assassin, Perkins, played by Adrian Palicki, comes in and tries to kill John Wick. On the grounds of the Continental. Right, which is against the rules. The whole thing with the Continental is that no business can be conducted on the grounds of the Hotel for Assassins, meaning you cannot kill anyone there. But she tries to kill him there. He stops her, he gets the upper hand, and then he spares her because she gives him information about a front that Vigo is running out of a church. So John Wick goes to this church and destroys all the money and all the stuff in Vigo's vault I recently saw Highlander for the first time brag wow that church scene I was like

oh like Highlander wow it's like when Mr. Krabs shows up to church in Highlander you know I don't Mr. Krabs Clancy Brown ah I was like I've never seen Highlander so it took me a second to figure out what was happening and then I was like oh no Clancy Brown got it got it got it you know who else you know who else is in John Wick 4 Mr. Krabs is oh that's right Clancy Brown's in it Mr. Krabs is gonna art art art his way into John Wick's who's gonna and you know who loves gold coins Mr. Krabs it makes sense okay so Viggo is upset that John Wick torched all of his stuff in the vault so he captures John and he's like get over it it was just a car and a dog and John is like that dog was given to me by my wife. And your son took that from me. Then there's another fight where John Wick kills more of Viggo's goons with the help of Willem Dafoe,

who turns out has no intention of killing John Wick because, again, they're friends. It's kind of the most beautiful part of the story is how Willem Dafoe is always like gazing from from a window helping his buddy out yeah it's nice nice male friendship can be nice yeah like when you snipe someone from a window to help your boy out i really did i mean i thought that that was kind of like my favorite relationship in the movie um then vigo gives up his son joseph's location which is a safe house in brooklyn so john wick goes there finds joseph and shoots him and vigo does not like that this happened so first he kills willem defoe for betraying him and then there's a shootout between vigo and his goons and john wick john wick kills most of them so now it's just john and vigo in hand-to-hand combat they both get stabbed

vigo dies john wick gets away cut to the opening scene of the movie where he's bleeding out and watching deadwife.mp4 on his phone but then he finds the strength to get up because she's like come on john let's go home the power of dead wife come on john let's go home and then he goes into an animal hospital that's right there he staples his wound shut and then there are some dogs in kennels and he takes one this rocks he's like this dog is mine now the second i was hearing the the yips of the dog i'm like god damn it they stuck the landing yep yep so uh that's john wick one i'll do really quick recaps of john wick two and three just to kind of give you an idea of how the franchise progresses does the second dog live yes the second dog lives living yes yes thank you okay well i couldn't I couldn't go through that again.

I couldn't let them do that to me again. Truly not. They, I mean, I know it's important to the movie that we lose Daisy. I just wasn't prepared to lose her so quickly. Yeah. You just got, oh, she's so cute. And that little dog clearly just loves Keanu Reeves as a person. Because if you were a puppy, of course you would love Keanu Reeves.

He's so lovable he's got a good spirit okay so wait what happens in the in the sequels okay John Wick 2 from 2017 so after the events of the first movie John Wick wants to go back into retirement and hang out with the dog he stole at the end of the first movie nice but another crime boss Santino D'Antonio, approaches John Wick with a marker. Basically a blood oath kind of thing where Santino had done something to help John Wick in the past. And now he's returning to collect on the debt that John owes him. And Santino wants John to kill his sister, Gianna D'Antonio, because Santino wants her spot at the high table, which is this like high court of assassins and crime lords.

Does this have to do with the continental also? Or is this a separate thing? So the high table is like basically the government of this secret. Of the assassination. Yeah. Okay. Got it. Got it.

And then the continental is just like a safe haven that operates within, you know, this underworld. It's the Deadwood, so to speak. Okay. Got it. So. Now you're speaking my language. So John Wick, knowing that he can't retire and be at peace while this marker is still

active he goes to rome he checks into the hotel for assassins italy edition he makes a bunch of preparations and then he goes to gianna to kill her she takes her own life before he can do that point is she dies and now santino is like well i have to avenge my sister's death so now i have to kill you john wick even though it was santino who wanted john to kill his sister i don't really a double cross yeah so santino puts a price on John Wick's head. And then with the help of the Bowery King, played by Lawrence Fishburne. What? Yeah. Wow. You thought we were done with movies starring Keanu Reeves and Lawrence Fishburne after The Matrix?

I'm glad we weren't. We're not done. Okay. He's back. Okay. Okay. So John Wick, with the Bowery King's help, goes after Santino. He kills a bunch of his goons.

He finally kills Santino, but he does it at the Hotel for Assassins. He does it at the Continental, which is, again, against the Assassin's Code. Ian McShane said no. He said no, don't do that. So Winston has no choice but to excommunicate John Wick from the Assassin's Secret Society. And now everyone is going to try to kill John Wick. And he's going to have to deal with that in the next movie. I did watch the first five minutes of john wick three and i like that there is like that group of uh that group of women that are all wearing hot topic clothes and they just talk about who

is the most wanted in the world at the beginning of the movie i love them where they're all wearing like those bizarro outfits they're like john wick 14 million dollars yeah get his ass yeah and then they're like okay let's change our manual board it's awesome well the thing about the Bowery King movie take place in I think it's modern day but there's a lot because like as the Bowery King says in I think the third movie computers and phones and all that stuff you can hack but you know what you can't hack carrier pigeons because the bowery king's whole thing is that he has this group of like carrier pigeons and that's how he sends messages around you wouldn't download a pigeon okay that's that's merch.

Vanessa, you've got to get on that. Hell yeah. Okay, so the third movie picks up immediately where chapter two leaves off. John Wick is on the run because now every assassin in the world is trying to kill him. Meanwhile, there's an adjudicator. Guess who had to look up what adjudicate meant me i did too i was like i don't know what this is what is this word what is it basically someone who casts judgment on someone else or someone who kind of like evaluates things in a judgy way like a like a judge like a judge basically a judge like a judge for hire well they should

just say that yeah but adjudicator has more syllables and therefore it's fancier hell yeah anyway so this adjudicator from the high table played by asia kate dylan is going around to all the people who helped john wick kill santino and then help John Wick escape. So they're going to Winston and the Bowery King and the adjudicator is like, shame on you. John Wick, meanwhile, goes to Casablanca to see Sophia, played by Halle Berry. He wants her to help him get to someone called the Elder, because the Elder can reverse John Wick's excommunicado status and give him another shot at life. So John Wick goes to the desert to find the Elder, who wants John to kill Winston. But then when John goes to do this, Winston reminds him that he will be a servant of the high table and that his life will suck.

And John is like, wow, you're right. Never mind. I'm not going to kill you. And then because of that, the Hotel for Assassins is declared deconsecrated, meaning business can now be conducted there, meaning people can come to kill john and winston which is what everybody does but john wick is like as if you could kill me so he kills everyone who shows up and then there's this final showdown between him and a guy named zero who has been after him the whole movie played by mark de cascos i love him so much whoa he's very good there's this great scene where he's like john i'm a huge fan of yours and we are gonna try to kill each other later but for now

big fan i love the fanboy aspect of it and i can't think of a better dude to play it than mark de cascos who's like the most dangerous looking man he knows like he like his martial arts repertoire is absolutely insane like if you look up his the amount of movies that he's done and the different kinds of martial arts that he's done for each movie absolutely crazy but he's like like mark de casco the guy is a very like i'm just really cool and hyper positive all the time so like seeing him play him but still be like a dangerous assassin was just such a funny character choice i love zero yeah zero is great that's so cool so after john wick has killed everybody the adjudicator is like okay fine winston you can have your hotel for assassins back but what are you gonna do about

john wick so winston shoots and kills john wick no But just kidding. John Wick is not dead. He and his dog go to the Bowery King. And they're like, all right, let's get ready to kick some ass in the next movie. Yes! So that's the franchise as a whole. Let's take another quick break and then we will come right back. Hey, everybody. This is Matt Rogers.

And Bowen Yang. We've got some exciting news for you. You know, we're always bringing you the best guests, right? Well, this week we're taking it to the next level. The one, the only, Katherine Hahn is joining us on Lost Culture East.

That's right. The queen of comedy herself. Get ready for a conversation that's as hilarious as it is insightful. Tune in for all the laughs, the stories, and of course, the culture. I feel some Sandra Bernhard in you. Oh my God, I would love it.

I have to watch Lost. Oh, you have to. No, I know. I would love it. I have to watch Lost. Oh, you have to. No, I know. I'm so behind. Katherine Hanken's thing. Oh, I'm really good at karaoke. What's your song? Yeah, what's your song?

Oh, I love a ballad. I felt Bjork's music. I just was like, who is this person? I got to hawk this slalom, Ludi. I'm not hawk the slalom. I absolutely love it. It was somehow Shakespearean when you said it. It was somehow gorgeous.

Yee, my slok, you hollum. Listen to Las Culturistas on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017, was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere,

a podcast that unhurts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel,

available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. This summer, the nation watched as the Republican nominee for president was the target of two assassination attempts separated by two months. These events were mirrored nearly 50 years ago when President Gerald Ford faced two attempts on his life in less than three weeks. President Gerald R. Ford came stunningly close to being the victim of an assassin today.

And these are the only two times we know of that a woman has tried to assassinate a U.S. president. One was the protege of infamous cult leader Charles Manson. I always felt like Lynette was kind of his right-hand woman. The other, a middle-aged housewife working undercover for the FBI in a violent revolutionary underground. Identified by police as Sarah Jean Moore. The story of one strange and violent summer. This is Rip Current.

Available now with new episodes every Thursday. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, Caitlin. Yeah? Are we back from break? Well, people keep asking if we're back, and we haven't really had an answer. But now, yeah, I'm thinking we're back.

Yay! It's such a good Keanu delivery I love how Keanu says words sometimes it doesn't always make sense to me but that's part of why I love it it's great there's an early that I mean that there's a couple monologues in this movie that just fucking rip but I think my favorite line read from him in this particular movie I don't know why and maybe it is nonsensical that I feel this way but I love when he first gets Daisy how he's like I'll get you some kibble later for some reason that line of dialogue really I was like I don't know if I'm gonna like this movie but then when he said I'll get you some kibble later I'm like you know what I'm gonna make this movie work because listen to him say that

I think it's because he sounds like legitimately apologetic the way you would be to like a little guy to a dog like he's very much like I hope this holds you over and it's fine in a way that implies that he wants the dog to understand his apology i'll get you some kibble later the only way that that scene could have been better for me is if we saw him do what i always do before i feed an animal something which is google can i feed dog cereal but john wick is an all-knowing creature so i assume that he's had to learn this before exactly all right where should we start vanessa does anything jump out to you where you'd like to start um i mean i definitely got to have my little little soapbox about like old guard versus new guard but it's one of my favorite like

through lines in this movie because like on the first watch, you only see it with like specifically Alfie Allen's character. But like there is that foil to it with Miss Perkins as well in terms of like, is there honor among thieves? Should there be? Can there be? And that kind of becomes like the question of the franchise but i think that what where i want to start is something that caitlin and i were talking about before we started recording which was the soundtrack is really unique for this when it comes to like an action movie i feel like it's a lot more like muted soft female voices a little bit less like bombastic than you remember like an action movie with like click click boom playing over it it's like it's a more like thoughtful soundtrack yeah the scene that it really stuck out to me was the red circle nightclub bathhouse action set piece where keanu reeves is just like going through and absolutely

like demolishing everyone in extremely violent ways. But it's like this angelic woman singing this like, it's almost Enya. Yeah. It's like a very calm, soft, like you could play this when you're like doing yoga or something. And the lighting also in that scene is like very like purple, like the bisexual lighting.

It's like purples and pinks and blues. And it's like purples and pinks and blues and it's just like it feels more like feminine in a weird way than so much action movie aesthetics i guess it's definitely sleeker and it's a it's the most an action movie cares about being at least american it's the most an american action movie cares about being a pretty movie. It's very pretty. Well, that's something I want to touch on just kind of in general is action movie tropes and trends

and how the John Wick franchise participates in those or doesn't, which we can kind of look at via John Wick's allies and adversaries and ask, are any of them women? Well, let's take a look. So if women are in action movies, there are some common tropes that you'll see, and they're usually quite reductive.

So I'm just speaking generally here, but I have a list of tropes. Bear with me. One trope is that women are not allowed to engage in the action or the fighting. They are damseled. Their character isn't a trained fighter. They're left behind for some reason, or they're ejected out of the action for whatever reason. The implication of this often being women are too delicate to fight. Combat is a man's game.

Or another big trope, which is that women are the prize to be won by the male hero. So a woman in an action movie is often just there to be the love interest of the action hero. So a woman in an action movie is often just there to be the love interest of the action hero. He will defeat the villain and save the day. And then the woman is his prize. She is usually given very little characterization and personality. She is just a hot lady by Western beauty standards and is basically a trophy. And that is one of the more, I think, interesting subversions of John Wick is that he's not a hypersexual character. Right. Even though people grow hypersexual

thinking about him, everyone's mourning for him. Because he's really hot. Yeah. And he's really hot in this movie. All true. It's impossible for anyone to witness him and not be like okay let's let's fucking go yes the james cameron awuga starts going off yeah but yeah i

did think it was i mean because i mean and i was like reading up like a bunch of you know kind of comparative studies of like how john wick kind of squares with other action heroes and I know that you and Vanessa know far more about this than I do but even like just thinking of like your classic action hero um like you're you're James Bond's you're uh you're Jean-Claude Van Damme's Tom Cruise in any movie it's not even out of the question to have a dead wife situation which I think is one of the trips that this movie doesn't really do very much with but like it's not even that that is unique it's more just that like it's almost i don't know i it's so assumed that uh an action hero is horny horny horny horny and that's just not on his mind he's going through a lot right now you guys he's still grieving he's not looking to date

right now exactly he's oh my god the raya messages john wick would be sending he'd be like i'm just looking for something casual okay i'm only here for friends um he's on bumble bff yeah i think john wick is more likely to be on bumble bff than raya like i think he's looking Bumble BFF yeah I think John Wick is more likely to be on Bumble BFF than Raya like I think he's looking for like play dates for the dog more than he's like looking for an actual date himself definitely

yes he's showing up to Bumble BFF dates being like there's one rule don't fall in love with me and it's impossible and if anyone knows about rules it's everyone in the Assassin's Society. The Mario coins. It's all things. But Miss Perkins doesn't give a shit because what is her main personality trait?

Money. It's the first thing out of his mouth where he's like, I thought she didn't get out of bed for anything less than like whatever the amount that he said it was. Perkins has one thing on her mind and it's money and it's making the absolute most of it possible she's a capitalist i love that there's no like hidden sexual tension between the two of them is she wants to get paid and she's gonna get paid by killing john wick right so this yeah so that'll play into some of these other tropes I'm going to unpack here. One is if women are allowed to fight, they are only allowed to fight other women where women on the good guy's side fight the women on the bad guy's side, but men and women don't fight

each other. That's not something that takes place in this franchise another trope will be that women are allowed to fight but the fight choreography will be heavily sexualized we've talked about the pussy slam a million times on the podcast where a woman wraps her legs around a guy's face or the crotch is right there or the alternative of like saying one quippy line and getting one kick in during the fight. Right. And everyone goes, whoa, that girl can kick. So there's that trope. There's the just women are used as sexy set dressing trope where because the target audience.

Which this movie is not impervious to. It's not. But it's not egregious, I would say. No. No, I don't think it's a particularly bad offender. But there are. I mean, there's this movie's definitely got some tropes going on. Oh, yeah. For sure.

Yeah. And then another trope that we see in action movies is that women will get tangled up in the action and then are brutalized as a result. And often that brutalization is something that the movie really like revels in and exploits and it treats it these regards because some of the assassins are women and they do fight john or fight alongside him like we see hallie berry do in the third movie and she has two dogs she and she has two dogs yeah okay yes okay they both live okay fine i'll i'm so i'm sold on three um in the john wick franchise women are not brutalized in a way that feels exploitative if a woman dies it just feels like an assassin dying yeah it's it's

an even play playing ground for who gets marked right women are not framed as the prize to be won because john wick never has a love interest we say, he only loves his dead wife, which is something we'll unpack further later. Yeah. I was like, but guys, the movie starts with a double fridging. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's true. Justice for Daisy.

Justice for Daisy. And the women as set dressing, there is some of that especially in the first movie there is some cinematography that lingers on like a woman's butt but this doesn't really happen in the later installments yeah i noticed i mean it's like i'm not even like you know opposed to like there being hot ladies in a movie i think it's just more i don't know i mean and i can only speak to the first one right i don't know yeah I'm really excited to hear what you both think about it because starting with the double fridging I was just like okay but I I'm I'm excited to talk about Miss Perkins in particular because Vanessa I think you've already said so many like

really smart things about what she represents and the tropes that she avoids and then I feel like there's other elements that like are kind of unavoidable because she's the only woman who is an assassin and so I feel like there's stuff that automatically ends up sort of projected onto her and like she dies in such a brutal way and she's like so dishonorable and I like that as a character and I also because she's the only woman, it just, I don't know. Like, I don't even think that the movie is like trying to say anything broad, but because she's the only person who's not a cis man who's like in this profession, it feels that way at times.

Does that make any sense? No, I get what you mean. I enjoy that she just gets to be a straight up villain. Yeah. Because I feel like any other movie would have taken a character like her and made her a very like sexualized villain. Like it's very easy to do, especially because she's just like a very attractive actress. But also given her like some kind of like mysterious connection to john and i like that in this universe she gets to just exist as somebody's that's completely looking out for herself which is literally what every assassin

is there for and i do feel like her dispatching is brutal but i think it's justified because of the way because of the way specifically like the rules of the continental have been teased to like something like there is something that will happen to you if you break these rules i feel like the movie does a good job of like building up and seating like there's a really really good reason you don't break this rule and her death could have easily been very unceremonious and the fact that there was like some ceremony to it very much was like yeah perkins was a formidable opponent she's not going to be felled easily by one guy she's not going to be felled easily like one guy she stabbed him in through the face of the pillow you're going to need a team of people to take down

miss perkins right and i think that's something that you don't really get in action movies where a female character is someone that is so formidable that you need to call in an entire ass crew to take out. Right. I mean, I totally agree with you. I think it's just more my thing is like I wish that there were like the two women that we get to know in the first movie well the one woman we get to know in the first movie is Miss Perkins yeah and then again it's like we've had like this conversation in almost every genre we've ever covered where it's like well if there were more women around it would feel less yeah whatever when you don't have to be a monolith when there's more than one one person doesn't have

to be the goddamn monolith and like the end all be all for like what it means for that marginalized community right even when we're not trying to make a monolith when you only put one in congratulations you made a monolith right right you're like okay you can be evil villain or dead wife.mp4 and those are like the two flavors of women that we meet in this movie i think that's why i like the third one so much is you start to see the different flavors of of complicated woman that exists in this universe and i feel i feel like with every movie they were like all right we're adding more uh, all right, we're adding more. You win.

You win. We're adding more. It's true. And because so the first movie, yes, basically just has one living female character. So even though this franchise generally avoids a lot of these like reductive tropes, as far as action movie tropes go go it's still a very male dominated franchise and even just looking at like john wick's allies they are mostly men and it's not until the third movie that he has like multiple allies who are women up until that point it's just like willem dafoe john loguizamo the concierge win the doctor, the king of the Bowery. Oh, and the bartender. And the bartender is a woman. Oh, yeah.

She is in a scene that lasts for like two minutes, maybe. Is her name Abby? She gets a name, right? She does get a name. Yes. And then she's sort of like like John Wick. You are awesome. She does say something that's worth touching on in this movie, which is that he is vulnerable. And I want to unpack that further later. But sure. But she is. I wouldn't say she's like a character. No, no. She's more like an NPC in a video game.

Exactly. You're like, oh, okay, we need plot information. But does she ever come back? No. No. Okay. Oops. Bye. See ya.

So yeah, make no mistake, this is a very male-dominated franchise. And this is something just worth mentioning that, and we've had this discussion here and there when talking about different action movies, but there's always this question, at least that I'm thinking of, of like, what does a feminist fight scene in an action movie look like? Does such a thing exist? Or like, what does gender parity in a fight scene look like especially because there is a long history in the real world of men inflicting violence against women and men exerting physical power over women

because the patriarchy conditions men to be aggressive and to value physical strength and to resolve conflict through violence so like with that context when you examine action movie violence and women's participation in that or lack of participation in that like right how then loaded do you it's yeah i have that fight scene as soon as you said it i was like i know exactly what it is um it's from a movie called writing wrongs, which is, uh, directed by UNBO who's like one of like the end all be all for like Kung Fu movies. Now the actress is Cynthia Rothrock. Cynthia Rothrock is maybe one of the greatest female action stars that has ever lived. Um, she performed mostly in Hong Kong because the U S was not ready for her and the U S did not make roles in action movies for women like Cynthia Rothrock. So Hong Kong was one of the few places that could like appreciate a woman of her caliber and, and skill. She's in a scene with another stage fighting actress named Karen Shepard.

And if you want, Oh, actually I have two scenes for this. If you want like feminist, this is what women look like when they're fighting women and there's nothing like sexualized about it and it very much treats them as formidable. You have Karen Shepard and Cynthia Rothrock

fighting each other and righting wrongs. Please look it up. One of them uses their belt like a goddamn lasso. It's fucking crazy. It is one of the most, it is one of the most incredible on-screen fights, grace to screen. And then the other one is a scene between three women and it's one of the

longest fight scenes in the movie in a movie directed by timo tijanto called the night comes for us and julia stell is a former ballerina that learned how to on-screen fight for this movie and she is outstanding and she's fighting two lesbian lover villains um great and it is this extended gory wild fight scene that is so good so those are if you're looking for fight scenes between women that actually have like a lens that isn't like sexualizing them and treats them as formidable look up those two scenes they are outstanding okay oh i'm so we'll we'll link that in the description slash i'm gonna watch it the second we finish recording because that's very exciting to me that rocks um i always go to the charlie starin tom hardy the first sight fight scene that they engage in in bad

max fury road oh yeah feels like i don't know it feels like gender parity as far as like action fight scene with a man fighting a woman. It's definitely tricky. Yeah. Because it's like, I mean, I almost feel like for me, again, this is like not my genre, but it feels like a you know it when you see it kind of situation. Right. Because it is like, especially when it's like a cis man fighting any marginalized group like that is not another cis man. Like, I understand why it's like a historically loaded thing to be doing.

And I think for a long time in movies, they would just instead choose to not depict it because you just didn't. At least in American movies, it just seemed like, well, we don't really know how to handle this so we're just not gonna do it and act like this never and like sort of in an unintentional way act like this never happens in the world right and i like that there is franchises like john wick and and others in the past maybe like 20 years where it's like you do see you you see movies not shying away because it is like even if you're like oh i don't want to depict you know a man beating the shit out of a woman that happens a lot in the real world and like but but then in doing that you are like sidelining huge groups of people who deserve to be seen in action movies as well it shouldn't be separated from fighting keanu

reeves like everyone should get a chance to fight this man and i generally i mean in this way i it again you really do just have miss perkins yeah but i i like that she gets a really solid fucking fight scene where you see what she can do and i don't know if like in my brain i was like well you know when you see it and that felt like a fight that felt like it was treated like a fight between two formidable assassins yeah in a way that wasn't super gendered yeah and that's why i wanted to watch the other two films of the franchise to see if more women were included or you know like what if any evolution there was there and it feels a little slow but by the third movie they're like you do have Halle Berry in a very extended fight scene where she is fighting alongside uh John Wick because she's an ally

she holds her own she survives yeah she's not killed you have ruby rose because in the second movie john wick fights ruby rose's character toward the end again it's like a drawn-out scene like there's it's because a lot of him fighting someone is just him shooting them in the head and then they're dead so i appreciate that the scenes that are some of the more extended like choreographed fight scenes where he's fighting the same person for a while tend to be with the one woman in the movie um it is cool that like even just based on hearing how subsequent John Wick adaptations have have gone in terms of including women and how it seems like based on the trailer for the fourth movie,

that that is going to be even more so in the next installment. It seems like it's a general upward trajectory and, and this is all happening in the last 10 years. Like that is pretty fucking cool. It makes me very excited for the action genre. Cause like, honestly in the last 10 years, it feels like it's why mortal combat pissed me off so much because I was like, you picked so many non fighting actresses.

And we actually have like the most on screen like female fighters in the last 10 years. And we've had a really long time, like not again, not counting Hong Kong, because, again, so many. But like it's frustrating whenever I see like I mean, I'm all for like an actress getting a role. But whenever I see like an actress that can't fight being selected for something now and i'm like do you know how many women are trained to do this like it was something that i would see happen a lot specifically with zoe bell in the late 90s and early 2000s where she was like always a stunt double but never the on-screen fighter like she was uma thurman's stunt double and kill bill and she actually like finally got to be on screen as herself um in the grindhouse double feature and

then most recently in malignant in in one of the prison scenes and i'm also very much for like bringing the women that have only exist as like doubles in the background to the foreground and we're finally seeing like more of that happening now which is incredible actually um highly recommend a movie called fury star it's vietnamese starring an actress named veronica no it's if taken actually was like good at fighting her her daughter gets taken so she's like on a mission to get her daughter back and it's just her like crushing dudes and trying to find her daughter on a motorcycle. It's,

oh, it's so good. Hell yeah. That's amazing. I would love to see good taken. Yeah. Instead of like a million cuts to get an old man over a fence and to convince me that he can actually fight.

It's Veronica. No, who like can fight and is just demolishing. Nice. Oh, I just wanted to go back to, um, to to Miss Perkins a little more because she's not in a ton. Also, I wrote down very 2014 hairstyle. Oh, yeah.

Where you're like, it's just a little too black hair on a clearly blonde woman. But that was 2014. That was happening. We were there. We did it. But we did it. But I do like that.

Yeah, she was put in. Again, it feels kind of weird to be like, wow, this movie could have really sexualized this character at so many points and doesn't. Yay movie. But I do think it is like relevant where we get like a pretty solid fight scene between her and john wick and then she sort of left in the custody of this guy harry which yes is a classic keanu reeves moment where he's caught doing something horrible

that he's like oh hey harry and like everyone loves john wick so much and he's like oh it's oh hey John Wick what can I do to help got a Mario coin for me and John Wick's like I sure do and again I feel like in a lesser movie or even a movie that maybe came out 10 years before this the scene between Harry and Ms. Perkins would have had a different dynamic in terms of like sexualizing her or like making it seem like because the way that again i think it's like the dynamic between harry and miss perkins is more what you were describing earlier vanessa about like old guard yeah new guard is very much what's in place where harry's like you know you're fucking around with the rules of the continental i can't be having that

and i want my mario coin and she's like well jokes on you i just want mario coins i think that that's the actual dialogue in the scene that was verbatim the exact dialogue yeah and then what happens is that she escapes because again she's skilled she's a formidable opponent she escapes from her handcuffs she does murder harry i liked harry i liked harry a lot it made me sad i was sad to see him go i wish that we i wish i knew a little more about i mean i know that part of john wick's thing is his mystique but i'm like oh what what did you what did you and harry get into back in the day yeah just give me it just give me a little something give me a little taste of what you guys did once. I feel like we need a spinoff series.

Would watch. It's coming. Oh, yeah. Ballerina, right? It's called The Continental, I think. Oh, no. So it's going to be specifically about The Continental, and it's going to be a prequel.

I can't hear that title without remembering that SNL series of sketches with Christopher Walken. Do you know what I'm talking about? No, no. He would be the Christopher Walken played this like ladies man, or he would like try to be a ladies man, but then he would just like, end up insulting the person he was trying to seduce. But you never saw, you didn't see her ever because the camera was like her point of view. And then you would just like see him like being a buffoon and then like drinks being thrown at his face and stuff but it was called the continental and it had this like weird intonation where it was just like the continental now i'm gonna watch

this i was like okay we'll link to that too um there's all there okay i was like have i lost it um ballerina is a movie that's coming out in the John Wick universe. It's filming right now. It takes place between John Wick 3 and John Wick 4. Whoa. Ballerina assassin Rooney hunts the murderers of her family. All you John Wick 3 heads will know what that means. But I guess that the character was played by an actor named Unity Phelan.

So an actual ballet dancer i guess yeah because john wick's backstory is that he was a ballerina hold on what yeah what oh right okay so something i left out of the john wick three recap is that see that's how you get me to care about john wick he was black swan are you joking i was i i think misunderstood what was happening so but so he seeks refuge in this theater, like this ballet theater, where Angelica Houston, yeah, I should not have left her out. Sorry about it. She's in ballerina as well.

Yeah. But the only difference is they recast the ballerina as Ana de Armas, which I'm like, just let the ballerina be the ballerina. Whatever. Seriously. about but whatever yeah seriously so he had his training at this theater and she's his kind of like mother figure almost i don't know enough about his backstory but i thought that like she was running a ballet school and an assassin school like i just assumed that he learned how to be an assassin at this ballet school i I don't know what I was thinking.

Yeah. He became a ballet assassin. Wait, Vanessa, was he a ballerina? Yeah, he danced. Oh. He was a ballet assassin. This isn't John Wick 3. Yeah.

I honestly am prepared to skip John Wick 2 and go straight to 3 and then to 4. It's fine. 3 is my favorite of the franchise, honestly. Okay. Because I was like, Halle Berry has two dogs and keanu reeves is a ballerina like that's something that i would watch no matter the tone no matter the year no matter like that's a timeless concept i'll give you my favorite fun piece of trivia about the third movie all of the scenes with the dogs uh in morocco took a goddamn eternity because there were so many feral cats uh in the

area that the dogs were constantly like losing their shit oh my god so filming with the dogs took a really long time because of just like there were people assigned to just shoo away feral cats from the scene because like the dogs just kept getting distracted by like cats swarming them that does sound like the sort of anecdote that ends with like and then keanu reeves adopted all the cats i know because he is nice so this has nothing to really do with bechdel cast discussion but i thought that this was like just i i was reading about how this movie kind of came to be. So this movie was written by a writer named Derek Kolstad, who had been at it forever, had written a million screenplays,

no one had really bitten, and then eventually sold this movie. But apparently he has an aunt who is a a popular historical fiction author named laurie wick and that's why john wick is john wick it's a little nod to his more successful aunt i love that huh so that's fun wow a good piece of trivia thank you so much should we unpack the dead his wife? Oh, the dead wife of it all? The dead wife of it all. I mean, I don't really know how much I have to say about it outside. I'm surprised that they went in so hard on it. I mean, like, it is like even in 2014, I feel like that's such a known trope that people would like even talk about then.

Like the term fridging existed by that point but i don't know i mean yeah i was um i guess in the movie's defense i don't know if you could classify that as fridging because she dies of an illness and not a brutal like murder i guess i guess i think of fridging for i i have like i use a more loose version of it where it's like if a woman needs to die for the plot to begin, that's a fridge to me. I mean, I guess it's like she doesn't die in a violent way, but the movie doesn't start until she's dead. Yeah. Right.

I mean, yes, there is the classic action movie trope of a woman existing in the world of this story, a wife girlfriend or daughter sometimes she's alive sometimes she's dead but the function of that character is to be motivation for the male hero we've talked about it a million times yeah and sometimes motivation for the villain yeah but in this case it's it's john wick's wife who died of an illness always my wife my daughter my wife my daughter that's like tale as old as time what i think is more interesting about this and again there's still very much this trope at play but it makes it so that the john wick character compared to other action movie heroes who in most franchises are cis het men who are extremely aggro and this whole like oh here's the ideal quote-unquote version of what a man should be and this is how to be cool and you're supposed to suppress your emotions and you're supposed to

disrespect women and all this stuff john wick doesn't it cements him as a wife guy right right so he's which is like i don't know he's just he's more vulnerable than his like you know male hero action counterparts is he dealing with his emotions in the healthiest way i would say no because he's murdering a lot of people but he's mr john wick yeah right but like his grief is and he's like actively trying to grieve and he yeah he's so attached to the dog because that was a way for him to experience grief and support animal right exactly they killed his support animal on like day two that's yeah so i don't know there's just like something soft about old john he's he's a ballerina wife guy. And the fact that he was a ballerina the whole time, twist of the century.

Like, I wonder if Helen knew that side of him, his ballet side. Also, did she? I mean, I just have, maybe these are answered in subsequent installments, but like speaking to your point, Caitlin, I do think that like that is like a cool subversion on the action hero that this movie does

is like that they don't shy away from the grief and it's like well if you're going to kill off the wife for the action to begin don't just forget about her immediately or just you know invoke her name or her memory when it's like plot convenient basically like it does you do feel her presence in every decision that he makes and like in his behavior towards other people. Like he's, I think almost like, like as actively grieving as I've ever seen, like a character where this trope is at play. Yeah. Grieving. Even other characters are like aware of that.

Right. Everyone knows that he lost his wife. And I think that's,'s i mean that is interesting i and i again it's like the element of mystery is so important to this character because the more mysteries about john wick the more john wick movies you get it's all uh it's all connected and all that stuff right but i was i was just like oh i wish that like you got a little like even just to like push the subversion of those decisions a little more, just like some sort of indication of like, did Helen know that he was an assassin?

Did Helen know that he was a ballerina? Was their relationship built on a bed of lies? What is one thing about her that isn't that she was sick and then died? Yeah. And loved John Wick so much. Like there, I feel like you can retain the like mysterious elements of the character. And still like give her some characterization.

Yeah. Give her something. Knowing more about Helen doesn't make us have to know more about John Wick. Exactly. Exactly. What was their relationship like? Even if it was fucking boring. Like yeah.

Us knowing what Helen's job was. Or like how they met. fucking boring like yeah us knowing what helen's job was or like how they met or just or something about her you know god forbid outside of that relationship would have i mean i think it just would it would have helped every i mean like we always say in these conversations it would have helped everything because it if you know why he loved her so much that makes you feel for john wickmore exactly it makes you understand why he like quit his entire lifestyle for her right right like what was what was so fucking i mean i i believe that this woman who doesn't exist was awesome but like what was so awesome about her that you bailed on your whole life to hang out with her good questions but the movie doesn't care enough

about her do you find out more about her in subsequent installments no no come on tragically no which i wish for i wonder if we're gonna get more on the in four but i guess i'm just gonna have to wait until i have that two hours and 50 49 minutes to spare that's a lot of time i also thought it was funny that they like bridget moynihan's like a very like a pretty successful actor to put in the part of dead wife.mp4 i was kind of like what yeah you you think that she's gonna be doing more you would think but i see that she's credited in all. Oh, that's so, wait, that's actually so funny. Okay. She's credited in John Wick and John Wick chapter two.

In John Wick three and four, she's credited as Helen Wick parentheses photo. So they probably just had to Venmo her $700. Oh, cause you don't even get flashbacks probably. That's right. You don't even get dot, she is now dot JPEG. She's been somehow cast into an even smaller and she is now dot jpeg she's been somehow cast into an even smaller role dead wife dot jpeg an even smaller file yeah brutally compressed

justice for helen come on that sucks really photo yeah um something i want to touch on is gun violence in American action movies. This is something that I don't think we've talked a lot about on the show, but gun violence in American action movies is very pervasive. And it's rare to have an action movie from the U.S. that does not have a lot of gun violence in it. We are not experts on this topic of like, oh, is it that guns are so readily available in the U.S. and that's why they're so prevalent in our media and in action movies in particular, just it's like tragically a part of American culture is it that the pervasiveness of gun violence in American media does that contribute to actual gun violence in our culture because people are famously influenced by the media they

consume is it both like what's the causation slash correlation happening here again we're not experts it's a much larger conversation that we can't really cover in the span of a single episode but i just i wanted to touch on it because again we haven't talked about it really before and i noticed that as a longtime consumer of American action movies, excessive gun violence in these movies has just been so normalized that I have gotten to the point where I don't even notice this alarming trend of how pervasive it is. I'm just like, yeah, that's how action movies are.

Well, I guess, Vanessa, that's a question that I have for you because you do watch so many international action movies are well i guess finesse that's a question that i have for you because you you do watch so many international action movies like is is this a uniquely american thing how do you feel about how violence is sort of portrayed across the genre i wouldn't say it's uniquely american because it is something that i see across like the international borders of action i'd say at least for john Wick specifically, a lot of its influence is specifically taken from John Woo. Oh, okay.

Because the gun violence in John Wick specifically isn't, like typically American action movies when it handles gun violence, it's just very much like a very like bullet spray, hold gun, infinite bullet kind of thing the john wick taking from john woo influence of gun violence is it treats it almost like an extension of the arm if you if you notice in john wick movies versus other american action movies it's treated almost like it's an extension of like a punch in it of itself to where it it's it's part of the choreography and usually american like gun violence doesn't include guns as part of the choreography unless it was like john woo with his very like hyper stylized version of it but it it is something that i see that isn't so

much just like if you watch like the raid or the raid 2 it's very much pervasive through it even though there's like a lot of like hand to hand combat in it. So I wouldn't say it's intrinsic to Americans, but I will say, especially in like the eighties and nineties, we did it more. Okay. Cause that is,

I mean like I, again, I, cause that's like, it's not my genre and I just come to expect it, but there were, I mean some I think maybe it is like a uniquely American conversation because there is such an issue with gun violence

in America where I feel like there is like this genre is especially right now and in the last 10 years going to affect people a little differently I know that there's a huge huge huge debate on yeah the causation and all this stuff and that i've certainly read a lot saying like you know that is like just to say that the presence of guns in media will turn you into like a murderous like you know like i feel like it's way overblown far more nuanced conversation than I've generally seen had about it. But I don't know. I mean, it's interesting, like, bringing your own and hearing other people bring their own sort of experiences of gun violence to the table and, like, how you're able to consume these movies.

Right. There's, like, no wrong way to kind of come at it but there are i mean in i think for me it's particularly in the like club scene where people are just uh you know they're killing each other and it's all very targeted like they're not taking out random people like you do see sometimes in action movies um but i think that was as close to for this scene just because of my own personal experience of, I don't know, like active shooter threats in a crowded space. Like you're like, oh, that can be a really like sudden and kind of triggering thing to see. But yeah, you're right.

For sure. It's a little more willful. Yeah. Like it's a little more thoughtful. It makes it makes an assassination feel more calculated. And it doesn't have that like that sense of just like bullet spray catching strays that you might see in like a crank movie right right yeah i never know i don't know it's like never like my favorite thing to see but that's also just because it's

like it's just that's just a personal preference i don't know right i don't think it's ruining the world necessarily yeah right because for me like again i love action movies and i love to see a good gunfight in an action movie but in the real world like i think guns should be banned outright i think we should throw every gun into a volcano like no one should have access to a gun but in movies i'm like more fun fun i'm having a fun time so it's a paradox but I just wanted to bring it up I want guns to be like dragons they only exist in fantasy yeah yes exactly I want Andy Serkis to play a gun I think he just gets really method about it I think he'd be good at it I think he'd have a really fun uh press junket for that one but I want him to do the golem voice while he's doing it

oh the gun has a whole lore that you don't see it's like Babu Frick like there's like the actor doing Babu Frick had a hole they're like oh there was a love thing that didn't work out for Babu Frick and you can see that in the puppet work and i'm like all right sure thanks shirley all hail babu but like bless her heart i'm the only person in the world who remembers the character babu frick from star wars 500 but no i'm right there with you i love babu frick with all my heart hey hey to all my babu for kids out there oh i also want to just uh mention the tendency in american action movies to make the villains be people from a nationality that is not american yeah which this franchise definitely does and again i just speaking to the first one, making the villains rush in felt like action movie 101 writing.

Where you're just like, this movie could have come out any time in the last 50 years, I guess. Yeah, in a way that is definitely trope-y writing. Oh, deeply so. Yeah. Does anyone have anything else to talk about no i think i i think i completely emptied the cartridge wow oh i like that you see john wick change the cartridge too or like run out of bullets sometimes yeah it's not infinite forever bullets he's so good i liked i like that this movie like i don't know i guess that like of the action movies that I've seen,

this is like, John Wick's not my favorite, but I feel like it has a really, really cool balance of fantastical world elements versus occasional like striking real world elements. Like he runs out of bullets. Someone doesn't end the scene on a quip and they just say, oh. Like just like kind of grounding moments that you aren't sort of trained to expect

in such a stylized action movie. Like, I really, really love those choices. They're so fun. Oh, God, same. Not having kibble at your house because you got a dog yesterday. I'm also like, Helen, you didn't send a bag of kibble? Yeah. Like like think it through babe you're giving him errands yeah you want to give a grieving man errands think about it and

that's how this whole thing started if he had not gone out to go get kibble he would have never met up with he would have never met yosef and then his dog was still it's look we can't speculate helen helen tell it to the photo in john wick four i can't believe she's parentheses photo that's so dirty i guess he's over it because she's been downgraded to a photo uh i do want to shout out non-binary actor asia kate dylan who plays the adjudicator in john wick three nice the character is never identified as non-binary but the actor is and i think it's just cool for an action a huge action franchise to cast a non-binary actor in that role and then just like have that character just be their existence being normalized within the world of the story yeah yeah which is something that very like hetero rigid gender binary action movies generally don't do no they're too scared of it yeah so I appreciate that oh yeah but uh yeah I think that's all my my cartridge is now

also empty my cartridge is empty as well I guess the last thing I have to say is that I I you know even though we're technically just covering the first movie in this episode even in the space of this conversation I've been very um heartened and feel good that it seems like as this uh franchise becomes more and more successful it also becomes more and more inclusive yeah which is amazing and i hope that that like remains sort of a precedent in this in especially in this like kind of typically aggro cis male genre in general like it's really fucking cool and um it continues to set the bar it does which is amazing and so look i'm gonna see john wick for it's also reena writing a song for it do we know i hope so i hope we get like a specter style song just for it and then she could win an

oscar i just the reena sawyama to Oscar pipeline. It just feels right. It's on the way. She's kind of EGOT. I want to see her live so bad. It's also, this franchise, I would say, is also pretty inclusive from a racial diversity point of view. Oh yeah, totally. Where it doesn't center whiteness the way that a lot of action movies

and action franchises do which is insane to me because they pull from so many like specifically asian genres but are scared of casting asian people right yeah have we have we arrived at the bechdel test portion there's no way this damn movie passes the bechdel test i'm sorry oh no it doesn't it does not pass but future installments pass maybe do maybe I think three does it does okay I think three passes I would have to re-watch and pay more attention I was not paying attention I want to believe I want to believe um but one certainly not um I you're hard pressed to get two women in a room that aren't set dressing correct upset or or terrified victims number three and four or bankers being forced to

lead a vault when keanu reeves goes bad boy yeah i forgot about them so, there's a lot of, I mean, featured extras being like, ah! But here's the thing is that our nipple scale will really say something about the movie, which is our scale of zero to five nipples based on looking at the movie through an intersectional feminist lens. I'm going to give this two and a half nipples, a split down the middle, because even though it subverts a lot of very reductive, harmful tropes when it comes to women in action movies, it's just a very male franchise still there's no reason why more of John Wick's allies and adversaries couldn't be women femmes non-binary characters since the franchise now has set a precedent for including non-binary actors although again with the subsequent sequels it is getting more inclusive when it comes to gender

but this first movie especially is just uh one dead wife and then one lady assassin and four seconds of a bartender right right and a pretty good you know i like it not to undercut ms perkins i think that she's like a well-written character and that you get the same amount of background for her as you would get for any other assassin in the movie and i agree with you like what vanessa was saying earlier of like she is formidable enough to like warrant a ceremonial takeout like it takes whatever a circle full of respected assassins to take her out um she is certainly one of them but yeah she's just kind of the only the only one of them right and and then

again like when you compare john wick and his like vulnerability and his emotional forthcomingness that is present in his character far more than your typical hyper masculine hyper aggro male action movie hero it's just an easier franchise for me to get behind yeah because of these various subversions so i'll give it two and a half, maybe even a three. I'm biased because again, I love the genre and I like movies and franchises that do subvert a lot of the harmful things that make this genre not so easy to enjoy these days. But John Wick rules. I love Keanu Reeves. I love all of the dogs. I love all of the dogs in the movie I love the dogs so that's who I will award my my three nipples to the dogs and Keanu Reeves I think I'm also three nipples I think the franchise overall is a four nipple for me the first movie is three nipples and Miss Perkins is doing most of the heavy lifting taking it to the third nipple i think it would have been two two and a

half if not for miss parkins so she brings it to a three for me cool yeah jamie how about you uh i'm gonna i'm gonna be a total killjoy and go a two on this one only because i i really like the i think deadwife.mp4 really really got me fair and it happens at the beginning and end and I was just like ah even in 2014 this is not awesome I I do I do like Ms. Perkins um I totally agree with what both of you are saying and also I'm a little bit biased against this genre for whatever reason yeah because it scares me and it's loud and it's hard for me to pay attention. So, yeah, but I love beagles. And I do love the, I think mainly my two nipples are going for the strength of Miss Perkins' character. And how she is like such a, you know, she's just an equal.

Which is not asking for much. And this movie does do that. And the subversions of the John Wick character of like he's not, yeah, he's not's not the my wife died but i'm ready to find love today like kind of you know brain-breaking action hero we're used to so uh yeah i'm gonna go too and i'm giving them both the daisy god damn it r.i.p bring her back her ghost should visit him in john wick four oh agree. She should have a really beautiful smoker's voice. I imagined her have a very buttery, raspy voice. I'm trying to think of who would voice her. Miley Cyrus.

Oh, I was going to say Andy Serkis. Oh my, Andy Serkis. Miley Cyrus, Andy Serkis, you know, same cadence. We'll figure it out. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah,

that's our, that's our John wick episode. There it is. Vanessa, thank you so much for coming back. Thank you for having me. I had a wonderful time. The five timer jacket is in the mail.

Hell yes. And come back for a six time whenever you want. I am more than happy to. Um, where can people check out your stuff follow you online plug away i'm ness guerrero on twitter and snes guerrero on instagram and then i produce a show called 10 minute power hour for the game grumps that comes out every other monday uh on the grumps channel on youtube and then um every other friday a show called Popcorn and Pixels in which we talk

about storytelling across video games and movies and how a ludonarrative storytelling device might be different from a linear narrative storytelling device but how they how they tell similar stories together and I host that with my co-host Emily Jacobson and definitely check it out if you like video games and movies cool hell yeah and you can follow us on social media at bechtel cast you can go to our patreon aka matreon patreon.com slash bechtel cast you get two bonus episodes every month plus access to the back catalog of well over 100 bonus episodes. And that's all for $5. Sorry, five assassin coins per month. Five Mario coins.

Five bodies weigh the gold. Who knows? And you can go, if you want merch, go to tpublic.com slash the Bechtel cast. And with that. Oh, wait. I have a good, I have a really good dismount okay fine so you do yours sorry i did not mean to interrupt no it's fine mine would have sucked anyways go ahead i was gonna say hey vanessa hey jamie be seeing you be seeing you john be seeing you, John. Be seeing you. Bye. Bye. Bye.

Hey, everybody. This is Matt Rogers. And Bowen Yang. We've got some exciting news for you. You know we're always bringing you the best guests, right? Well, this week we're taking it to the next level. The one, the only, Katherine Hahn is joining us on Lost Culture East. That's right. The queen of comedy herself.

Get ready for a conversation that's as hilarious as it is insightful. Tune in for all the laughs, the stories, and of course, the culture. Don't miss Catherine Hahn on Las Culturistas. Listen to Las Culturistas on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was assassinated. Crooks Everywhere unearthed the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. She exposed the culture

of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. I'm Joe Gatto. I'm Steve Byrne. We are Two Cool Moms. We certainly are. And guess where we could find us now? Oh, I don't know. The iHeart Podcast Network?

That's right. We're an official iHeart podcast, and I'm super excited about it. I am too. I thought Two Cool Moms was such a fun podcast, but now it's even more funner and cooler and heartier. That's right. It's more iHeartier. I knew it. Check your heart rate. We're here at iHeart. Yeah, you can find us wherever you listen to your podcasts or's more iHeartier. I knew it. Check your heart rate.

We're here at iHeart. Yeah, you can find us wherever you listen to your podcasts or on the iHeart Radio app.