John Wick: Writing A Terrifying Protagonist

tell me his name again thanos is a plague, baby, he invades planets, takes what he wants, wipes out half the population, loki said, the attack on new york, that's him, okay, that looked familiar, probably be true, but it's most likely not for the reason I want to focus on Well, how about this? Some men are not looking for anything logical like money. You can't buy them. You can't buy them. Look, we called him babayeka the boogeyman, well, John wasn't exactly the boogeyman, he was the one you sent to kill the boogeyman. Now I think we're cooking with fire, so we only saw three very short scenes from three very different movies, but of course.

They all have one thing in common They all exaggerate the villain Part of what makes the antagonist of many great stories so effective and intimidating is the fear and respect they provoke in the heroes The goal of the

protagonist

s is to be at the center of a story and Taking the audience into the emotional highs and lows of the narrative, in general, we must walk in the

protagonist

's shoes, so by definition, if they fear the power and abilities wielded by the antagonist, we will also feel that way about the main characters. Verbally expressing his uneasiness when confronting his antagonists has served as a key method of constructing iconic villains such as Thanos the Joker and John Wick except, of course, one of them doesn't belong.

John Wick is not the villain; in fact, he very much is. steadfastness The protagonist of the entire movie is named after him, but he is definitely talked about as if he were a villain. The bodies he buried that day lay the foundation for who we are today if a person only saw this scene between Theon Mafia Joy and his father. One would definitely come away from this thinking Jon is as villainous as he seems, but why does the movie spend this time making the hero sound so threatening? I think it's because the writers knew it was the absolute best they could do given the circumstances and that

writing

choice and what we could all learn from it is what the rest of this video will be about almost without fail through each client. with whom I have worked on every manuscript I have edited.

The essential approach has been to make the protagonist interesting. As I said before, a protagonist usually stands at the center of a story and therefore carries the story on his shoulders. Because of this, it is very important for many writers to endear themselves to their protagonist as soon as possible in front of the audience or at least make the main character likable from the beginning. This is actually the main theme of the late Blake Snyder's ultra-famous book Save the cat inside snyder describes the usefulness of having a decisive moment in which the protagonist proves that he is worth rooting for as soon as he appears or at least approaches.

The example of such an action that Snyder gave was saving a cat, an action that almost Anyone could get behind John Wick, as a movie does exactly this, but with a little twist, instead of a cat, he's a dog and everyone can get behind him. take care of a dog, yes, well if you ask me if I like wild animals drooling on me, then yes, I guess I'm not really a dog lover, well, maybe not all because narrative techniques focus on throw. on your heartstrings don't work equally on everyone, but I think you get the point.

The only reason we see John Wick with this puppy is to give us a sense of who he is as a person, someone we can understand and possibly care for. because, in fact, the entire introduction of this film is geared towards that goal, the opening showing us John bloodied, bruised and vulnerable. The opening moments continue to show us that Jon was a loving husband but now he is dealing with the difficult reality of losing the love of his wife. In life, this all culminates in Jon receiving this puppy as a final gift from his late wife, one last thing to remember her by, and while the literal moment of saving the cat is John caring for the dog, the entire introduction is a great moment for save the cat an orgy of evidence to impress upon us that Jon is a good guy who deserves our sympathy.

The narrative is doing its best to cast an emotional net that can capture the hearts of as many people as possible, as deeply as possible, and it is doing so for two reasons. The first is that this moment hits hardest where it hurts the most. Jon is beaten, his dog is killed, and it is revealed that all of this happened simply as a result of a chance encounter with a terrible stranger. All that positive aspect of the film. The intro build takes its toll here and anyone with a heart will at least feel a little bad watching a puppy and a man get brutalized for no reason, but like I said, this is only part of why the intro was created. .

In this way, the other is to give narrative weight to this scene. This whole exchange between Chief Vigo and his son Joseph could honestly be the most important scene in the entire movie and its content is completely opposite to everything that happened during the introduction where the opening begins. of the film went out of its way to impress us with a John who was vulnerable, kind, heartbroken and protective. This scene educates us about a completely different side of John, one that is murderous, ruthless, calculating, and efficient. I once saw him kill three men in a bar. with a bouncer and the reason I think the scene is so important from a technical editing perspective is because it expertly lays the narrative foundation for making John Wick a

terrifying

protagonist, something the film relies on throughout the rest of its execution time.

This is not achieved. just because of the information about jon's past, which is honestly

terrifying

on its own, but who does the information come from, it's not

john

giving details relevant to his own character, it's the gangsters, the villains and because of how fiction modern has commonly handled the delivery of character information, this makes jon seem like the villain, let's delve into why typically one of the most important jobs a narrative must accomplish from the beginning is establishing the antagonist and the threat they represent. There are two very common ways to achieve this. One of them is to show the villain's methods in cruelty through an action scene, this shows the audience firsthand how dangerous and threatening the antagonist is.

Christopher Nolan did this with both the Joker and Bane and the MCU achieves this with villains like Killmonger. The second method of establishing the villain's threat is a little different as it revolves around words rather than action. Many times the main characters or even the protagonist will convey the dangerous aspects of the villain through dialogue. If you get the six stones. Tony, you could destroy life on a scale up to now on Dreamtop. Now both. The action and dialogue based methods are really just smoke in mirrors to disguise the narrative construction going on underneath. Let's focus on the dialogue method for a moment in which a main character talks about how powerful, dangerous, or threatening a villain is.

Establish the traditional struggle of a story to overcome a conflict. All good stories revolve around a character, usually the protagonist overcomes some conflict and that conflict is created by the antagonist, so for our main character to overcome the conflict, he has to overcome the antagonist. Pretty simple things. but for antagonists to be surpassed that means, by definition, that they must be in an elevated position in relation to the protagonist to say that in a less pretentious way the villain needs to be better than the hero stronger, faster, smarter, richer, whatever narrative conflict typically demands. the strengths the protagonist has should be ineffective in dealing with the antagonist there wouldn't be much conflict if the hero could immediately save the day a well executed antagonist points out and highlights the protagonist's weaknesses when done correctly this should make the protagonist face their weaknesses experience character growth and rise to meet the antagonist's challenge, and of course, the greater the power difference between the protagonist and antagonist, the greater the conflict and the greater the reward if the protagonist ultimately succeeds.

In general, this means that when the main characters talk about the threat of the villain, they are setting the benchmark for who they have to overcome and surpass and that is why John Wick in this scene feels so villainous, which seems simply a dialogue. is actually an inversion of traditional narrative formation, it is the antagonists who fearfully establish the threat of the protagonist. John will come for you and you won't do anything because you can't do anything. Our hero character is portrayed as a determined murderous force of nature that cannot be reasoned with: let's not resort to our baser instincts and handle this like a civilized man moving forward and it's the villains who have to try to change and evolve. to get over it.

Task team How many do you have? And I think this is the key. to what makes

john

wick

so terrifying as a protagonist this is not a situation like the one taken where the main character is a highly skilled assassin but the villains ignore him and i will kill you good luck this is a situation where the main character is a highly skilled assassin, but the villains are horrified of him because no one is john mike and what that does for anyone who gets involved in the fiction is let them know that they should be horrified by john

wick

ii.

It is an incredibly simple but effective way to make the protagonist terrifying, however, this is not a carte blanche endorsement of this narrative technique, there are different dangers and weaknesses associated with it and, to avoid them, it is necessary to use very safe security mechanisms. specifics in

writing

, all of which john wick as a movie employs in the introduction and Believe it or not, we actually already mentioned them. Let's say you want to use this technique and you want to convince the audience of your protagonist's threat by making the villain fear them. This can only work if the audience understands that the villains are threatening.

First, if the villain is weak, lame, unintimidating, or worse, unremarkable, being afraid of your protagonist doesn't mean much, but if your villain is hardened and ruthless, their fear of the protagonist is much more impactful, in the case of John Wick. . the movie needed to establish the threat of the antagonist before making them fearful of John and that's exactly what he did. This scene is an example of the introduction of a villain through action that he was talking about and allows the audience to get a sense of how dangerous he is. And these twisted gangsters are the kind of people who don't think twice before breaking into your house, killing your dog, and beating you senseless just because they feel like it.

The movie relies on you thinking they're scary people who would make their Jon's eventual fear exponentially more significant, but that's still not enough because you don't want your audience to just be terrified of your protagonist, you want your audience to be invested, otherwise , hopefully, supports your main character, but most people don't. I don't like rooting for a ruthless mass murderer, so how can you make your protagonist terrifying but also sympathetic enough to excuse murdering him? Well, you do what John Wick did to make the murders as justified as possible. Generally, this is done through a moral justification or an emotional justification.

Justification is what superhero and action movies do. The hero can kill his enemies because he is serving the greater good, in quotes. Emotional justification is what John Wick does. The narrative creates a situation where the audience can sympathize and understand why Jon is killing. This is the value of the movie introduction to save the cat. The movie tells you that Jon was a peaceful morning widower who wasn't malicious but was simply pushed to the edge. The other side of emotional justification makes villains so easy to root for. against possible, that's why yosef, to put it scientifically, is such an insufferable idiot that we want to see him get what he deserves and that creates a situation where we are willing, if not happy, to know that jon is coming after him so mercilessly, the appeal of The Rest of the Movie isn't just about seeing if John Wick lives up to his legendary reputation, but about waiting to see if the villain gets the comeuppance we so desperately believe he deserves.

John Wick is a terrifying protagonist because the villains fear him and he has the skills to back it up, but we also root for Jon because the narrative has convinced us on an emotional level that while we may not act on it, a part of us He understands John's desire for revenge and wants to see him triumph. The anger, fear and regret in Vigo's eyes when he realizes how bad of a mistake it was for his son to be angry with John is all the movie need to do to get going at full speed if any of you,writers, have been struggling with ways to make their own.

The protagonist feels threatening or powerful. This narrative technique might be right for you anyway. I hope you enjoyed the video and I hope you learned something along the way too. If you like what you heard, consider subscribing for more content or if you really want it. To help, please consider supporting the channel on Patreon for the first videos and other cool goodies, the links will be in the description or if you want something more casual check out the second channel link below again, thanks everyone for watching until the final, as always. It was a pleasure and I will talk to all of you again soon.