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John Wick’s Bulletproof Suit Makes the Series More Believable, Not Less
- draw_down 3y agoWith this series, I reckon one should not trouble oneself too much with “believability”.
- chillycurve 3y agoI think there is a difference between "realism" and "believability". Even the hardest fantasy and sci-fi needs to be believable, even if it is completely unrealistic. And by that I mean, it needs to follow a predictable and understandable set of rules that make sense. I think John Wick does that (besides falling off the occasional building.)
- HillRat 3y agoWhat’s clever about this particular narrative trick is that it obeys a kind of conservation of disbelief: reduce the number of impossible things your audience has to believe in by having them flow naturally from just one or two impossibilities, which you can then spend more time grounding ahead of time to make them feel more real. (The trick of grounding an impossibility is another thing entirely, but comes down to introducing it in a way that lets the audience accept it as either utterly fantastical or deceptively mundane.)
- m_a_g 3y agoMy biggest problem with those imaginary suits is the transfer of energy. Even if a lightweight bulletproof material like that can be made, there needs to be some symptom of energy transfer visible to the eye. Otherwise, it's not sci-fi; it's magic
- chillycurve 3y agoIn the 2nd movie (and perhaps other places), he gets shot repeatedly with rifles. Even if the shots don't penetrate, the repeated impact alone would break ribs and leave him incapacitated.
- unsupp0rted 3y agoIt's suggested that he is having ribs broken, or at least badly bruised, by every major hit
- everforward 3y agoI think that could still kill as well. Repeated shots break the ribs, and a subsequent shot pushes a broken piece of rib into the lung causing bleeding into the lung or maybe pneumothorax. Either that or the kevlar failing due to repeated shots. It's not meant to be shot in the same place more than once. Still more believable than Matrix style bullet dodging, though.
- belval 3y agoThat's my main gripe with how the bulletproof suits were shown in the fourth movie. There is a difference between getting shot in the chest and actually catching a bullet with your suit while using it as a shield. The former is believable because the kinetic energy would dissipate in your ribs (possibly breaking them) the later isn't because it's roughly equivalent to dissipating the bullet's energy using your arm. OTOH it's a John Wick movie, expecting anything to be very relatistic is already thinking one step too far.
- wongarsu 3y agoI haven't mathed this out, but from experience from jumping (both from heights and towards ledges) I would think that our arms and legs are much better shock absorbers than our ribs. If you hold something like a shield, you are primarily using your triceps and shoulder muscles as springs to dissipate the impact over the distance of about a foot. Of course there are issues with that, but it's much better than your rips which can move much less before breaking.
- ohgodplsno 3y agoGood thing John Wick isn't scifi then. It'd be like complaining that the Predator has elements that aren't realistic when it comes to physics: it's true, but it's not exactly the point of the movie to make you think deeply about physics, is it ?
- brohee 3y agoA 9mm round (most typical in John Wick) is around 600J of muzzle energy (and John Wick fights are extremely close range so we can use the same estimate for impact). That's in the range of a strong punch by a good boxer (a good heavyweight can be well over 1000J). Punches don't ragdoll humans and neither should bullets stopped by a ballistic vest.
- stevehawk 3y agoon the other hand, a bullet isn't stopped by bullet proof fabric, it's stopped by what's behind it. If I take a 9mm round to the arm then my arm is breaking. That 600J is focused on a much smaller area than a heavyweight punch.
- hesdeadjim 3y agoYea this. Now conceivably such a sci-fi suit might have a non-Newtonian reaction to a bullet impact and automatically spread the force over a wider area in a somehow non-destructive way.
- brohee 3y agoDunno about sci-fi, but some tactical gear is incorporating D3O today (see https://www.deltathreeoscar.com/ https://www.deltathreeoscar.com/). And I suspect the most advanced stuff is not quite public.
- backpackviolet 3y agoNo, that’s the magic of the bulletproof fabric. Imagine the energy of the bullet is distributed across the entire garment.
- libria 3y agoI think that is our problem, we have a hard time imagining how the energy could be distributed across the garment. You could sell me on Non-Newtonian-Kevlar though: Pliant to a slow crease, rock-hard with a sudden strike. --- Oh man I thought I was making that up, but it's a thing! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_Armor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_Armor The future is now!
- photochemsyn 3y agoNo worries, it's a Culture suit with a built-in trapdoor system (Iain M. Banks) > "Trapdoor system: A mechanism that transports any unwanted energy inside of the ship into hyperspace, so it can't be destroyed by internal attacks. It was stated that you could set off an H-bomb inside of a Culture ship if you were right next to it, and all of the energy would be instantly transported into hyperspace so it would seem like nothing had happened at all." (outskirtsbattledomewiki)
- Decabytes 3y agoHack smith has a great video where they make a bulletproof suit and show that it’s possible! https://youtu.be/Eeb4aZObp-0 https://youtu.be/Eeb4aZObp-0
- stronglikedan 3y agoKyle Hill, too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpn4ImFo0Dg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpn4ImFo0Dg
- chillycurve 3y agoLove that video! Linked to it in the footnotes because it partially inspired the post.
- kybernetikos 3y agoThe deformation on the clay makes it very clear that yes, stopping the bullet was good, but there's still a lot of energy there that is really going to hurt and potentially do damage.
- rkangel 3y agoI'll take three broken ribs if that means I'm still alive. But yes, it doesn't quite meet the John Wick requirements.
- ramraj07 3y agoThe bulletproof suits are acceptable leaps of logic that I’m fine with. The bigger issue is keeping things consistent. Try as I may I just can’t keep thinking about how easy everyone else in that universe is to kill compared to the hero. And the most unbelievable scene for me was the two on one knife fight.
- Insanity 3y agoThe author makes good points - but honestly I don't care too much about the explanation behind _why_ the protagonist is seemingly invincible. John Wick movies are fun due to the camera work, fighting scene choreography and the "cool" characters. Most action movies don't require you to think too much about what's going on, and that's fine, imo.
- ChuckNorris89 3y ago>Most action movies don't require you to think too much about what's going on, and that's fine, imo. I beg to differ. If your hero is vulnerable, then the stakes are high and you're always on the edge of your seat throughout the fights as you don't know whether he'll make it out alive or not. But when your hero has some magic bullshit armor that makes him invulnerable, then the audience stop caring about his fights because you know for sure he's invincible anyway and the fights just seem pointless and forgettable no matter how flashy they are. Take the first Matrix movie of 1999 also with Keanu Reeves. When Neo was fighting Agent Smith in the subway, the whole theater was dead silent because Neo was just a man going up against an invulnerable foe, and that was exciting, but in the sequels when Neo became this invulnerable Superman, people were much less invested even though the fights were flashier, because the stakes were much lower since he's now basically invincible so nobody can hurt him anyway. It's like playing videogames with God mode on. Nobody cares if you win.
- hgsgm 3y agoPlot armor is as strong as a bulletproof suit.
- ChuckNorris89 3y agoIt is, but good film making is not making the plot armor obvious to the audience.
- Zababa 3y agoI think the issue with Matrix is that going from vulnerable to invulnerable is a downgrade. However, if the invulnerability is "part of the contract", then you don't have this downgrade. You can also have low stakes with a vulnerable hero if you don't care about him.
- jurimasa 3y agoIm Colombian. The bullet proof suit has existed since the late 90s. We invented it.
- Namari 3y agoIt's from the 16th century
- OnionBlender 3y agoI haven't seen the 3rd or 4th movies. Does anyone just wear a helmet made of the same material?
- Insanity 3y agoLol, I don't think they do but this raises a good question as to why. (Could claim it's not see-through so you'd only have the eyes left to hit). Maybe in JW5.
- chillycurve 3y agoThey do. John has to get creative to get those guys.
- brohee 3y agoThe high table soldiers do wear commercially sourced ballistic helmets that stop handgun bullets IRL (and some rifle rounds). UHMWPE is truly a wonder material.
- wyager 3y agoThe final movie was by far the worst in the franchise. They completely abandoned a lot of the attention to detail and carefully managed suspension of disbelief that characterized the first movie. Turns out they fired/didn't hire the guy who wrote the first 3, which explains why number 4 was basically just a generic lowbrow super-hero movie with none of the sauce of the others.
- klyrs 3y ago> which explains why number 4 was basically just a generic lowbrow super-hero movie with none of the sauce of the others. I dunno, I watched the first one and if you slept through the roughly 30 seconds of plot exposition it was just a guy murdering everybody he set eyes on (and probably some that he didn't even bother to look at). At least with lowbrow superhero movies there's at least a minute of heavy-handed moralizing per hour.
- wyager 3y agoYeah, but the murdering was: * Well motivated * Tightly scripted and shot * Had a lot of attention to mechanics, and attention to detail where it was important
- AmVess 3y agoThe bulletproof suits were willy, but not as silly as him falling 5 floors and not getting killed.
- chillycurve 3y agoOf course, I didn't like this move either. The magic is that John is human, and they sully that notion by making him survive a 5-story fall.
- BiteCode_dev 3y agoYes, and that really hurt the audience more than John Wick. After that, they were no stakes anymore, because you knew anything could go and it would not matter. Case in point: in the first (second?) movie, he get stabbed once, and it changes the whole rhythm of the film. You are thinking "oh shit, now everything he does will have to be performed with this wound". And the story matches that, his moves are not the same. He has to overcome this problem, and there is a lot of suffering. It makes you care such much about him. In the latest one, he gets hit by 3 cars and you go "meh". I did enjoy JW4, but not remotely as much as the first one, where we were counting bullets and it matched the known gun capacity. Now it's just another dumb action block buster, albeit a superb one. It's the tragedy of the common because most viewers will be happy with the DBZ effect taking over. So it's a commercial success. But it has lost part of what made the concept special. People will remember the feeling of seeing JW1 forever, it set a standard. We compare things to it in the same way we compared things to the Terminator, Alien or the Matrix (twice Keanu? Really?). It created its own category. JW4 will just fade away.
- gamblor956 3y agoHe gets injured repeatedly, badly, in the 4th movie and it absolutely affects how he fights over the course of the movie. It's one of the best parts about the series: the protagonist isn't invincible, he's just very good. But when he gets hurt, he actually gets hurt and needs to recover from those injuries (or take drugs to cover the pain). Edit: it seems a lot of people commenting on the invincibility of John Wick did not actually watch the 4th movie. Spoiler alert: by the final showdown, he's barely conscious and keeps going despite his accumulated injuries solely due to sheer force of will, and ultimately dies of his injuries.
- exabrial 3y agook so why not make a bulletproof helmet and ski mask? Look I'm not watching these because of realism... I'm here for bad Keanu Reeves delivery but mindless martial art mayhem.
- chillycurve 3y agoThey do eventually send helmeted foes that have to be creatively dispatched at the end of three and throughout 4.
- belval 3y agoThat's pretty much what the high table task force is wearing in the 3rd movie and the solution is to use bigger guns.
- david927 3y agoI always thought the John Wick character represented death itself.
- jstarfish 3y agoThat's a very interesting lens to view the series through. Haven't seen the newest one yet but I'd have suggested he is Karma incarnate. He has the Midas touch-- everyone around him dies. Everything he touches dies. Yet he persists as an unstoppable force of nature, bringing death and destruction wherever he goes-- including to his loved ones. As punishment for his previous life as a hitman, he's locked into this weird purgatory where everything he cares about is systematically taken from him at every opportunity (from his actual family to his "work family," his cherished car and even his very identity). What I've seen of the series so far has him constantly on the run. You can't outrun your past forever.
- freitzkriesler2 3y agoI don't care about realism, I just want Neo Wick to go pew pew pew with his flat lined emotional expressions, dodging bullets while taking revenge for his dead dog with what seems 5 movies ago.
- forferdet 3y agoI've never had an issue with the suit, the lack of headshots on the other hand....
- mikeryan 3y agoI’ve not seen the most recent John Wick but I’m just going to point out that “gun-fu” is a long standing film trope and not a “new martial art” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_fu https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_fu
- croes 3y agoMy main problem with the later parts is, that in the first it was some kind of super killer versus normal but later with the whole mythology it became just a different kind of super hero movie with super villains and bullet proof cloths. The first part had some part of reality left just like the first Matrix movie where the fights felt more real because the fighters hit each other instead of the standard Kung Fu movie dodging until the deadly blow. The movies are still fun to watch because of great choreography but to me it doesn't have the same impact like the first. It shifted from "could happen somewhere now" to "happens in a parallel reality"
- croes 3y agoP.S. For me they made the same mistakes with Kingsmen. Of course they need a substitute for the surprise factor that most first installments have, like Pirates of the Caribbean or Nobody with Bob Odenkirk
- motohagiography 3y agoThey make them in Toronto as well: https://garrisonbespoke.com/custom-suits/bespoke-bulletproof-suits https://garrisonbespoke.com/custom-suits/bespoke-bulletproof... While I haven't used Garrison personally, owing to some personal loyalty to another century old family one here, most of the other people I know who get suits made here use them, and I have watched their story evolve. By adaptating and actually growing their own market, I think they have preserved the traditions of their craft better than anyone else, by keeping them viable while maintaining their standards. The armour is a gimmick to me, as the whole symbology of a suit is that it represents establishment membership where other than the occasaional regicide, getting shot just isn't a thing - unless you are a politician or some other kind of criminal with airs.
- generalizations 3y agoSince they don't mention any actual specifics on the class of protection afforded by the body armor, it definitely looks like a gimmick to me.
- ihateyouall123 3y agoTech people talking about movies sure are the worst.
- MattPalmer1086 3y agoNo no, tech people talking about tech people talking about movies are the worst.
- ihateyouall123 3y agoNo no no, tech people talking to tech people talking about movies are cunts
- MisterBastahrd 3y agoLike... Chip Zdarsky wrote a Superman who forgot that Kryptonians have pressure points even though he's used them in combat repeatedly on Kryptonians in recent years while simultaneously having Batman survive a fall from orbit while riding a box to save the day. Plot armor is truly the most unbeatable superpower.
- gregorymichael 3y agoThe John Wick sequels lack the restraint that made the original so enjoyable.
- Scalene2 3y agoThis is pretty much what Dune did.
- fwlr 3y agoI was also in favour of the bulletproof suits. The progression in the John Wick series is actually extremely well-done: in JW1 he outclasses his opponents in every metric except numbers; in JW2 he meets several opponents whose hand-to-hand prowess equals his own and he struggles when the plot denies him his guns - but his shooting prowess remains an advantage throughout. In JW3 a higher class of mooks are added to the mix, who are clumsy in their heavy armor but immune to most small arms fire. They require close-up kill shots or less practical weapons like slow-reloading shotguns to dispatch. Wick’s first encounter with these armored soldiers is actually film-making genius: https://youtu.be/e7VegkzbJOY https://youtu.be/e7VegkzbJOY , it plays out like a usual scene where he guns down the mooks with ease… and right as the viewer feels like the scene is about to end, one of the shot-down soldiers coughs and simply gets back up, startling John, and we see him have to empty entire mags into each opponent to actually kill them. JW4 ups the ante once again, giving most mooks the same kind of bulletproof suit that John has. The result is that in many fights, gunshots are mostly long-range punches that have to be combined with regular punches and other martial arts to overpower the opponent thoroughly enough that a coup-de-grace headshot can be delivered. There is an absolutely valid criticism of the JW series, though, and that is the falls. Particularly the five story fall at the end of JW3, and there’s at least one and maybe two in JW4 that egregiously break suspension of disbelief. It’s a clumsy mis-step in terms of film-making craft, as big falls are the gold standard of final death in movies. It even hurts a pivotal scene in JW4 where a mid-boss dies by falling two stories directly onto his head - when I saw it in theaters, I could unfortunately sense the audience expecting the mid-boss to get back up like John Wick would have. Because of the non-lethal fall in JW3, they didn’t really buy that this boss had actually died. Another valid criticism, specifically for JW4 alone, is that it has one scene which too-shamelessly tries to recapture the magic of the club shootout moment where Wick is backlit by the visualization, 3:40 here in the original https://youtu.be/0L9SzBANF0w https://youtu.be/0L9SzBANF0w and 0:50 here in JW4 https://youtu.be/iEyNlN9AGLE https://youtu.be/iEyNlN9AGLE. It also tries to re-use the club scene music, but I think it succeeds here just on the raw awesomeness of doing a full 3-minute one-take Hotline Miami reference https://youtu.be/LdWdPykQhSQ https://youtu.be/LdWdPykQhSQ.
- chillycurve 3y agoExcellent points. > It even hurts a pivotal scene in JW4 where a mid-boss dies by falling two stories directly onto his head - when I saw it in theaters, I could unfortunately sense the audience expecting the mid-boss to get back up like John Wick. Because of the non-lethal fall in JW3, they didn’t really buy that this boss had actually died. Especially when JW took a similar fall only a few moments earlier and gets right back up.
- korse 3y agoFYI, there is a bit of truth to these. https://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/02/01/bogota.bulletproof.tailor/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/02/01/bogota.bulletp... The guy/company making these has done pretty well in the intervening years and has a pretty nice website now too. https://miguelcaballero.com/ https://miguelcaballero.com/