I heard not long ago that they’re making another John Wick movie, and I found that odd. Not completely odd, seeing that John Wick movies make loads of money — they’re even making spinoffs now. But considering how the fourth movie went, I absolutely don’t know what’s going to happen next, and not in a good way.
The first John Wick movie caught my interest, as did the first Ip Man film. The latter may need some introduction — it’s a movie series about Ip Man, Bruce Lee’s kung fu teacher and master. The movies follow his life story in the loosest possible sense; I doubt Ip Man at any point fought a massively powerful American boxer (played, incidentally, by Mike Tyson), and he certainly didn’t go to America at all. But if you’re vaguely familiar with either or both of these movie series, you’d know what their primary draw is: action and impressively choreographed fight scenes. Loads of them. And they tend to be pretty good.
Movies have stories, though, even really actiony ones, and stories have characters. Every well-written character must have flaws. Flaws are what make them interesting and more human, so to speak. They can be immense and obvious, like with Joffrey Baratheon. Or they can be subtle, like with John Wick and Ip Man. Either way, they help the viewer or reader engage with the material. If characters have no flaws, they’re called a Mary Sue or Gary Stu (it doesn’t matter which, really), and what happens then is that they’re boring. This ties into what makes stories tick: conflict or tension, which lies under everything that happens in a good story. Nobody wants to watch a character that does everything effortlessly, without any risk to themselves or their close ones, and has nothing to lose.
John Wick and Ip Man both come perilously close to being overpowered. For the genre of film they are in, they theoretically are Smary Gtues: they are tremendously competent, both physically and martially. They carve their way through opponents with ease (less lethally, in Ip Man’s case), though they do themselves get hurt. There’s tension even in the fight scenes that way, though not much — you get the sense throughout that they’ll accomplish whatever it is that they set out to do, which is to hurt quite a lot of people, though for different reasons.
They’re very different characters though, and that’s where their personalities (and flaws!) come in. John is stoic and bent on vengeance; Ip Man is mostly amicable and somewhat meek, fighting only when he feels it’s necessary (usually to protect someone). And they both have pretty different attitudes towards their wives. Ip Man even has children, and that complicates who he is further. Both series, I believe, deteriorate in quality as they’ve progressed: John Wick in character, and Ip Man in plot. Some of that might be debatable, especially with the fourth installments of both. But there are going to be some spoilers ahead, so look out.
I thought about these two characters together specifically because of their relationships with their wives. John swears vengeance in his wife’s name, and she dies before the audience can interact with her. As the series goes on she’s somewhat forgotten because of that, though apparently not for John — he always remembers he’s in the mess he’s in because of what he did for her. The line between whether that’s true or not is blurry, because sometimes one gets the sense that John is just lashing out in rage, and the trauma he’s suffered gives him the excuse. He lives from that point on just to survive, and to try to find further meaning in life. He’s lost. But it’s clear that he did indeed love his wife once upon a time, before all the pencils in the ears and the flaming shotguns.
There’s more going on with Ip Man’s wife though. First of all, she’s very much present in the films (except the last one). Though Ip Man clearly loves her and appreciates her, he has trouble showing it throughout the films. This isn’t an uncommon phenomenon in Asian families, and as such it’s nice to see it onscreen, although it gets a little sad. Ip Man’s relationships with her and their two children change as their circumstances change, and it’s only when his wife is diagnosed with illness that he prioritises her and his family more. As he then raises his children in her absence, he feels guilt for his negligence and strives to do better until his own death later. He doesn’t forget that stain on his character, all the way until the end.
I find it interesting that these two characters are united by their incredible fighting prowess but also their inner weaknesses and specifically their relationships with others. There’s even a reading here that contrasts their strengths and machismo with their failures in commitments to family, but perhaps that’s for another day. The takeaway for writers is that there’s always some way to introduce flaws in a character, and you probably should. No matter how powerful they are or need to be plot-wise, there’s always a way. I don’t remember all the action scenes in the film — though I was entertained at the time — but I do remember the broken look on Ip Man’s face when he sees his son again after a long separation, even having been diagnosed with cancer and beaten up several times. And I think that’s worth something.
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