Vin Diesel came under some heavy fire when he decided to compare himself to J.R.R. Tolkien and embrace comparisons between Fast & Furious and The Lord of the Rings, but it doesn’t seem quite so far-fetched when John Wick director Chad Stahelski draws the exact same parallels.
While The Fast Saga has been teetering on the brink of being a full-blown superhero series for years now, it isn’t quite a sweeping fantasy fable in the same way as Peter Jackson’s legendary trilogy. On the other hand, Keanu Reeves’ sharp-suited assassin is embedded in an underworld ripe with mythological inspirations and its own inbuilt lore, which makes it a lot easier to join the dots between the Continental and Middle-earth.
In fact, during an interview with Rolling Stone where he was reflecting on the legacy left behind by the incomparable Lance Reddick, Stahelski explained why he doesn’t find John Wick to be too dissimilar from The Lord of the Rings, and it makes a great deal more sense than it reasonably should.
“Lance’s DNA is all over this film. You go back ten years, and I’m going to pitch to you what the pitch was back then: “So, it’s about a retired assassin who’s gotten married, his wife dies of natural causes, he gets pulled back in because somebody killed his puppy, and he’s going to shoot 84 people in the head. And on top of that, I’m going to put this weird Greek mythology on it, so it’s going to be like a modern-day Lord of the Rings.” We pretty much got turned away everywhere. We finally had to do it independently, and we started casting.
Keanu was the one that hired myself. I believe Lance was probably the first cast member we got. Me and Dave Leitch were big fans of his from The Wire and we also knew about him from video games. We sit Lance down and we give him the pitch: “OK, we’re calling your character Charon. He’s gonna be the guardian of this Underworld, he’ll have this whole lair, and you’re gonna do this.” Lance takes off his glasses, puts them back on, and says, “Great. Super. Maybe he’ll have an African accent and do this and that?” He immediately got it.”
One of the greatest things about John Wick is that even though every single character across the four films treats everything with the utmost seriousness and solemnity, it’s an exaggerated world packed full of moments that simply don’t happen in the real world. By its broadest definition that clearly makes it a fantasy universe, even if we haven’t quite reached magic and mysticism just yet.
