I don't think what I said could even be argued against. (Aside from the slow beginning/first hour, I suppose.) There were so many bloodless deaths throughout, that it didn't do the action scenes any favors. John Wick took the 'most punishment' in this movie. But reacted like nothing happened after nearly every fight. The plot *is* much simpler in the first two movies by far. The movie has nice expensive looking shots/cinematography. (Like the dancing scene that has the dancers not act like human beings and keep dancing in the middle of a gun/axe fight.) It's the longest movie. Etc etc.
I don't know how you could call the beginning slow considering it takes all of a minute or two before John Wick is on horseback shooting people and then it pauses to set up the plot and stakes before launching into an extended action scene that in any other movie would've been the climactic action scene of an entire movie. Bloodless is a weird complaint considering 1: John Wick is not exactly a bloodbath franchise because of how quick the kills are anyway, 2: there is plenty of blood like on the drum in Osaka and 3: the lack of over the top blood splatter makes it more effective in showing how good the people are at killing people. It's not Kill Bill. John Wick has always been something of a supernatural force of nature - his nickname is literally Baba Yaga - but every John Wick movie has him basically barely standing by the end of it and this one was no exception. He didn't feel superheroic at all, there were multiple points in the movie where he actually had to be bailed out.
The plot isn't any more or less simple than the other movies. The movies are not exactly movies you watch for plot or character development, though there is certainly that to be found if you look for it. The first movie's plot is the guy getting vengeance on a shit kid who killed his dog. The second movie's plot is John having to fulfil a blood pact and being fucked over. The third movie is him trying to erase an open bounty on him. The fourth is the consequences of everything he's done since the first movie, he's still hunted because if he isn't stopped then the High Table runs the risk of being taken out. He's a man on the run because he has no safe haven and even fewer allies. It's hardly bloated unless you consider runtime as an exclusive metric for bloat. Everything in the movie makes sense and flows.
The cinematography isn't 'expensive' looking, it's just well shot and creatively lit to boot. It's a movie that constantly one ups itself in terms of spectacle and setpiece and every single action scene in the movie would've been the climactic action scene of any other movie. The staircase scene is incredible but so too is what came immediately before it. If you're going to comment on people not reacting to the violence then maybe you should watch the other movies and how no one reacts to Keanu and Common shooting at each other in the middle of New York's subway or how no one reacts when John Wick kills a dude in Grand Central Station or how in the first movie Jimmy the cop's only response to seeing John covered in blood is "You working again?". This is a franchise where everyone is either a ridiculously skilled killer for hire or else so used to seeing bodies dropping that it doesn't bother them. You either buy into that or you don't.
The movie doesn't try to do the same thing as the third, the bounty from the third movie was never erased because he went against the mission given to him. And then the first thing he does in 4 puts an even bigger target on him because of it. The bounty doesn't even come into play until the last part which has less to do with him being excommunicado and more to do with the villain being an arrogant coward shit. The movie doesn't 'repeat' so much as 'homage' and raise the stakes and choreography to boot. It takes everything that worked from the past three movies and improves on them in every respect. And if anecdotes are metrics for things then no one in my pretty packed theater opening day checked their phone and actively applauded multiple scenes.
A movie's length is not a mark of quality one way or the other. A great movie can be three hours long and a bad movie can be eighty minutes. The opposite is also true. It's a matter of pacing and presentation and a bunch of other factors. John Wick 4 is tightly paced and still delivers a satisfying narrative in a movie you don't really watch for the narrative.
As for the revenge/catharsis thing that's up to the individual but I felt much more satisfied watching the ending of this one than I did the first one.
How exactly would you rate the movies? (And how would you defend the boring/made to look stupid in every scene that he's in, villain.)
Numerically? On a five point scale:
JW1: 3
JW2: 4
JW3: 4
JW4: 5
On a ranking list I go 4 > 2 > 3 > 1
As for the villain, I didn't see him as boring or made to look stupid at all. Because he wasn't. He is the physical representation of the entity we've heard about for three movies now: The High Table. He acts with their blessing and has the single mission of stopping John Wick even though he is completely out of his element he acts with the authority and swagger of someone who believes himself to be more important than he is. He doesn't actually do anything himself but wants to take credit for it, he hires people to do everything but still wants to be seen as the man responsible. He's slimy and smarmy and arrogant and he's unlike anything John has faced before because he's so used to people who are on his level skill-wise or else willing to also get their hands dirty. I didn't find him boring at all, he was so utterly hateable in the very first scene he was in and it was satisfying to watch him unravel over the course of the movie as he truly came to understand that John Wick really is that motherfucker.
