John Wick's Success Shows That We're Still Suckers For The Iliad

Hello friends.

Spring blossoms in the UK. As I write this, I can hear the chirruping of a pair of blue tits in the garden. 

I feel one season out of sync this year. The usually hibernatorial Winter saw a flowering of new opportunities. I find myself stepping into an early Summer: a time of exploration, play, and, of course, enchantment. 

On to the main event…

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By my calculations, John Wick’s nunchucks have reduced the midriffs of 10 men to origami by the time he encounters Caine, Donnie Yen’s blind, katana-wielding assassin in the latest instalment of the John Wick franchise. 

It is practically unheard of for John Wick to be matched by any single fighter. Taking down ‘the Baba Yaga’ tends to be a numbers game, an attritional slog that relies on possessing sufficient goons, weapons, and vehicles to deploy against Keanu’s bearded, suited, machine-gun-wielding protagonist. 

With Caine, however, something feels different. 

He has been granted a lengthy, cinematic introduction. We have just seen him knock (or, more accurately, slice) the stuffing out of a procession of hapless goons. He has even been allowed a backstory and, whisper it quietly, character motivation, the rarest of things for supporting characters in this unapologetically action-based franchise.

As the pair square up, Caine seems calm, composed. Wick is wary and hesitant. 

A lengthy fight ensues.

Wick repeatedly appears to be on the back foot. If it wasn’t for Caine’s blindness, you sense he would be mincemeat (Wicksmeat?). Eventually, the fight ends in a score draw after the unwelcome intrusion of an interested party. 

It appears that John Wick has met his match. 

Never one to embrace subtlety, the John Wick saga wears its mythological elements on its sleeve.

A fight scene in the second instalment takes place under the shadow of a giant statue of Hercules. Charon, the late Lance Reddick’s character, is named after Hades’ ferryman. Director Chad Stahelski has outright stated that he sees John Wick as an Odyssean figure.

Titillating though these references may be to mythology nerds, they aren’t alone sufficient to represent much beyond the interests of the filmmakers. 

Dig a bit deeper, however, and it’s apparent that the John Wick franchise's heart, body, and soul are indebted to a fundamentally Homeric interpretation of the world.

The aforementioned Wick vs Caine showdown is instructive. The premise - that a previously unrivalled Alpha has carved through a series of inconsequential Betas before finally meeting a similarly talented Alpha in single combat - reoccurs time and time again in The Iliad.1

These blockbuster encounters are premised on the idea that there exists an assortment of ‘Heroes’: characters who are unashamedly, unreservedly superior to the ordinary warriors who surround them. 

As Peter Green writes in his excellent translation of The Iliad:

“In Works and Days (143–73), Hesiod describes the last two ages before his own in mythic terms, as an “age of bronze” (150–51) and an “age of mortal heroes, called demigods” (159). The end of this last, the era preceding his own, he specifically correlates with the THEBAN and TROJAN WARS. The men of it were superhuman in that they had divine blood in their ancestry, and they thus far outclassed, both physically and in prowess, the men of his own “iron age”;yet they nevertheless remained mortal, and all perished in “vile war and grim battle” (161). Their glory was their strain of divinity and the warrior code that they upheld…their tragedy was that they could not escape death.”

These legendary warriors are not heroic in the modern sense. Their prestige derives from ability, not altruism; dominance, not diplomacy. There are no prizes for participation upon the blood-stained sands of Troy.

For this reason, the outcome of conflict between Heroes and lowly footsoldiers is preordained. When Achilles meets some rookie Trojan butcher’s apprentice, it’s never in doubt which one of them will end up with a sword through the belly. When John Wick comes across Goon #04, you know that Goon #04 will end up with a bullet to the skull, a tomahawk to the chest, or a nunchuck to the unmentionables. 

The real tension arrives both from the internal conflicts of our Heroes and the rare occasions when they face each other. 

Far from being a relic of a long-forgotten past, the Homeric conception of a Hero remains weaved into our cultural tapestry. As the resounding success of John Wick Chapter 4 tells us, stories involving uniquely talented individuals who effortlessly overcome the common man really resonate with us.

When it comes to our stories, we are unashamedly elitist. We remain enthralled by the idea of a Homeric Hero, a character operating on a different plane of ability.

John Wick, Top Gun’s Maverick, pretty much any superhero, The Matrix’s Neo, James Bond, and Sherlock Holmes are all examples of characters whose excellence and ability render them effortlessly superior to the common man.

In television, the age of the antihero can be reframed as a succession of stories about aspiring Heroes who glide with demonic authority over the hapless individuals who oppose them until, usually, being undone either by their fatal flaw (Walter White) or by coming up against another, superior, Hero (Gus Fring).

Cast in this light, our propensity for these stories takes a decidedly masochist turn. Who are our surrogates in Marvel films? Is it the divinely powered, perfectly sculpted, wisecracking superheroes? Or is it the helpless civilians who are buffeted by forces outside of their comprehension and whose survival is contingent entirely on the actions of an unaccountable group of superior beings?

So why do we keep telling these stories? Why do Heroes continue to hold such weight?

Returning readers will be unsurprised to hear that I think the answer partly lies in our longing for the transcendent.

In demonstrating levels of excellence that transcend what we are usually capable of, Heroes give us a fleeting glimpse of something beyond ourselves.

In this sense, the Heroes embody a bridge between the Divine and the mortal.

This is explicit in The Iliad, whose Heroes tend to be the progeny of the gods, and implicit in stories such as John Wick & Breaking Bad, which self-consciously lean into their mythologising elements.

As Greg Luti has written, “If you told the audience that John Wick was a descendant of a god, I don’t know how many people would disagree with that.”

By draping characters in mythological imagery and equipping them with godlike excellence, storytellers tap into our primal need to feel like we are engaging with something transcending ourselves.  

That these Heroic stories continue to hold such sway in a notionally secular age is no coincidence. In an era where many of us feel disconnected from anything higher than ourselves in our daily lives, it’s no surprise that we find ourselves turning to our stories to fill the gap.

If the Heroes can touch the gods, then perhaps, just for a moment, we can too.

“I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me. But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars… Seen in the streets of cities, how great they are! If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown!”

— From “Nature”; by Ralph Emerson

I need to read some more Emerson!

The best stories can approximate the visceral experience of life better than cold-blooded analysis ever can.

The path forward lies in consilience: analysis + narrative.

Great essay.

I’m really enjoying

Weekly essays using mythology to explore questions of meaning, beauty and transcendence? Sign me up.

This is from Noah’s recent essay, On Developing a Sense of Destiny:

“Whatever it is, I believe identifying it—that destiny, that thing we were placed here to do in service to others—and then dedicating our lives to it, regardless of the personal cost, is the single most important ingredient to living a life we can rest satisfied with. To do anything less is to set ourselves up in a life that we know, in our heart of hearts, we will be deeply disappointed with.”

I will be taking David Perell’s Write of Passage course over the next five weeks. I’m sure I will see a lot of you there!

That’s everything for today. Have an enchanting week!

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