The ever-expanding John Wick franchise has been blowing minds for over seven years now, and it's showing no sign of slowing. Among the many accomplishments of the franchise is one of the best approaches to worldbuilding in an action series to date, one that other films could learn a lot from.

John Wick is three movies in with another mainline entry along the way and multiple spin-offs set to premiere in the near future. What was once a very simple mid-budget action smash hit has swiftly become one of the most popular film series in the world, all thanks to its careful introduction into the intricate underworld of The High Table.

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The brilliance of the first John Wick film comes in the way it reveals its world, by thrusting the audience in and unveiling detail over time. John Wick is a perfect example of the classic screenwriting lesson; show, don't tell. Exposition is kept to a bare minimum in the franchise, everything the series feels the need to teach is taught first hand. The first movie plays a simple trick, opening with Wick having already retired and living a quiet life alone. After the break-in that sends John on his rampage, the audience learns exactly who The Baba Yaga is through the reactions of every other character. When Wick decides to come out of retirement, he takes a sledgehammer to a spot in his basement, unearthing a handgun and a stack of gold coins. That scene is without explanation, at first, but rather than having someone talk up their significance, the audience is shown everything they need to see. Through incredibly sparse dialogue, the details become clear.

John Wick and his beagle

Consider the concepts that are necessary to understand to fully follow the events of John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum. The High Table and its rules, the Continental and its importance, the ancient order of assassins, John Wick's past, multiple crime syndicates, The Bowery King and his army, and the crime Wick committed that put him on the run. All these details are introduced at breakneck speeds throughout the franchise, and most of them are simply demonstrated to the audience. The High Table's power is communicated through their exercising of it, the Continental's rules are made clear when people bend or break them and suffer the consequences, the Bowery King's network makes themselves known, and so on.

Minimal detail is necessary to bring these concepts across, the audience gathers the key truths, even if they don't know every detail. The history of this underground society of hired killers is still largely obscured, but what information is present gives a complete enough depiction to understand and often predict their actions. Wick's past still holds huge blank spots, but what fans do know of him sells his legend while keeping the mystery alive. The John Wick franchise plays a delicate game, revealing only what it needs to keep the audience engaged, while always leaving enough to the imagination to keep expanding. In the final moments of Chapter 2, when Winston declares Wick "excommunicado," and the sheer scale of the world suddenly expands exponentially as seemingly every human being in sight demonstrates their involvement, it builds mythology like no exposition dump could ever accomplish.

In many ways, John Wick does exposition in exactly the opposite way of the default amongst its peers. Look to Harry Potter or Star Wars, works that introduce the audience to new concepts with their own complex rules and mythos by centering around a character who, like the audience, is finding out for the first time. John Wick is one of the most connected and important fixtures of his world, he needs nothing explained to him, so the audience is thrust forward as if they're as familiar as he is. The filmmakers trust the audience to pick up the details and choose their own level of investment. Viewers are free to hang off every word, crafting intricate theories and picking their own favorite interpretation of hidden elements, or to simply sit back and enjoy the action with only cursory knowledge of everyone's deeper backstory.

john wick speaks with the ballet leader

John Wick is far from the only franchise with deep mythology, and its example could stand as a monument to clever storytelling across the genre. Wick is already the new standard for action, perhaps it could also inform mythology in cinema. Nearly every Marvel movie features a scene in the second act that blatantly serves no purpose other than to explain the narrative. Imagine an MCU blockbuster that discarded the tired origin story tropes and simply threw audiences in with confidence. By showing off the world's rules, laying out only what's necessary, leaving plenty to the imagination, and starting from a place of knowledge rather than from ignorance, action cinema could be made smarter, quicker, and more engaging.

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