14 DAY TRIAL // As I watched Keanu Reeves as John Wick quickly and efficiently dispatch a huge number of enemies using guns and knives in the movie with the same name, I could not help but think back to one of the video games that defined my childhood in many ways: Max Payne.
The structure of the new movie is different from that of the game but there are scenes, like the night club shootout, that have the structure of a classic level from the first two titles in the series.
The two directors of John Wick, Chad Stahelski and the uncredited David Leitch, have talked about the way their stunt past influenced the movie and how they were aiming to show their appreciation for some classic genre films.
The movie understands the importance of movement and accuracy in a way that is mostly associated with titles in the shooter genre.
But they seem to be unaware of Max Payne and the stylish noir that it brought to the world of video games when it was first introduced, and that’s a shame because I suspect a video game take on John Wick would manage to find an audience and might actually be more interesting than Max Payne 3.
Brazilian color versus drab US cities
Max Payne 3 had great production values and Rockstar clearly put a lot of effort into the story and mechanics, but the move to Brazil meant that the game could no longer draw on the bleakness of New York and lost access to its own mythos.
John Wick is also set in New York and tends to make the main characters the titanic forces dominating the city, with no police or other government presences getting into the way of the assassin who aims to take out the Russian mafia.
On the one hand, Max Payne 3 failed to push the series forward, and on the other, the movie based on the video game also failed to satisfy.
John Wick has managed to attract positive reactions from both critics and the public and it would make sense for a video game developer to license the concept and create an experience around its mythology.
The noir shooter genre is not seeing much action at the moment and it would be great to play some of Wick’s missions before he retired in order to marry or even explore the past of Perkins or Winston.
