This past week, John Wick: Chapter Two released a teaser image of Keanu as Wick getting measured, presumably for a casket as he goes off on some suicide mission against heavily-armed swarthy drug lords. That’s all well and good, but there are lots of movies about hardass loners shooting Albanian gangsters in the face. The twist with John Wick was that he was doing it all over a dog. People could relate to that. It was much easier to imagine being driven to murder over the loss of a beloved pet than, say, the kidnapping of Maggie Grace. Thus, the first John Wick 2 teaser image raised the question, “what about dogs?”
As I wrote in This Week In Movie Posters:
For the next poster, I’d like to see a furious Keanu standing over a dog-shaped coffin. Or even just the dog coffin alone, so you just have to imagine how pissed John Wick is going to be. Or, since it’s a sequel, maybe there should be two dead dogs. There’s always more in sequels. “Vengeance? They double-dog dared him!”
Well, today the official John Wick: Chapter Two Twitter account tweeted out the above image, and it looks like they did me one better. Instead of a dead dog driving John Wick to vengeance, we’ve got John Wick and his new dog sidekick out to avenge violence against their dog brothers. Will he be a pit bull voiced by Pitbull, perhaps, as in our award-winning White House Down storyboards?
In any case, I like the idea. Instead of a lone John Wick out for murder, now he’s got a new dog partner. Who would be more pissed about dog murder than a fellow dog? And one who’s all buff at that, like the John Cena of dogs. I’d like to think Keanu’s new partner combines the body of John Cena with the growl of DMX. Could John Wick 2 be John Wick meets 12 Rounds with a canine twist? Will they argue over who gets to drive? Which one of them is too old for this sh*t? I also want to believe there’s a scene where someone’s reading the dog’s resume aloud while he sits there looking determined. “Graduated top of your class from obedience school, but it says here you got shooed out of special forces for biting your commanding officer. Are you a bad doggie, Mr. Cujo?”
I don’t want to speculate too much based on a single image, but I’m already calling this the best dog-man action team up of 2017.
Sidenote: The Drop was better than John Wick. Please don’t @ me.
Vince Mancini is a writer, comedian, and podcaster. A graduate of Columbia’s non-fiction MFA program, his work has appeared on FilmDrunk, the UPROXX network, the Portland Mercury, the East Bay Express, and all over his mom’s refrigerator. Fan FilmDrunk on Facebook, find the latest movie reviews here.