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skyhooks-notebook · 6 years ago

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My John Wick/Jason Bourne movie which will never be made

(Bourne, of course, is a brutally disillusioned idealist. He had no idea he was signing away his soul. Wick likely sold his soul with his eyes wide open, though he probably only understood the ultimate cost later on - a naive pragmatist.)

I don’t post much at all, but here is a thing that happened on my computer. I was thinking about how John Wick and Jason Bourne could be brought together. My thoughts became long, and I started writing it down. This isn’t a story, just a sketch of how I think such a movie could be made. It’s not really edited either, this is all off-the-cuff.

[I only know what’s in the movies. I don’t know other canon from either ‘verse.]

So, if I were making a movie…

The universes of John Wick and Jason Bourne have very different styles, creating a problem.

Problem: - Bourne lives in a Universe where government is large, powerful, knowledgeable and nearly competent. - Wick lives in a Universe where a vast and elaborate criminal underworld exists, where we’ve never seen those major criminal figures worry about law enforcement or government.

The discrepancy must be resolved.

Simple.

Jason Bourne has never dealt with crime. Everything has been political and confined to the intelligence community.

Wick has never dealt with politics or the intelligence community.

So.

We must assume that the intelligence community is perfectly happy to leave common crime in the hands of law enforcement.

- Law enforcement has an unwritten and fatalistic attitude that there will always be some level of crime no matter what you do because it’s innate to human nature. And if you’re going to have crime, it might as well be organized. Let the strongest and most dangerous criminals accumulate power and influence, because they will go a long way to controlling the stupid, the excessive and the disruptive crooks. Better to have one major weapons trafficker controlling the traffic than have a thousand slightly smaller and more disruptive dealers completely out of control. (You can strongly hint that there’s an uneasy, unwritten and largely unspoken agreement between crime and law enforcement, and that it’s often a two-way street.) And if the big crime gets too big, it’s easier to knock it back down to “acceptable” levels because you’ve got bigger targets, which are easier to hit and which make a large and impressive splash across the front page when you throw RICO charges at them.

Plus it would also illustrate that Wickian Law Enforcement at its highest levels is just as dirty, amoral and underhanded as the Bournite Intelligence community.

- So, with a little work and willing suspension of disbelief (which wouldn’t be hard, because who wouldn’t want to see Wick and Bourne on the same screen provided it’s done with at least half an ass), it’s possible to bring the two Universes together.

- We start with Bourne. Someone else, like an hard ass, experienced reporter, is snooping into the government’s history of creating conditioned assassins. Maybe because a public face, like a former intelligence director, has left the shade to become a politician. And many strongly suspect that he’s dirty as fuck, but our snoopy reporter is just figuring out how deep the rabbit hole goes. Our politician was, of course, instrumental in developing programs like Treadstone, Blackbriar, et al.

- The Snoop finds out, one way or another, that one of the earliest failures of these programs was an “asset” who experienced a psychological break, went “off the res”, starting killing people and still turns up now and then to kill more people. To our Snoop, it appears that the government has created an uncontrollable monster who is still on the loose and possibly lurking right outside the White House, dear reader, are you scared now?

- The story, scanty, incorrect and harshly spun, gets printed as above. A few names are named, but mostly dead people (and maybe someone who has already been publicly discredited.) Our politician is not named because our Snoop doesn’t yet have absolute proof linking Mr. Politician to the Treadstone/Blackbriar/etc. machine.

- The evidence still exists. Witnesses still live, in numbers too great to be cleanly eliminated.

- Mr. Politician is sweating bullets.

- The Snoop isn’t done. He wants to find Bourne so he can say, “Here’s your monster, where’s my Pulitzer?” As investigation continues, the story becomes clearer to the Snoop, and the monster starts to look like little less monstrous and little more victimized. Which is an even better story.

- Now Mr. Politician is not only worried that he will be named, he’s worried that if Snoop makes contact with Bourne, or simply as a consequence of Snoop stirring the shit, Bourne will find out who our Politician is and how complicit he was in the program that destroyed David Webb. Mr. Pol knows this is likely to be a death sentence.

- It has become obvious to everyone who isn’t deeply deluded that Jason Bourne is practically indestructible and that sending more valuable and increasingly scarce ‘assets’ against him is just going to result in the loss of those assets. Agents available may be trained and conditioned to within an inch of their lives, but Bourne’s psychological break caused him to exceed his limits, training and conditioning in a way Black Ops programs haven’t been able to replicate. Those with a pragmatic attitude believe that they have no agent who can measure up to Bourne. Politician believes this as well.

- But Mr. Politician knows some things that the intelligence community has never concerned itself with. In his many years of government service, Mr. Pol was also involved with Law Enforcement at various times. Maybe he did a stint with the effa-bee-eye. Whatever. He knows about the Criminal Underworld, he knows that to maintain the ugly equilibrium, the Underworld may be influenced to comply with certain requests. And he knows a name. John Wick.

- Mr. Politician is also savvy about recent developments in the Underworld. He’s got a friend who’s still in the business of monitoring organized crime and keeping tabs on what’s going on down there. Mr. Pol has listened to recent stories with fascination because of certain similarities to a well known government failure who has haunted his dreams for decades. It has become a fact in Mr. Pol’s mind that the CIA will never be able to take down Bourne, but maybe there’s another way.

- Mr. Politician approaches a major Crime Lord and tells him point blank to activate John Wick by any means necessary and set him on the trail of one Jason Bourne. If Wick can’t be activated, Crime Lord will receive his own personal set of extensive criminal and RICO charges, delivered to his doorstep by the entire FBI

- Crime Lord knows if he gets charged, he probably won’t survive because other crime lords are going to want to make sure he doesn’t talk - about them. Also, his family will be endangered no matter which way the sword swings; either the FBI will be targeting them or his fellow criminals will be.

- Crime Lord knows John Wick. They’re old friends. Crime Lord feels a bit conflicted about it, but his first loyalties are to his family and his own hide. So he swallows his fondness for John Wick and commits falsehood, deception, a calling in of favors, maybe a little blackmail and the old Rock-And-A-Hard-Fuck-You-Up-Place on Wick. An elaborate, manipulative lie, that sets a misinformed John Wick on the trail of a man potentially as dangerous as himself.

- Now, we’ve got Jason Bourne being hunted by the Snoop, which has him on alert. We have John Wick hunting Bourne because he believes, once again, that he has no choice.

- We also have a Jason Bourne who is somewhat confounded. We need the scene where Bourne finds out, before contact ever takes place, that someone has taken out a contract on him with an Underworld assassin. Bourne doesn’t know much more about the Criminal Underworld than Joe Schmoe from Kokomo, just what he’s seen in the news and largely ignored, because it never had anything to do with him. Even in all that training years and years ago, there was this gap, because organized crime wasn’t the CIA’s beat. Maybe at first, Bourne even assumes that this Wick character isn’t a threat because he’s just a murderer, a thug, and not a highly trained government operative like himself.

- So in a riveting scene where Bourne and Wick first come into contact, we see Bourne - under the influence of his ignorant assumption - nearly getting killed by Wick and making an extremely narrow escape by use of desperate measures. We also have Mr. Wick limping away, suitably impressed with the skills of his opponent.

- Now we have that stretch of the story where Wick is on the hunt, Bourne is on the run and Bourne is trying to uncover any information he can find about this assassin. Wick doesn’t research much, though, because that’s not how he works. Bourne is a machine; the gears must grind. Wick is a force of nature, like a tornado; most of the info he gets he just picks up along the way, either paying for it or having it given to him by friends.

- Bourne discovers that Wick had a military past, Special Forces, maybe he was fucked over by the military/government in his own way. Or Bourne sees it that way. Bourne finds out about Helen and her death, and maybe not the whole story, but quite a bit about how John cut through a small army of Russian mob mooks for vengeance. He identifies with Wick’s grief and anger. He sees something of himself in John Wick. He sympathizes with the devil.

- John hasn’t done the heavy research. He understands that Bourne is dangerous, perhaps more dangerous than anyone he’s ever met. He consolidates his resources and finds someone else to do his research. He is awaiting a report on Jason Bourne when…

- Bourne stops running, goes to confront Wick and ends up trying to explain, while fighting of course, what he knows about the Dirty Politician and the Crime Lord who has called John out of his troubled retirement yet again, and how Wick has been used and betrayed (this time) until he says something that causes Wick to call truce long enough to hear it all.

- Bourne can see the beginning of a way to solve the whole mess. After some persuasion, Wick is on board and has some ideas of his own.

- Now we’ve got our boys on the same side and it’s only left to decide whether the war will be conventional or nuclear.

- There are two victories we need to see. We must see the destruction of Mr. Politician and Mr. Crime Lord.

- You might-could send Bourne, who doesn’t really give a shit about the covenants and conventions of the criminal world, to the Continental - probably breaking in, instead of checking in. Luring the Crime Lord out into the open, perhaps on the intimation that Mr. Politician is about to take up backstabbing. Draw the Crime Lord out to confront the Politician. Bourne’s plan, reluctantly agreed to by Wick, is to draw the Politician and the Crime Lord together, get evidence and even a full recording of the meeting and expose them both to the world.

Or course, this backfires. Bourne finds himself in a position where he has to kill either Crime Lord or Mr. Politician in self-defense. Probably the Crime Lord.

- It would also be immensely satisfying to see Wick take out the dirty politician with a head shot. Bourne would, of course, be stoically pissed about it all, but it also illustrates the difference. Bourne is willing to let even unrepentant bastards live because he’s tired of having blood on his hands. Wick doesn’t let anybody live who’s fucked him over. Bourne is still conflicted about who and what he is. Wick has come to terms with himself. Bourne believes in atonement. Wick believes in damnation. Bourne still cares. Wick doesn’t give a fuck. Bourne still dreams of inner peace. Wick would settle for a little peace and quiet, would you motherfuckers just leave me the fuck alone already. Get off my lawn. And stop teasing my dog, you bastards.

- You must also show Wick taking an active role in planning, because if Bourne does all of it and says here’s what we’re going to do, then 1) he’s just using Wick as a tool or weapon, instead of treating him like a person and an equal and 2) Wick once again is being controlled by someone else instead of doing what he does best, which is take matters into his own hands (shooting Santino may have looked like a misstep, but who in the audience didn’t love it?)

- I’ve forgotten our Snoop reporter.

We could let Bourne track him down, in which case he will almost certainly die, because going by canon everybody who sympathizes with Jason Bourne must die.

We could let Wick find him, in which case he probably has a much better chance of surviving to publish his Pulitzer Prize winning story provided he’s not armed when he meets Mr. Wick. Hell, Wick could give him a coin, which could buy him entrance and protection at the Continental (even the government doesn’t want to mess with that bunch - like stirring a hornet’s nest with a stick; you might survive, but it will be excruciatingly painful and you’ll look like an idiot the whole time with all the screaming and flailing and jumping around in a panic.)

John Wick’s name will not appear in the story. Only a vaguely defined “other sources”.

- And after all is said and done, Bourne and Wick part company, with mutual respect and recognition. Though they really don’t like each other very much.

So that’s my John Wick/Jason Bourne movie which will never be made. But I had fun.

P.S. Please excuse crappy photoshop, I just wanted something there.

#john wick #jason bourne #matt damon #keanu reeves #movies that will never be made

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skyhooks-notebook · 6 years ago

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Encounter

John Wick fanfiction

The wound in his side was still leaking blood. His legs had begun to feel weak and the unnamed dog was beginning to whine, trotting as closely to him as possible. He was in danger of being tripped, but he hadn’t the energy to shove the dog away a foot or two and still watch the crowds of New York for potential threats. The sun was going down, the evening growing colder, he was tired and losing blood, and he was a target.

As his eyes flicked from one stranger to another, assessing them each in a glance, he forced himself to assess his situation. His home was gone, his car was a wreck and in another man’s keeping, his professional connections were dated and largely useless in current circumstances and he was cut off from the resources of the Continental network. Every friend was now an enemy or at least a suddenly disinterested third party, likely unwilling to get involved in his sudden war. He didn’t have much cash on him, a credit card it would be dicey to use, a scavenged weapon and not much ammo. In a brutally honest thought, he admitted he was also hindered by the dog, but he knew he couldn’t abandon it.

He tried to tally his resources. He had a gun, and a little ammo. He had made much of less many times before. Though they weren’t close to hand, he had small stashes tucked away in several place because old habits died hard. He was in a city of seven million people, much of it a veritable maze. Though he was wounded, he had no broken bones. And he was the best in the business.

He hoped it would be enough.

An involuntary cough caught him off guard and he realized his mouth and throat were almost painfully dry. He paused a moment, turned his concentration on his body and realized how many hours it had been since his last food or drink. Seemingly without a thought, he turned and walked straight toward a small store tucked between two anonymous buildings, what passed for a neighborhood shop these days.

He barely paused to hold the door for his dog and before the shaggy-haired clerk at the register could finish saying, “Hey, you can’t bring that dog in here,” he had noted that except for the cashier, the shop was empty. He thumbed the lock on the door and turned the hanging sign from open to closed.

The clerk hadn’t caught the motion that engaged the lock, but he had seen the sign flip. He had barely twitched his hand toward the panic button under the counter before the man had reached the counter and grabbed his arm. The man’s face was hacked with fresh wounds, some of them still seeping through the forming scabs and his shirt was bloody. So were his hands. The clerk looked into the eyes of the bloody man and froze. Those eyes were dangerous. You didn’t argue with eyes like that.

John Wick forced himself to focus. He was standing in a crummy, dusty shop, holding the wrist of a pimply nineteen year old in a threatening grip and the kid was frightened. The young brown face had turned ashen under the shaggy hair and zits and the arm John was gripping was shaking. Frightened people could be unpredictable and do stupid shit, like push the alarm button. He heaved a breath, reached his other hand over the counter, grabbed the kid by the belt, picked him up, dragged him across the counter and set him on his feet in one smooth motion.

“Listen, kid,” he said, trying to make his voice soft and apologetic. “I don’t want to cause any trouble here, okay? I just need a few things. I’m in a bad situation. Worse than you can imagine. Just sit down right here and be nice and quiet and I’ll be outta here just as fast as you want me to be.”

The kids eyes had drifted down. He had seen the gun in John’s waistband. His knees bent and he slid to the floor, staring at the gun. When John let go of his wrist, the kid raised his hands above his head.

“Okay,” John said, willing to settle. “Will you stay right here? I have no problem with you.”

The kid nodded. He looked scared enough.

John grabbed two warm bottles of water off a cardboard display, scooped up some snack cakes, beef jerky, a soft overripe banana from a small neglected rack with a sign that said, “Healthy Snacks for Healthy Kids”. He leaned over the counter and dropped the stuff into a white plastic Thank You Come Again bag on the rack, then went over the counter in a quick glide. He spared an intense glance for the street outside, then scrabbled through the small selection of first aid supplies and over-the-counter remedies, adding Tylenol and the few packages of gauze and adhesive tape to the bag. He dragged a twenty and a ten out of his wallet, dropped them on the counter and climbed over it again, bag in hand.

The kid was still on the floor. The dog was sitting several feet away, quiet, passive, regarding him curiously.

“What ar–” the clerk began.

“Shut up,” Wick said. “Is there a back way out?”

“Yeah,” the kid said, “but it’s all locked up and I don’t have the keys -”

“Fine,” Wick said. He reached over the counter, found the panic switch and yanked the wire out of its side. He looked down at the kid with his hands in the air. The name tag on his shirt.

“Thank you, Christopher,” Wick said. “You’ve been very helpful. But that phone call you want to make? You have a much better chance of surviving if you make that call somewhere else. There are some serious hard cases after me. They have police scanners. And you don’t want to be here when they hear my description in connection with this address. I suggest you wait until you hear the back door close, then you leave this place to make your phone call. Do you understand, Christopher?”

Christopher forced himself to focus his thoughts on the words instead of the gun. He looked up into the hard, don’t-give-a-fuck eyes, bombardier’s eyes where did I get that phrase? and saw a glimmer of … manners? He finally found his voice. “Yeah, man. I get it. I don’t want to be here.”

Wick nodded. “Good luck, Christopher.”

That was what convinced Christopher. That polite ‘good luck’, quietly passed between two men in a hard world. The shadow passed from him and the dog followed it. Christopher waited until after the sounds of rummaging, after the sound of the crowbar being dragged out of the mess in the broom closet, after the sounds of squealing, shrieking metal, after the sound of the steel door refusing to shut against its bent and abused frame. After he heard the footsteps fade away. After that, Christopher left to make his phone call, from some place far away.

He didn’t know about the money left on the counter until the police asked about it later. He could only shrug. “Yeah. He was a polite guy.”

#John Wick #fanfic #fanfiction #john wick fanfiction

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