New John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum Trailer Sees Wick Wield Many Weapons
He needs guns. Lots of guns.
Lionsgate dropped a fresh trailer for John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum on Thursday, throwing an array of weapons into John Wick's possession and sneaking in a subtle reference to one of lead actor Keanu Reeves' biggest films in the process.
The footage starts off in the same fashion the previous peeks at the third John Wick movie have: Reeves' John, the hired gun with a multi-million-dollar bounty on his head, seeking asylum after he murdered a man on the grounds of the Continental Hotel and was thus ex-communicated. We watch as John sprints through the rain-soaked streets of New York, battles baddie after baddie who want his blood and the fat stacks of cash that come with killing him, and ultimately meets up with fellow assassin Sofia (Halle Berry), whose help John desperately needs if he is to stay alive. Sofia seems reluctant to help John, as the score between them will be "less than even" if she protects him, and the chances of John not getting slashed, stabbed, and shot by everyone he encounters are slim to none.
Like The Director of the High Table (Anjelica Huston), an elite group of assassins with great power in the criminal world, explains to John in the trailer, "There is no escape for you. The High Table wants your life."
But things take an interesting turn for dear ol' John when he reunites with Winston (Ian McShane), the manager of the New York Continental who previously gifted John a blood marker that he could use if he ever needed a favor. That favor, so it seems based on this new John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum trailer, involves Winston giving John a truck-load of weapons — a need the assassin relays to Winston in the form of a nod to The Matrix. That film also featured Reeves delivering the line, "Guns. Lots of guns," making this moment a perfect full-circle for the actor and a fun little Easter egg for fans of the Wachowskis' film.
The small, flying-under-the-radar details featured in this John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum footage don't start and stop with a Matrix wink. Astute watchers will find that two hitmen seen taking on John in a fight sequence around the 1:57 mark of the trailer are both actors in The Raid 2 and portrayed kanjiklub members Tasu Leech and Crokind Shand in Star Wars: The Force Awakens – Yayan Ruhian and Cecep Arif Rahman. Other faces viewers might find familiar are Mark Dacascos, the host of Iron Chef America who portrays the bald assassin Zero in John Wick 3; Orange Is the New Black actress Asia Kate Dillon, who plays a high-ranking member of the High Table known as The Adjudicator; and Laurence Fishburne, who portrays an underground crime lord called The Bowery King.
And what would a John Wick movie be if it didn't see its titular guy fighting his way through every room, building, city he enters? Nothing, we say — and that's why it comes as little surprise this new trailer includes John throwing punches, firing guns, and riding a motorcycle while wielding a sword and hacking up his opponents left and right.
It's easy to forget how John found himself in such a mess, but The Director brings some perspective at the end of the new trailer: "All of this, for what? Because of a puppy?"
Director Chad Stahelski changed the face of the action genre as we know it with the John Wick franchise, and it looks like he'll continue to shake up the landscape with this all-killer, no-filler follow-up.
Also starring Jason Mantzoukas as the Tick Tock Man, Lance Reddick as Charon, Saïd Taghmaoui as The Elder, Robin Lord Taylor as The Administrator, and John Leguizamo as Aurelio, John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum is set for release on May 17.