John Wick fixed one of Hollywood’s most annoying action movie tropes, and the entire genre was better for it. Every so often, one or two touchstone action movies will come around that leaves an indelible mark on the genre as a whole. In the 1980s, it was Rambo and The Terminator, as every other action movie seemed to have a body builder screaming as they unloaded an entire machine gun clip onto enemy soldiers. In the 1990s, it was Die Hard and Speed, and everything that followed them featured an average police officer stuck in some life or death scenario, usually with a timed bomb.

John Wick actually was one of those touchstone action movies for the 2010s. Ever since it became an international sensation, there have been dozens of John Wick clones that try to mimic its style and tone. Bob Odenkirk’s Nobody, Charlize Theron’s Atomic Blonde, and Chris Hemsworth’s Extraction are all great examples, as they all had the same slick style, over-the-top brutality, and complicated action sequences that John Wick pioneered. In fact, John Wick actually replaced the last dominant source of mimicry in action movies, and it did the entire genre a favor by getting rid of its most annoying trend.

John Wick Offered An Alternative To Hollywood’s Shaky-Cam, Bourne-Style Action Films

John Wick Showed Hollywood Good Fight Choreography Could Replace Bourne’s Shaky-Cam Style

Before John Wick set the pace of action movies, it was Matt Damon’s Bourne franchise that was the dominant power in the genre. Unfortunately, the Bourne franchise had a patented “shaky-cam” style, where the camera itself would shake during chase and fight scenes to add a level of immersion, and that was one of the action genre’s favorite aspects to mimic. Suddenly, everything from Damon’s own Elysium to The Hunger Games featured shaky-cam for its most intense moments, and it was the dominant style for most of the 2000s and early 2010s.

Shaky-cam ruled supreme in the action genre, until John Wick came around. John Wick took inspiration from martial arts films and relied on the choreography and fighting abilities of its stars to make action scenes intense instead of trying to make them look intense with a filming technique. Because Keanu Reeves is a seasoned martial artist, John Wick could film its fight scenes clearly, and it ended up providing an alternative to shaky-cam. There was suddenly another way to put the “thrill” into the action-thriller genre, and one that audiences clearly appreciated.

Bourne’s Shaky-Cam Scenes Worked, But It Quickly Became A Hollywood Problem

Paul Greengrᴀss Mastered Shaky-Cam, But Other Hollywood Movies Used It To Cut Corners

Shaky-cam is one of the most annoying trends of the 2000s, but it wasn’t a problem in the Bourne movies. That’s mainly because director Paul Greengrᴀss knew how to use it sparingly for maximum effectiveness. The shaky-cam in the Bourne franchise didn’t obstruct the well-crafted fight scenes, and it actually added a new layer of frenetic, close-up energy to them. Greengrᴀss showed viewers the parts they wanted to see, and he used shaky-cam to make them hit even harder. Shaky-cam was, however, a problem for other movies that weren’t nearly as skillful with the technique.

The main problem with shaky-cam is that few people other than Greengrᴀss knew how to use it. For many Hollywood films that were trying to imitate the Bourne movies, shaky-cam was a way to hide poor fight choreography and make underwhelming scenes more exciting. Some of the worst examples of shaky-cam can even be found in good movies like The Hurt Locker or Man of Steel. Particularly bad examples of shaky-cam can turn a reasonably well-choreographed action sequence into an indiscernible blur of a moment. But, since the Bourne trilogy was a hit, every other movie from that decade wanted to follow suit.

John Wick’s Fight Scenes Set A New Benchmark For Hollywood Action Movies

John Wick’s Style Was So Good Every Action Movie Had To Strive For It

John Wick‘s crystal clear action scenes and completely steady camera signified a proverbial crossing of the Rubicon for Hollywood. After years of movies imitating the Bourne franchise’s shaky-cam, viewers didn’t want to go back, and every action movie after about 2016 had to follow in John Wick‘s footsteps if it wanted to succeed. It wasn’t enough to just disorient viewers with blurred images of violence – now action movies have to highlight each brutal detail of their fights and clearly show viewers what they want to see. John Wick quite simply changed modern action movies in a tremendous way.