The John Wick saga is continuing this month with John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum (the title of which means “Prepare for war,”) promising all-out action in the assassin community. Hopefully, the franchise won’t be stopping any time soon, as the CEO of studio Lionsgate has said he plans to make it “a multiple-title action franchise,” while Keanu Reeves continues to get bigger and better in the role.
As he’s taken on legions of fellow assassins and avenged both his dog and his car, Wick has amassed a number of memorable lines. Here are ten of the very best lines from the franchise.
Updated by Ben Sherlock on April 7th, 2020: Since this list was first published, the John Wick franchise has been joined by another title. John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum proved that the series hasn’t run out of steam yet, that Keanu Reeves is still as badass as ever, and that there are plenty of stories left to be told about a certain Baba Yaga. The threequel brought a bunch of new memorable quotes to the table, so we’ve updated this list with a couple of lines from Parabellum.
15 “Para Bellum.”
Not a lot of John Wick fans knew what the title Parabellum meant when they went into the third installment in the franchise, but they sure knew what it meant by the end of the movie.
When the Continental is about to be invaded by goons and John and Charon get ready to take them out, Winston says, “Para bellum,” and the subtitles read: “Prepare for war.”
14 “He Shot My Dog.” “I Get It.”
Halle Berry was apparently a big fan of the John Wick franchise and asked the producers if she could have a role in John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum. Hence, the awesome Sofia character, who is virtually unstoppable when she’s armed with her two attack dogs at her side.
When one of the threequel’s villains shoots one of her dogs and she becomes consumed with a desire for revenge, she tells John, “He shot my dog,” and John simply replies, “I get it.”
13 “I Once Saw Him Kill Three Men In A Bar… With A Pencil.”
In the first John Wick movie, when Wick first announces his intentions to come after Viggo’s son, Viggo tries to illustrate to his son the kind of grave danger he’s in. These early scenes establish John’s legendary status among the assassin community.
Viggo tells his son, “John is a man of focus, commitment, sheer will…something you know very little about. I once saw him kill three men in a bar…with a pencil. With a f*cking pencil!” In the sequel, we got to see John actually kill people with a pencil.
12 “Nothing’s Ever Just A Conversation With You, John.”
Whenever John Wick goes somewhere, it usually leads to a brutal knife fight or an intense shootout. In the third movie, he tells Sofia, “Sofia, we’re not going in like the old days. Just a conversation.”
And she replies, “Nothing’s ever just a conversation with you, John.” She’s right; with John, things usually escalate pretty quickly.
11 “Guns. Lots Of Guns.”
In John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum, when John teams up with Winston to fend off the bad guys, Winston asks him what he needs. John simply replies, “Guns. Lots of guns.” The line is taken directly from Neo, one of Keanu Reeves’ other iconic roles.
Parabellum’s use of this line is just one of many references to The Matrix trilogy included in the John Wick movies as a wink to the audience. The Bowery King (played by Laurence Fishburne, who played Morpheus alongside Reeves in The Matrix movies) has red and blue containers, a nod to the red and blue pills offered to Thomas Anderson in The Matrix.
10 “You wanted me back…I’m back!”
John Wick: Chapter 2 continued the story of the first movie in a very exciting way. At the end of the first movie, he got a new dog and he seemed prepared to go back to his peaceful existence. But the events of the first movie got him back in the game.
In the sequel, he says, “You wanted me back…I’m back!” We finally got to see John Wick on form. He wasn’t expecting to get back into the killing game in the first movie, so he was a little rusty, but in the second one, he’s fully back.
9 “That f**kin’ nobody is John Wick. He was once an associate of ours. They call him… Baba Yaga.”
It was a great tragedy in 2017 when the brilliant Swedish actor Michael Nyqvist died. He was best known to Hollywood audiences as a villain, but even then, he was terrific at playing those villains. For example, he even brings humanity to the Viggo Tarasov character in John Wick. He’s the one who explains the weight of his son’s actions to him: “It’s not what you did, son, that angers me so. It’s who you did it to.”
Iosef incredulously asks, “Who? That f**king nobody?” And then Viggo gives us a window into Wick’s reputation: “That f**kin’ nobody is John Wick. He was once an associate of ours. They call him…Baba Yaga.”
8 “Well, John wasn’t exactly ‘The Boogeyman.’ He was the one you sent to kill the f**kin’ Boogeyman.”
As soon as Viggo Tarasov explains to his son Iosef that the man he targeted used to be an assassin who went by the alias “Baba Yaga,” Iosef translates it for us: “‘The Boogeyman?’” And then Viggo explains exactly what he meant by the nickname.
When he tells us, “John wasn’t exactly ‘The Boogeyman,’” we get the sense that he’s about to say he wasn’t actually that bad. But then he adds, “He was the one you sent to kill the f**kin’ Boogeyman.” Uh-oh.
7 “How good to see you again so soon, Mr. Wick.”
This quote from Lance Reddick’s character Charon also reflects the audience’s feelings about the sequel. We loved the first movie in 2014 and we were thrilled when the character burst back into multiplexes in 2017. And now, in 2019, he’s back again.
Charon is the concierge at the Continental and, as far as he was concerned, Wick had retired, so he’s delighted – and surprised – to see him back at the hotel so soon. There’s actually a TV series in development that will focus on the daily goings-on of the Continental. Wick might cameo in the show, but he won’t be the focus.
6 “You stabbed the Devil in the back. To him, this isn’t vengeance; this is justice.”
Ian McShane has been carving out a niche recently as the go-to exposition guy for big franchises. Every time some world-building is going down and the audience is struggling to comprehend it all, Ian McShane comes along to explain everything. It used to be Morgan Freeman, but now, it’s Ian McShane.
He’s done it in Game of Thrones, American Gods, the new Hellboy reboot, and yes, John Wick. His character Winston always shows up to explain everything. He sometimes gets the occasional kick-ass one-liner as well, such as “You stabbed the Devil in the back. To him, this isn’t vengeance; this is justice.”
5 “Whoever comes, whoever it is…I’ll kill them. I’ll kill them all.”
The reason why fans are so incredibly excited for John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum is that the end of the second one set up the most action-packed sequel yet. A contract was put on John’s head and he was declared “excommunicado” from the Continental for violating their rules.
So, now, every single assassin in the world is looking to kill John Wick and he’s going to have to face them completely alone. Rather than be terrified by this prospect, John takes it on the chin and tells Winston, “Winston…tell them…Tell them all…Whoever comes, whoever it is…I’ll kill them. I’ll kill them all.”
4 “Rusty, I guess.”
The days of the Sylvester Stallone/Arnold Schwarzenegger star-driven action thriller are long gone. John Wick is the last bastion of those kinds of characters: infinitely capable, absurdly awesome, and always with a one-liner in the chamber.
Wick always keeps his cool, even under tremendous circumstances like being captured by the Russian mafia and tied to a chair to be tortured and eventually killed (or so they think). Winston says, “Jonathan! Now, as I recall, weren’t you the one tasked to dole out the beatings, not to receive them?” and Wick simply replies, “Rusty, I guess.” He’d later prove that he wasn’t rusty.
3 “Everything’s got a price.”
What makes this line even more badass is that John utters it in Russian after killing the Russian guy. There’s no need for this one-liner to be in Russian, since only John is there to hear it, but it has more of a sense of closure if it’s in Russian. It’s a callback to an earlier scene in which Iosef tried to buy John’s car. John refused and he said, “Everything’s got a price.”
So, later, when John finally catches up with Iosef and he pleads with him not to kill him over what was “just” a dog. But then John shoots him and says, “Everything’s got a price.” In this case, the price was Iosef’s head – or, in other words, vengeance.
2 “You want a war, or you want to just give me a gun?”
There are the two options when John Wick has gotten involved in a situation: “You want a war, or you want to just give me a gun?” You can go into an all-out war, or you can simply arm Wick. He utters this line in the scene with the Bowery King, who was played by Laurence Fishburne.
John Wick: Chapter 2 reunited Fishburne with Keanu Reeves after the two had starred in The Matrix trilogy together. Fishburne is slated to return to the role of the Bowery King, with a more significant part in the plot, in the upcoming third movie.
1 “I’m thinking I’m back.”
This quote applies in two different ways. John Wick is back in the assassin game and Keanu Reeves is back making awesome action movies. This whole monologue sums up the movie and the character:
“When Helen died, I lost everything. Until that dog arrived on my doorstep. A final gift from my wife. In that moment, I received some semblance of hope. An opportunity to grieve unalone. And your son took that from me…stole that from me…killed that from me! People keep asking if I’m back. And I haven’t really had an answer. But now, yeah, I’m thinking I’m back! So, you can either hand over your son, or you can die screaming alongside him!”
