It's the ultimate Keanu showdown, Neo vs John Wick.
Young Keanu vs Old Keanu.
But rest assured, one of these two- Neo or John Wick- is going to be a Sad Keanu by the
time this fight is over.
Now lets run down our two contestants, and see what the tale of the tape tells us.
Neo, or The One, or simply Thomas A. Anderson to his landlord, was a programmer working
for a run-of-the-mill software company.
By night however he was a prolific hacker who infiltrated company and government networks
in order to sell off the secrets stashed there.
One day he came across something known as 'The Matrix', but Neo was unable to find any
definite answer on what this was.
He believed that whatever this matrix was, it was tied to his own feeling that there
was something wrong with the world.
In a quest for answers, Neo undertook a search for one of the world's most dangerous terrorists,
a man known simply as 'Morpheus'.
His search leads him to make contact with Trinity, or Carrie-Anne Moss with a leather
fetish, and this encounter inevitably leads him to Morpheus and his discovery that all
reality is nothing but a digital construct created by intelligent machines.
The purpose of 'The Matrix' was to give human minds something to occupy themselves with
while machines harvested the bio-electrical energy of their physical bodies, which makes
absolutely zero sense but that's ok because cool gunfights.
Soon Neo is embracing his newfound identity as a freedom fighter- even if this is a fight
to free people from a normal life in pleasant modern-day Earth and awaken them to a post-apocalyptic
hellscape where machines are constantly trying to rip them to pieces.
Oh, and everybody eats goo soup- which we're pretty sure is dead people by the way because
did you see a single farm outside of The Matrix in any of the movies?
Yeah, we didn't think so.
So Neo literally becomes a god in between the first and second movies and at that point
the Wachowskis realize that you can't have a protagonist become godlike at the start
of a trilogy because then nothing is a challenge to him, and the entire Matrix series pretty
much goes off the rails at that point.
What's important to us though is Neo's powers, as that will be what John Wick will be contending
with.
First, inside The Matrix Neo is practically God.
With his ability to edit the very source code of the matrix, Neo can twist and spin reality
as he wishes, dodging bullets, explosions, and destroying hostile AIs with but a touch.
He can fly, we're pretty sure he can teleport, and he has the strength of a hundred men.
Or a thousand.
Or a million- there's literally no limit to his power because the matrix is his sandbox.
On top of godlike physical and mental abilities within the matrix, Neo is also an extremely
skilled martial artist, given the fact that he can learn any martial art by simply downloading
it directly into his brain.
This means that Neo has mastered every fighting style that has ever been digitally recorded,
which is pretty much all of them.
He's also an expert on every weapon ever conceived by man- as long as someone made a WikiHow
on using it, of course.
He knows every language posted on the internet, every single science, and all memes ever created,
because he can just instantly download the information to his brain.
This makes Neo a dangerous opponent even outside of the matrix, because while he can't bend
reality to his will outside the matrix, he still knows literally everything ever.
There's a popular myth that it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert at something- for
neo it takes a fraction of a second, and unlike your ability to 'totally pwn 360 no scope'
noobs on call of duty, Neo's knowledge actually has useful applications in the real world.
So if John Wick thought this fight would be easier outside the matrix, think again.
John Wick is basically Neo without the godlike powers and a beard.
Growing up in the former Soviet Union- or a small Mexican village depending on if you
think movies or comic books are canon- John was destined to become a top assassin.
Unlike most protagonists, John Wicks' exact backstory is a bit vague, but it's believed
that at some point he joined the US Marines, likely early on in his life, before being
groomed to become an assassin and work for the Continental, a club for all the cool assassins,
no nerd assassins allowed.
John's reputation quickly grew as he took on more and more dangerous assignments, earning
the nickname of “The Boogeyman”.
John would eventually join up with a Russian outfit known as the Tarasov Mob, becoming
its leader’s top hitter.
John worked for many years until one day he met a girl named Helen and fell in love with
her.
Wishing to live a quiet, civilian life, John Wick asked his boss to release him from his
service.
A deal was struck- John would have to accomplish one impossible task and then be free to live
his life as he wished: write just one good episode of The Mandalorian- err, we mean,
kill all of Viggo Tarasov's rivals in just one night.
With a little help from his friends, John managed to accomplish the feat and soon he
was living the simple life with his beloved Helen, until tragically cancer claimed her
life.
Helen left John with a farewell gift though, a small beagle named Daisy.
When Viggo Tarasov's son ends up killing Daisy, John went super-sayian and killed literally
everybody ever.
John is much like Neo, a martial arts expert, skilled in Barizilian jiu-jitsu, judo, jujutsu,
sombo, aikido, and aiki-jitsu.
He's also very skilled with blades and knows his way around practically any firearm in
the world, making him a deadly opponent.
So how do the two stack up in a fight?
For our first round we're taking things to the matrix, where obviously Neo is going to
have all the advantages.
Neo can simply dodge Wick's attacks all day long if he wanted, but why not torment Wick
and defeat him not just physically but psychologically.
Much like one of the first mods to hit Steam for Xcom 2, Neo can simply mod the matrix
so that his own gun shoots beagle puppies at John Wick instead of bullets.
A beagle moving at several hundred feet per second is still a deadly weapon, and one that
will for sure make John Wick absolutely lose his (bleep).
Sadly, there's literally nothing Wick can do in the matrix against Neo- but what about
the real world, surely he has the advantage there, right?
Well, you might want to pump your brakes before you think a real world fight between Neo and
Wick would end with a Wick victory.
Remember how earlier we made it clear that Neo basically has the sum knowledge of humanity
in his brain thanks to his ability to download everything?
Well, Wick may be a martial arts and gun expert, but Neo's own proficiency is lightyears ahead
of Wick's.
Sure, Wick has real world experience- but Neo has something even better: simulated experience.
While jacked into the matrix, or a training digital construct, Neo can gain a form of
super intelligence known as speed intelligence.
This means that Neo is basically able to framejack his mind so that he experiences time in any
digital world at hundreds or even thousands of times faster than time flows in the real
world.
So while John Wick has been a top assassin for thirty years or so, Neo could have been
practicing for this fight for tens of thousands of years, simply by jacking into a training
program and framejacking his brain.
Experience is firmly on Neo's side, because John Wick will have lived only one lifetime
as a super assassin, while Neo will have lived thousands of lifetimes in his digital training
world, which is capable of fully simulating every single aspect of real life.
Such accurate and detailed simulations means that Neo's fake, virtual experience is just
as effective as Wick's real-world experience.
Wick's one advantage over Neo is his physical fitness though, as Neo doesn't have to be
as physically fit as Wick when most of his fighting is in the matrix.
You might think Wick's reflexes are better than Neo's, because of his real-world experience,
but reflexes are based on electric impulses, which can be fully replicated by a computer
in a simulation- so both Wick and Neo are on par here.
Physically, Wick is stronger than Neo without a doubt- but that matters little if Neo can
resolve a fight at a distance using his tens of thousands of simulated years of gunfight
experience to destroy Wick.
To make matters worse, Neo also has the ability to affect the electronic systems of machines
in the real world through some poorly understood method, or just bad plot writing, so Neo could
use that power to destroy or interfere with any electronics Wick may be using.
If the fight came down to hand-to-hand combat, Wick may have a shot at victory thanks to
his superior physical strength and stamina.
However, Neo has mastered every martial art that was ever digitally recorded, and many
of these martial arts are designed for weaker opponents to defend themselves from physically
stronger opponents.
Once more, given his thousands of years of experience in simulated martial arts fights,
even Wick's superior strength may not be enough to overcome Neo's god-like skill set.
In the end, we're declaring Neo a winner, because when your brain is literally a supercomputer,
it's like playing at life with cheat codes enabled.
But, Neo and Wick have one opponent that neither can defeat- and that's Keanu Reeves.
Not only are both Neo and Wick constructs in Keanu's head, mere fictions in his imagination,
but Keanu is basically the best at everything IRL.
Seriously, he's the nicest guy in Hollywood by far, the most respectful, and he learned
every single martial art and gun skill that he really needed to know for both The Matrix
and John Wick movies.
Keanu has been an undercover Chuck Norris this whole time, because the true master always
keeps his strength secret.
Now go watch You Versus John Wick to find out all the ways Wick would absolutely wreck
your day- or check out this other fun video instead!