John Wick's Church Shootout Scene Made No Sense Because Of One Obvious Mistake

The "John Wick" movies are a great deal of fun, pitting super-assassin John Wick (Keanu Reeves) against a whole world of professional killers. Drawn back into the world of contract killing after his retirement when someone kills his puppy, John Wick is almost a superhero in his abilities to absolutely decimate the competition. He's the ultimate badass in a world full of badasses, and while the universe he exists in feels somewhat fantastical, it's at the very least rooted in our reality. Even if Mr. Wick is sometimes called "Baba Yaga" in reference to the powerful witch from Slavic folklore, there's no magic to be found, and he could ostensibly live in our world, but there's just one little problem (and it's not the imaginary but super cool Continental hotels).

In the very first "John Wick" film, there's a pretty climactic shootout in an old church in New York City, where Russian mobster Viggo Tarasov is hiding some of his ill-gotten gains and criminal gear. It's a great introduction to the big, elaborate world of the "John Wick" movies and its use of religion to enrich the story, but there's one detail they got wrong: the church has pews, and classic Russian Orthodox churches generally do not! 

As much fun as it is to watch John Wick and his guns go "pew-pew" between the pews, "old world" Russian Orthodox/Eastern Orthodox churches generally don't have pews. Prayer is usually done standing in Eastern Orthodox churches, and while some newer American churches have pews, a very old, very elaborate church with ties to the Russian mob probably wouldn't! (Not only that, but those pews look just as old as the rest of the church, with lots of wear, which leads me to believe they used a Catholic church for filming, as elaborate Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches bear a lot of similarities.) 

The "John Wick" movies have a lot of Russian influences, so it's a little odd that they missed this particular detail, but hey — this was still the first "John Wick" movie, and they were still getting everything established. Besides, there ended up being a much bigger, cooler church fight with action legend Donnie Yen in "John Wick Chapter 4," complete with loads of flickering candles and not a pew in sight. Wanting complete accuracy in a movie franchise built around gunfights and secret coalitions of assassins feels a little silly, so maybe just chalk this one up to fantasy.