The gold coin economy felt to me like some sort of toy market designed to cater to the particular neuroses of the assassins. Like, these are deeply neurodivergent people, and it seems like whatever trait makes them good assassins also makes them awful at capitalism, so there's this whole system that allows them to exchange CURRENCY for GOOD or SERVICE without needing prices. The coins don't have any particular conversion rate, but maybe the body removers and weapons dealers and so on register those transactions afterwards and get trued up for the right cash value based on the specific service. This is inefficient, but it works because the assassins capture so little of the value of assassination due to being bad at prices, so there's a lot of surplus that can be used to make sure other transactions are worthwhile. Presumably this system is maintained by whoever actually uses the assassins to assassinate non-assassins.
You might be interested in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4qTZ_ENmw8 . It's Keanu Reeves and Chad Stahelski (the director) reacting to various fan theories. The reason I mention it is that one of the theories they react to is very similar to yours about assassins replacing the military.
I don't think it's true that everyone knows about the assassins. They do seem to make a token effort to hide their activities -- notably, whenever they're talking on the phone they use euphemisms, presumably because phones can be tapped.
There's clearly some kayfabe (or magical glamour) involved: when assassins assass each other in crowded public places, ordinary people pretty much just ignore it (or reveal themselves to be secret elite assassins), they don't run for cover or call for help like they would in real life. And sure enough, they never ever get hit by a stray bullet or anything: massive property damage, but people not part of the assassin fight are utterly safe.
As someone who actually watched all four John Wick movies, I think I had a somewhat different experience of the franchise than yours. On the one hand, no, the world-building does not remotely make sense, which I think is actually made worse if you watch all four movies back to back, because each movie often seems to take place in a different version of the setting.
On the other hand, I did not find myself questioning John's motivations nearly as much as you did? If you watch the movies in order you get the sense that murdering his way out of his problems seemingly worked for John for a long time, right up until around the climax of the second movie, which is when things really start to spiral out of control. After that it becomes increasingly unclear how John could possibly solve his problems with murder, but you sort of understand why he would try, since it had seemingly been working until then.
It also helps that the first movie worked pretty hard to establish he really did retire from being an assassin for a period of time, which explains why John doesn't simply go "huh, guess you're right" when other characters suggest he'll never be able to leave because of who he is as a person (even if they do kinda have a point).
I think that something can be a Signal From Fred and valid characterization! There are many situations where a normal person would go "nothing that's going on makes any sense" or "this explanation is boring", when it is also a desperate plea from the writer's subconscious to make the plot more coherent or cut the infodump.
The gold coin economy felt to me like some sort of toy market designed to cater to the particular neuroses of the assassins. Like, these are deeply neurodivergent people, and it seems like whatever trait makes them good assassins also makes them awful at capitalism, so there's this whole system that allows them to exchange CURRENCY for GOOD or SERVICE without needing prices. The coins don't have any particular conversion rate, but maybe the body removers and weapons dealers and so on register those transactions afterwards and get trued up for the right cash value based on the specific service. This is inefficient, but it works because the assassins capture so little of the value of assassination due to being bad at prices, so there's a lot of surplus that can be used to make sure other transactions are worthwhile. Presumably this system is maintained by whoever actually uses the assassins to assassinate non-assassins.
You might be interested in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4qTZ_ENmw8 . It's Keanu Reeves and Chad Stahelski (the director) reacting to various fan theories. The reason I mention it is that one of the theories they react to is very similar to yours about assassins replacing the military.
I don't think it's true that everyone knows about the assassins. They do seem to make a token effort to hide their activities -- notably, whenever they're talking on the phone they use euphemisms, presumably because phones can be tapped.
There's clearly some kayfabe (or magical glamour) involved: when assassins assass each other in crowded public places, ordinary people pretty much just ignore it (or reveal themselves to be secret elite assassins), they don't run for cover or call for help like they would in real life. And sure enough, they never ever get hit by a stray bullet or anything: massive property damage, but people not part of the assassin fight are utterly safe.
As someone who actually watched all four John Wick movies, I think I had a somewhat different experience of the franchise than yours. On the one hand, no, the world-building does not remotely make sense, which I think is actually made worse if you watch all four movies back to back, because each movie often seems to take place in a different version of the setting.
On the other hand, I did not find myself questioning John's motivations nearly as much as you did? If you watch the movies in order you get the sense that murdering his way out of his problems seemingly worked for John for a long time, right up until around the climax of the second movie, which is when things really start to spiral out of control. After that it becomes increasingly unclear how John could possibly solve his problems with murder, but you sort of understand why he would try, since it had seemingly been working until then.
It also helps that the first movie worked pretty hard to establish he really did retire from being an assassin for a period of time, which explains why John doesn't simply go "huh, guess you're right" when other characters suggest he'll never be able to leave because of who he is as a person (even if they do kinda have a point).
I think that something can be a Signal From Fred and valid characterization! There are many situations where a normal person would go "nothing that's going on makes any sense" or "this explanation is boring", when it is also a desperate plea from the writer's subconscious to make the plot more coherent or cut the infodump.