Oh, I don’t dispute any of that. There’s tons of media in that vein, and it is indeed all a turn off.

Hell, most of these just seem like movies that all want to be 2008’s Taken with Liam Neeson really badly. Even Taken was honestly very silly and absurd. Like, he just walks away from these situations where he fucks up half the city and the cops somehow can’t find him? It just cuts away and suddenly he’s fine and on to the next bit.

However, it was an incredibly popular film, spawned multiple sequels, and there’s definitely a whole genre of films in this vein. Nobody said Hollywood was very original, even when it comes to an original film. They still want formulas that they think will sell. Action tends to be the most popular, and to make action believable you have to have some backstory that makes these guys top tier fighters.

At least the John Wick films didn’t rely on him being ex-military, I guess.