Keanu Reeves names the greatest “whoa” of his career: “The ‘whoa’ was wonderful”
To paraphrase that guy from E3 2019, Keanu Reeves is breathtaking.
Not only is he incredibly handsome and well-dressed, but he’s also effortlessly cool. There’s a reason he’s cast in so many high-profile heroic roles – one look at this guy, and you know you’re looking at a badass. On top of all that, he also seems to be a genuinely nice fella, which is a rarity in the celebrity realm.
All of these qualities have earned the Canadian a legion of loyal fans over the years. The Reeves-heads love nothing more than to get together and talk about their favourite actor, which often takes the form of discovering interesting trends in his career. As well as the fact that he loves playing people called John, fans have also worked out that Reeves has a tendency to say the word ‘whoa’ a lot.
Screen Rant published an article in 2019 detailing all 113 ‘whoas’ from Reeves’ career up to that point, beginning with Babes in Toyland and culminating with one in the post-credits scene of Toy Story 4. According to the research, the films where Reeves utters the word the most are the first two Bill and Ted’s, with 27 “whoas” each. Considering there has been another film in that franchise since this article was released, who knows how high that number is now?
This affliction got so bad that, in a 2014 Ask Me Anything (AMA) on Reddit, the star was specifically told not to bring the word up. However, Keanu being Keanu, he did it anyway. Completely unprovoked, he started talking about his favourite use of the utterance. “I thought one of the ultimate expressions of ‘whoa’ was in the first ‘Matrix’,” he said.
“The ‘whoa’ was wonderful in The Matrix,” he added.
In the list, it is noted that Reeves busts out a ‘what’ on six different occasions across the 136-minute run time of the first Matrix film. The most famous one (and the one Reeves is probably talking about) is when he watches Laurence Fishburne’s Morpheus leap across a city block, displaying the powers that he will one day obtain as ‘The One’. Four of the “whoas” occur when Reeves’ character Neo is falling from some great height, whilst the other comes when he sees the famous ‘déjà vu cat’, a physical manifestation of a ‘glitch’ within the titular computer simulation. On the whole, six ‘whoas’ across over two hours isn’t that bad, especially for Keanu.
The list makes no mention of either The Matrix Reloaded or The Matrix Revolutions, so we’ll have to assume that Neo got over his obsession with the word after achieving his full potential. The Matrix Resurrections wasn’t released until 2021, so its stats are unavailable. There are a few movies where he only says it once, such as The Prince of Pennsylvania (when he gets jumped during a dance) and Tune in Tomorrow (when somebody gives him some free champagne). The funniest entry on the list is for Sweet November, in which he apparently ‘whoas’ 11 times, all in the same sentence.
If you have five and a half minutes spare, you can watch this video by Owenergy, which chronologically arranges all of his ‘whoas’ up to 2016.
