Thank you to everyone who reads this Reel Librarians blog! We have a special community here, and this shows up especially in the monthly “recent additions” post as y’all continue to share additional titles to add to this site. This increases awareness of library scenes and reel librarians in movies and TV shows and helps demonstrate the breadth and depth of our profession onscreen. ❤
Therefore, I have decided to move the monthly “bonus” recent additions posts into regularly scheduled posts. You will still be getting 2 posts a month, published on the 2nd and 4th Wednesdays of the month; one of those posts will now be a recent additions update post, and the other post will continue to be an original analysis post.
Hey Arnold gif via Giphy.com, shared under “fair use” guidelines
Thank you for your patience for this special report and brief interruption in our regular programming! See y’all again next month! 🙂
Why not revisit another memorable library fight scene?!
Last month, we revisited the library (adjacent) fight scene in Thor: The Dark World (2011), which was set in and around the Old Royal Naval College Library in London. So why not revisit another memorable library fight scene, this time in John Wick: Chapter 3 — Parabellum (2019), set in the iconic New York Public Library.
I was inspired by an article in The Ringer, an exhaustive look at “Every John Wick Kill, Ranked.” And this article really does what it says: it ranks every single killing across the first four John Wick films (a fifth movie is rumored but has no release date yet), totaling 415 notches on John Wick’s belt. Exhausting indeed. This is why the internet exists, y’all, so we can enjoy these deep-dives into pop culture! OF COURSE, for me, the most memorable kill in the entire John Wick series thus far is the library fight scene in the third film (uh, spoiler?), but of course, I am biased! I was intrigued to see how highly this fight scene ranked for a non-librarian.
And out of 415 total kills in 4 movies (thus far)… the library fight scene ranked at an impressive #12! I was secretly hoping for a top 10 finish, but it’s not far off!
I did laugh at the brief write-up for this scene, and the observation that it was befitting to have a library-centric scene in a film with the word “Chapter” in its title, LOL! 😀
“After absorbing one of the world’s longest front kicks ever, Wick gets a read on the situation and kills overeager henchman Ernest (Boban Marjanovic!) by snapping his neck over a book. It’s amazing, and almost necessary because the word “Chapter” is in the film’s title.”
A student in the library shushes Jane and her squeaky shoes!
The stand-alone Thor movies thus far have been pretty consistent with showcasing library, book, and/or research scenes! In this movie, Thor: The Dark World (2013), Thor reunites with Jane Foster and battles Malekith and the army of Dark Elves. Thor: The Dark World is part of MCU’s Phase Two. Upon rewatching, this sequel to Thor — directed this go-round by Alan Taylor and often cited as among the worst MCU movies — was actually better than I remembered it being. It has two main things going for it:
Chris Hemsworth’s eyebrows are not bleached blonde like they were in the first Thor movie, and
At 1 hour and 26 minutes into the movie, Erik Selvig (Stellan Skarsgård) and Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) arrive at the Greenwich site of convergence for plot reasons. They walk hurriedly through an academic library in London, and you can see a wooden, rolling book cart in the foreground.
Inside the Royal Naval College Library
The captions reveal that Jane’s shoes squeak… which is why they get shushed by a student in the library!
A student shushes Jane and her squeaky shoes!
Meanwhile, Thor and the main baddie Malekith (Christopher Eccleston) are fighting it out in the college courtyard, and at 1 hour and 30 minutes, the perspective switches back to students in the library checking out the fight from the library’s windows.
Click on any image in the gallery below to view in a larger window.
Jane warns the students in the libraryStudents have a front-row view of Thor’s fight from the library’s windowsStudent captures Thor’s fight on his cell phoneStudents watch Thor’s fight from inside the library
Jane: What are you all doing? You need to get out of here, now!
Student [holding a phone in his hand]: You’re joking, right? That’s Thor out there! He’s waving his hammer around and everything!
Fun fact: The actor who has this bit line is Royce Pierreson, who plays Istredd in Netflix’s The Witcher TV series!
The next thing we see, Thor’s hammer sends shock waves that blow out the windows in the library. Jane warned y’all.
Click on any image in the gallery below to view in a larger window.
A wide shot of the windows breaking in the libraryA closeup of the windows breaking in the libraryWindow wreckage in the library
The library scene lasts less than a minute total, but it is a very cinematically striking scene that helps demonstrate the real-world effects and damage due to Thor’s fighting.
The location of the beautiful library is the Old Royal Naval College Library in London. Here are a couple of different views of the library’s exterior and courtyard during this fight scene.
Use the slider below to view and compare both screenshots.
Old Royal Naval College setting
No librarians were easily discernible in this scene — again, it looked like a student shushed Jane and Erik earlier in the scene, not a librarian — so Thor: The Dark World falls into the Class V category.
Thor: The Dark World. Dir. Alan Taylor. Perf. Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Anthony Hopkins, Tom Hiddleston, Stellan Skarsgård, Kat Dennings, Christopher Eccleston. Marvel Studios / Disney, 2013.
I recently rewatched The Spy Who Dumped Me (2018), a charming-but-ultimately forgettable spy comedy, via our Hulu streaming service. Honestly, just about the only thing I had remembered about the movie — other than Kate McKinnon’s sparkling wit — was that there was a scene in a beautiful library. Let’s go exploring!
The movie’s title is a play on the James Bond 1977 flick The Spy Who Loved Me. After Audrey (Mila Kunis) finds out that her ex-boyfriend (Justin Theroux, the title character who dumped her) is a CIA agent, she and her best friend Morgan (Kate McKinnon) are chased by assassins through Europe. Sam Heughan, a Scotsman playing an Englishman, rides along as Sebastian Henshaw, another CIA agent who is also tracking down the MacGuffin, which was hidden amongst the ex-boyfriend’s possessions left at Audrey’s apartment.
At 15:48 minutes into the movie, we join Audrey sharing with Morgan the info that her ex-boyfriend is a spy.
Audrey: They said he’s a spy… I know it sounds batshit crazy, but just think about it, okay? There were so many unanswered questions about that guy.
Morgan: Right, like if he went to Vassar [College] then why does he pronounce it “li-berry”?
Why does he pronounce it “li-berry”?
I bet this line lands with every librarian! Yes, I admit, it’s a personal pet peeve of mine when people pronounce “library” as “li-berry.” But to use it as the FIRST EXAMPLE that comes to mind to explain your suspicions of someone who has boasted about an Ivy League education?! LOL forever! 😀
Library scene + set-up
Fast forward the plot, and the MacGuffin is a little trophy that contains a big secret that everyone is after. It turns out that secret is a flash drive, which the ladies discover after dropping the statue. Audrey and Morgan are then kidnapped and tortured in Prague by a hitwoman (Ivanna Sakhno as Nadedja), and then rescued by the CIA and transported to Paris in order to be questioned about the flash drive. Throughout these interrogation scenes, Audrey insists that she flushed the drive down the toilet.
At about 1 hour into the madcap plot across Europe, Sebastian is ordered to drive the ladies to the airport so they can go back home. That’s when another secret comes out (and from an unusual place)!
Audrey: Out of curiosity, if we still had the drive, what would’ve happened?
Sebastian: Hypothetically? … I’d figure out how to de-encrypt it and then see what Highland’s plans are and stop them.
Audrey: How do you de-encrypt something like that?
Sebastian: Why do you want to know all this?
Audrey: Because the drive is in my vagina.
Sebastian and Kate [simultaneously]: What?!
This movie does travel into some unexpected places!
Mila then fishes out the flash drive and gives it to Sebastian. She asks Sebastian to trust them, that they can help out with this new mission to de-encrypt the drive and stop the bad guys.
Sebastian brakes hard, swings the car around, and zooms down the road. Next stop? If you guessed library, then here’s a gold star for you! ⭐
At 1 hour and 10 minutes, we arrive at a magnificent library building, complete with columns and dome ceiling. The inside reading room is just as magnificent, with tall windows and arches.
Library exteriorLibrary interiorThe exterior and interior of the library building
The three of them crowd around Sebastian’s laptop, but they hit a hurdle. Sebastian says the drive has “State Department encryption” and that they need “access to an expert in U.S. intelligence computer security.”
Morgan then says “One minute,” and sticks out out a finger… not to shush!, but rather to make them wait.
This is not the shushing finger of a reel librarian!
Morgan then saunters confidently down the aisle of the reading room, and we get another breathtaking view of the full reading room, complete with rows of tables and those classic library lamps. Behold the bibliophilic glory:
A walk down the library lane
Morgan then pauses at a back table and attempts to speak French at two young people.
Morgan [speaking in French]: Where is the library?
Young woman [also speaking in French]: You’re already at the library.
“Where is the library?” is a good phrase to know, wherever you go!
The end result of this scene is that Morgan borrows the young woman’s phone. She then heads off into a back room by a stairwell, and this looks like some kind of store room for the library, as it is filled with what look to be stacks of books and periodicals. Surely this is not the main collection, shoved in the back of a stairwell! There is also a call number sign on the wall that reveals call numbers starting with the letter “J.” [Note: If they are using the Library of Congress call number system, then the “J” class of call numbers is used for the field of political science.]
Morgan calls Eric Snowden; there is a running joke throughout the movie that they knew each other while growing up, and that he was obsessed with her. Snowden, of course, is the “expert in U.S. intelligence computer security” that they need. (The real-life Eric Snowden is, of course, notorious for having leaked classified U.S. documents and then flying to Russia for asylum in 2013 after he was charged with violating the U.S. Espionage Act. Snowden became a naturalized Russian citizen in 2022, a few years after this movie was released.)
Can you spot the call number sign?Background of library storage room shelvesLibrary storage room scene
Cut back to the library, and Snowden’s assistance pays off — they successfully access the drive! Sebastian then gets to explain the MacGuffin:
This drive is a back door to the entire internet… everyone’s secrets. We need to get out of here, now!
Uh-oh, the library is no longer a safe place for them!
He then slams down the laptop screen, and the library scene ends at 1:13:30. The entire scene lasts a total of 3 and a half minutes.
Purpose of library scene
So why does this scene take place at a library? Let’s consider a few possibilities:
It’s not because they need a computer, which is a common purpose behind many library scenes in movies. We know this isn’t the reason because Sebastian is using a laptop, and we see him using that same laptop later in the movie.
They don’t need any specific materials or documents that this library has access to or in its collection.
Do they want to access the drive in a quiet place? That doesn’t make sense, however, because they talk throughout the scene, and Kate’s voice volume and zany antics also attract a lot of attention.
Is it so they can access the library’s wifi? That seems to make the most sense to me in this context, because public libraries are a safe bet for free wifi. But it still feels a bit weak because earlier in the film, Audrey and Morgan access free wifi in a cafe in Prague.
But Audrey and Morgan get caught by the baddies after that cafe scene, so maybe they go to a public library to access the drive in a place they feel safe in?
Maybe another reason is to spotlight this library as another beautiful European location in this international spy movie? If this is the main reason, mission accomplished!
But even that final reason is a little suspect, as we will soon explore.
Library location
At the time Sebastian, Audrey, and Morgan are heading toward the airport, but then turn around to go to a library with the drive, they are in Paris.
However, this library — which is a real library! — is NOT located in Paris. The actual library filming location happens to be the BME Central Library of the Budapest University of Technology and Economics (BME) in Hungary. The library, built in 1909, was designed in the Neo-Gothic style by the famous Hungarian architect Samu Pecz.
A quick note that I’m not 100% certain that the exterior is the BME Central Library exterior: the IMDb.com Filming & Production page for this movie only credits Budapest for interiors, plus I couldn’t find a photo of the BME Central Library’s exterior. If you know this building exterior, seen below, please leave a comment! And I figured why not enjoy this library’s architectural beauty again?
Library interiorLibrary interiorThe exterior and interior of the library building
That library scene is definitely supposed to be set in Paris — evidenced by the location title card and because everyone is speaking, or attempting to speak, French — so it seems the likeliest to me that they used the BME Central Library because it was a cheaper film location. I also looked online, and my best guess is that the BME Central Library is being used to stand in for either the Sainte-Geneviève Library or the National Library of France, two libraries that are located in Paris and feature amazing arches and windows in their reading rooms.
Bottom line? Whatever the reason for this library scene, it is an amusing rest stop before the final action scenes and resolution of all that drive drama. The purpose of this scene being set in a library doesn’t feel vital to the plot — they could have accessed the drive on Sebastian’s laptop anywhere there was free wifi — but the information they learned while in the library was necessary to keep the plot moving along. And because I could spot no discernible reel librarian character in the library scene, The Spy Who Dumped Me dumps out into the Class V category, with other films that include library scenes but no reel librarian characters.
Have you seen this spy comedy? If so, did you remember this brief library scene or the beautiful library location? Please leave a comment and share!
REEL LIBRARIANS 