Action movies are definitely struggling these days. We are right smack in the middle of the summer blockbuster season, the time of year when action movies should be their biggest and best, and it has been pretty disappointing to say the least. Both The Fall Guy and Furiosa did lousy box office business to start the summer off. And that’s unfortunate, because they were probably the best two movies released in the genre so far this year. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes was good, but when not just the action but the entire movie is GCI, it’s almost like the movie is in its own genre. Very few known actors on screen here, and almost all of them in motion capture suits.
Getting back to traditional action flicks, Bad Boys 4 did nicely, but wasn’t exactly smart or original or creative. At least it had decent action though, with it’s cool use of drones. And then we got Beverly Hills Cop 4, released straight to Netflix, and by far the worst of the bunch. Using those five movies alone, we can take a sample of what is happening with the genre, and use it to draw some conclusions.
First, let’s take a step back, and look at how all of this has evolved over the years. It’s worth noting where the action movie came from and when it was at its peak. The answer to both of those questions, is the eighties and nineties. That’s where the genre really started to take off, with A-List movie stars like Arnold Schwartzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, and Bruce Willis launching some of the biggest action movie franchises of all time. Before the eighties, we had westerns and then a couple of crime movies with car chases from the seventies (Bullet, the French Connection.) We also had some sci-fi flicks. Star Wars, Alien, and Blade Runner. All from the late seventies or early eighties.
And then by the eighties, it was on. From Bruce’s Die Hard to Sly’s Rambo, we got the terrorist action movie. And from Arnold’s Terminator to Total Recall and Robocop, we. got the sci-fi action movie. We even got Harrison Ford, from Star Wars, branding out into his own franchise as Indiana Jones. Action movies became the stuff of legend with one after another doing so well they often spawned whole massive franchises.
This carried on all the way through the nineties. Movies like the Rock, Con Air, Face Off, and The Long Kiss Goodnight took the genre to the next level. Suddenly we weren’t dealing with the beefed up action movie star as much as the wild and crazy stunts and unique plots. And yes, there were tons of Die Hard rip offs (Die Hard on a plane – Passenger 57, Die Hard on a ship – Under Siege, Die Hard in a Hockey Arena – Sudden Death,) but it was the more creative action movies by directors like John Woo, and yes, even Michael Bay, that brought it to the next level. Say what you want about Bay as a filmmaker today (and you wouldn’t be wrong,) but there’s no denying that The Rock is a B movie masterpiece.
And then something happened. It was the early 2000s. A whole new century. The Lord of the Rings series, released starting in 2001 dominated. The first Bourne movie, released in 2002 offered something different that audiences were clearly hungry for. Between those two movies alone, which were the starts to their own series’, action movies began to feel different. They now fell into one of two categories. Either sci-fi fantasy epic (like the Matrix movies,) or the gritty, realistic thriller action movie, (Bourne.)
The Bourne movies, in particular, offered a brand new direction, that made the more cartoonish action movie directors (Bay and Woo,) have to take a backseat. Bay got relegated to making Transformers movies and Woo pretty much disappeared from Hollywood. The result of Bourne was that everything got grittier. A new look to James Bond with Daniel Craig being the darkest Bond of them all. A new look to Batman with Christopher Nolan creating an ugly, realistic, lived-in Gotham and with Batman being realized in ways that were darker than ever. Even Mission Impossible movies got a new style. Just look at the first three Mission films compared to everything that came after those to see the difference. And yes, John Woo was part of the first wave of those films, having directed the second, and most cartoonish of all MI films to date.
But now we were into the gritty action movie phase. Bourne, Bond, and Mission Impossible were putting out movies left and right. Every year it seemed like there was a new version of at least one, and often two of those movies. The 2000s were the time of the spy thriller and the gritty action movie. Nolan’s best two Batman films came in that decade. And then we got Marvel. The year was 2008, and we moved onto superhero action movies, starting with Robert Downey Jr (an unlikely action movie star,) playing Iron Man.
Superhero movies now dominated for the better part of a decade. Marvel even found a way to tap into the sci-fi element, the same way Star Wars did, with their Guardians of the Galaxy films. But then audiences got tired of those movies too (in large part because Marvel stopped tying their movies into each other, and oversaturated the market with no clear plan, often putting out about four movies in a year, plus streaming shows on Disney Plus.)
And at the same time that Marvel was reaching its end in popularity, streaming services were on the rise. Suddenly the only places willing to take a chance on big budget action movies with unproven IPs that were based on original content were the big streamers. Studios were only willing to pony up and commit to big budget action movies if there was a built in fan base from previous films. It became all about the sequel. And that’s a tough sandbox to play in, because most franchises get worst over time. Especially the further away you get from the original source material. There are very few sequels that are better than the original (Terminator 2 and Aliens,) only one third movie that has got the first beat (Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,) and absolutely no fourth movies. In fact, if you think about it, the last time a sequel or remake was better than the original film (and remakes like The Thing and the Fly are included here,) was 1989 with that third Indiana Jones film. Now that’s a long, long time ago at this point.
And that brings us to today. Where are we with action movies now. The John Wick films launched us into a new stratosphere of physical stunt work at a time where most action movies are CGI. Just look at the two recent Mad Max movies… Fury Road vs Furiosa. Same director, nine years apart, and a clear difference in stunt work vs CGI. And that goes to show you that physical stunts aren’t being appreciated as much anymore.
It’s a new day and age we’re living in. Between the drone shots in Bad Boys 4 and the CGI takeover in Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, clearly action is computer driven these days. The time of Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, and Jet Li is as much a thing of the past as the time of Chaplin and Keaton. Thank god we still have John Wick kicking around, or else the art of physically doing stunt work yourself would be gone all together. Especially after the box office results of something like the Fall Guy. The end result is that there is still good action out there these days, but the stunts will never quite look the same. It’s ok, though. As long as we keep learning and evolving and making fun creative movies (look at how John Wick films not only demonstrate great action, but also world building,) it will still be great.