I like to
consider myself a “movie connoisseur”, because I have seen a lot of movies in
my life. It’s mostly what I do in my free time. Normally, I like to watch at
least two movies a day, preferably ones that I’ve never seen before. Comedy,
drama, horror, I don’t discriminate. BUT, there is one genre of movie that I
can never get enough of. You might call it my “guilty pleasure” (and I’d be ok
with that), but I LOVE to watch really bad action movies! Granted, I love
really good action movies more, but there’s a soft spot in my heart for those
action films that are just…so…terrible.
You might
be wondering what a “bad action movie” actually is. Let’s play a little game:
Is Terminator a bad action movie? No,
that’s a science fiction film mostly, but there is one factor that adds
“action”, and that’s Mr. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Arnie has made lots and lots of
bad action movies, including Commando,
The Running Man, Red Heat, and most recently, The
Last Stand (all of which I have seen, and I’m proud of it). As bad as Arnie
can be, his films aren’t nearly as bad as a lot of his friends.
Can you
think of any other action movies? How about Cobra?
Or what about Demolition Man? Over The Top? Yes to all three! And what
do these films have in common? You guessed it: They all star Sylvester
Stallone. I have seen every Sly movie made, and I love most of them, but even I
have to admit that a lot of them are just plain awful. Sly has made a name for
himself doing the same shtick for years, and he still makes a killing off of
them (just look at The Expendables films;
they’re in the process of filming the third one NOW!). For more examples of
some bad action films, just look up anything made by Jean-Claude Van Damme or
Chuck Norris.
Why am I
talking so much about really bad action movies? Well, if you missed my last
post, it’s because I’m making an action short film for my Capstone project! In
order to help me focus on the task at hand, I’ve been doing a lot of research
in the realm of action tropes and clichés. The goal is to integrate what I’ve
learned so far into my story. The story, so far, is halfway finished. One bit
of research that I found was an excerpt from James Welsh’s collection of essays
on film genre. Welsh explains how there are 3 main points of an action film that
identifies as just that, “an action movie”:
1.
The Main Protagonist
2.
The Director/Style
3.
The Producer
The main
character of such films is normally “a tough, potentially brutal, sometimes
cynical, often laconic, preferably muscular, oversized hero” (Welsh, p.170). A
lot of these action heroes are often forgettable and normally “expendable” to
the audience, because they are almost always this same, muscular character
described above (Unless the character is a lot more in depth, therefore ruling
it out of the “bad action movie” genre). The only way we can remember such a
character is by the action star portraying him: Arnie, Sly, Bruce Willis, Chuck
Norris, etc.
An action
film is oftentimes recognizable by the style in which it was built. Styles are
often based on the directors of the movie. The Lethal Weapon films would more than likely not done as well as they
did if not for Richard Donner directing all four of them. Their style was so
similar, and the formula was repeated so much, that it’s actually quite difficult
to distinguish them as individual films. Other films include those made by John
Woo (martial arts master) or Jerry Bruckheimer (action film director/producer
guru of the 90’s).
Lastly, an
action film would not be able to gain its publicity without its producer. Some
action franchises would be nowhere without their producers, case in point James
Bond. Every single James Bond movie begins with some form of the name
“Broccoli” at the beginning of the main credits, whether it’s “Cubby” Broccoli
from 1962-1995 or his daughter Barbara from 1995-present. The Broccoli family
has been in charge of the cinematic Bond franchise from the very beginning, and
it looks like they haven’t slowed down yet.
What I’ve
been trying to get at this whole stinking post is the fact that an action movie
is just an average action movie if it has the same stuff as any other action
movie. What makes it BAD is when you put in an action star who’s “too old for
this shit”, a director who has made his mark making a lot of action flicks, a
producer willing to risk it all just to do it all over again, and finally, an
audience group that doesn’t care how bad it is, they just want to see some
gunfire, car chases, and explosions.
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