5 Ways Hollywood Action Movies Are Changing (For The Worse)

There used to be a time when the word "Schwarzenegger" printed atop a movie poster was enough to force 80 percent of the world to buy a ticket. Even Batman & Robin headlined with the promise of everyone's favorite Austrian monolith smothered in blue pixie makeup -- his face and name dominating all promotional material and even the credits, despite the fact that he was by no means the main character.

Warner Bros.
Something something ice something whatever.

That was in no way unusual, because action stars like Schwarzenegger, Stallone, Van Damme, and Steven "Adorable Hair" Seagal used to be some of the biggest stars in the world. But then something happened: The new millennium gave birth to the superhero genre, and suddenly having turbo muscles and a delightful name didn't matter as much anymore.

That sounds counterintuitive, because Marvel Studios' Chris collection is an assortment of enormous dudes, but the most popular character in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is Iron Man, played by Robert Downey Jr. Before Iron Man, the most financially successful superhero films were the Spider-Man trilogy, wherein Spider-Man was played by an in-shape (but by no means cybernetically biceped) Tobey Maguire. We don't need our action stars to look like alien gladiators anymore -- we just care about the character they're playing. To be fair, it certainly didn't hurt Guardians Of The Galaxy when Chris Pratt transformed from a dancing watermelon into Astronaut Freakzilla, but we would've loved him either way.

NBCUniversal Television Distribution
"They're called love handles for a reason."

The point is, audiences aren't paying to see Jackie Chan or Tom Cruise movies -- we're going out to see the new Captain America and Iron Man films. We won't even go see Robert Downey Jr. films, as Hollywood quickly discovered in the wake of Iron Man's success. You could argue that superhero movies are different, because the main characters wear identity-obscuring costumes, and the original Batman films rotated lead actors like a weirdly specific swingers party, but the same thing happened to movies where the main character doesn't wear a mask (incidentally, almost no member of the current slate of Marvel Studios movies wears a mask for longer than three minutes per film). Star recognition is no longer a deal-breaker for audiences. The Bourne Legacy dumped its titular character and lead actor, Matt Damon, and still killed it at the box office.

Universal Pictures
It's not clear if the tagline is talking about the characters or their plans for the series.

No doubt the same will be said about the upcoming Jason Statham-less Transporter film, starring some random bozo from Game Of Thrones. This isn't something that can be blamed on miserly studio heads not wanting to cough up the coin to keep actors from leaving franchises, either -- we as an audience have spent the past several years teaching them not to give a shit, because we go see the movies anyway. (Did anyone even notice that Shia LaBeouf left the Transformers series?) It's even affected salary and creative control disputes -- when Ed Norton hit a negotiation wall with Marvel about returning to play the Hulk in The Avengers, he was recast without a second thought, because Marvel knew their audience had an attachment to the Hulk and not Edward Norton. The same thing happened to Terrence Howard -- he was replaced by Don Cheadle for Iron Man 2 and 3 after he and Marvel couldn't reach an agreement over money.

There are always exceptions (Robert Downey Jr. and Chris Pratt are balls of charisma that are likely to be difficult to replace without upsetting audiences once their respective contracts run out), but there is an entire industry of professional wrestlers and MMA fighters (and even high school football stars) waiting in the wings to step in and take over The Transporter series for way less than Statham or the Game Of Thrones guy.

This is a big reason why ...

We're not saying that Liam Neeson made the wrong decision (it's hard to criticize a man who just made $20 million for Taken 3). Much like the song-and-dance versatility required of actors in the early days of cinema, today's stars need to be able to dive through the air and punch people. It's an easy transition for veteran action heroes like Denzel Washington and Keanu Reeves, but ever since Neeson brought back the "aging baby boomers revenge" genre, we've had an influx of old guys like Kevin Costner and Sean Penn trying their hands at violent heroism, because drama clearly isn't working out for them anymore.

What about getting hugeified (or "swole up," in medical terms)? Surely middle-aged men and women can't be expected to suddenly start a bodybuilding career just to look like believable action stars. To answer that question, take a look at Hugh Jackman in X-Men vs. Hugh Jackman in The Wolverine:

20th Century Fox
Go ahead. Bask in it.

He absolutely went from "burly" to "inhuman Adonis," but Jackman didn't bulk up so much as eliminate almost all of his body fat before building up muscle. It's a trick first popularized during the shooting of Fight Club, when Brad Pitt's trainer realized that instead of building bulk, you could simply eliminate 100 percent of the actor's body fat to achieve the same "space lizard Hercules" look. This is how we went from barrel-chested Mr. Universes to tight-abbed superhumans, a look that is just as impressive yet relatively easy to obtain. Consequently, starving, washboard abs has to be a tool within reach on the resume of every mainstream actor if they want to maximize their career potential. Everyone needs to be able to climb aboard a superhero franchise at a moment's notice, because action-adventure is the biggest genre in the entire world.

This is somewhat ironic, considering that ...

And here's Jackie in The Spy Next Door (an American film):

Lionsgate

See the difference? The result of masking the action over many disorienting and fast-pace cuts ironically makes everything less exciting -- the impressiveness of the choreography is completely overpowered by the editor's seemingly short attention span. The obvious reason for this is that not everyone is Jackie Chan, so the cuts are used to hide stunt shots and boring choreography. But once you notice it, this phenomenon makes every modern action sequence as lackluster and weightless as watching an action sequence in a video game cutscene.

For example, the new Captain America has a great scene where he beats up a whole gaggle of buzzcut motheruckers in an elevator. Right away we know that Brooklyn Blondie will pummel his way to a daring escape (because he's Captain America and he's signed on for three more sequels), so the only relevant question is: How awesome will this be? But instead of witnessing an impressively choreographed elevator fight, we get 70 different editing cuts in the span of 70 seconds of fighting (not an exaggeration, we actually counted), resulting in a different shaky-cam angle for every one second of action. In the end, the scene is still fun, but nowhere near what it could have been.

Now, compare that to the hammer fight in 2003's Oldboy:

That fight sequence is so ass-blastingly off-the-chain that it took three days to get right. That's a boatload of really difficult work, but it ultimately paid off, as it is one of the more iconic modern movie fight scenes, made all the more impressive by the fact that it is a single three-minute shot, which required actor Choi Min-sik to perform all of the choreography without using a stunt double.

Speaking of which ...

Yep, Damon spent one whole year of precious, irrecoverable life practicing for fight scenes that we can barely see, when he could've been out getting drunk with Casey Affleck or something. It makes you wonder why an actor would bother honing their "wailing on other dudes" skills if the editors are just going to pave it over with high-octane bullshit later. Or if the audience even cares about actors doing stunts in the first place. Let's look at two recent examples of the elegant art of Russian-punching: The Equalizer and John Wick:

Columbia Pictures, Summit Entertainment
These films killed more Russians than World War II.

I audibly enjoyed both of these films in theaters. Coming out within a month of each other, both plots were generally the same: An aging ex-killer gets thrown back into the game after violently insane Russians wrong an innocent friend. In The Equalizer it's the beating of a teenage Chloe Grace Moretz, and in John Wick it's the murder of his adorable puppy. If I had to graph a moral ratio, one beaten teenager seems more or less on par with a tiny dog skeleton.

There's only two major differences in terms of how these films were made. One is that while both actors did their own stunts, only Keanu Reeves is the kind of scruffy maniac to push his body through 16 hours of arduous fight choreography for John Wick. The man is famously relentless when it comes to doing his own stunts.

Despite the fact that Keanu put way more effort into his role, the second difference between the two films is that John Wick made half as much money as The Equalizer, even though it carries a better rating than The Equalizer on Rotten Tomatoes.

Obviously there are a million reasons a movie might do better than another. However, the effort an actor puts in to make the action look believable is apparently not one of them.

In fact, aside from Lone Survivor (which is based on true events), not one of the biggest action films of last year featured anything less than a deified hyper-slayer of men who is never once in any real danger. The ending fight in John Wick was two minutes of Keanu Reeves beating the few remaining years of life out of some rickety old crime boss. Non-Stop features a catastrophic plane explosion that every good guy survives. Edge Of Tomorrow is about a guy in a mech-suit who literally cannot die, and even Jack "I'm just an analyst" Ryan went from a shaky newcomer to murder-chimp stuntman in a matter of minutes.

Paramount Pictures
"Analyze this! Get it? Like the movie? Oh, I broke your arm."

Maybe it's the CGI stunt doubles or superhero films, or perhaps it's the midlife violence crisis of the Taken series -- but with few exceptions, American action heroes have been reduced to unshakable killdozers mowing the opposition like they're in a Jack Slater sequel. No longer are we required to feel tension or connect with an "everyman" like John McClane or Sarah Connor. Every recent character resume has had "retired murderer" scrawled across the top with a bone pencil. Action movies like Taken are essentially slasher films where we root for the immortal masked killer as he lumbers from sequel to sequel, destroying helpless people in hilarious ways as we delight in their inability to stop him.

And yes, I'm well aware that we've had unkillable action heroes since the '70s -- but it would be nice for them to at least keep pretending that's not the case.

Dave once punched a guy so hard he turned into a gravestone. Send him your affection on Twitter.

Be sure to also check out 5 Badass Real Fugitives Who Put Action Movies To Shame and The 6 Most Inexplicable Skills Displayed In Action Movies.