20 Tired Action Movie Tropes (That Still Have A Lot of Life In Them)

Action movies are kind of an obsession here at Cracked, yet established genres also entail their own established tropes, and those can become rather annoying. In the case of action movies, we are all tired of big blue sky beams, villains divulging their plans before succeeding, or henchmen with bad aim. Yet for a while now, action movies have been distancing themselves from these sort of clichés, usually unsuccessfully, or even failing in breaking through their ossified plot structures, as it happens with Marvel movies and their known third-act problems.

Here we try something different. Instead of mocking action movie tropes, we focus on the ones that can indeed be sorta tired, yet still have some life in them. We’re talking about the sort of tropes that can still cause goosebumps when properly used, the ones that still feature prominently in good action movies — and for good reason. These are tropes that just need some tweaking, some creativity, some loving team behind them, and can still drive good action movies, as we will see with concrete examples. What will these tropes and examples be? Will we include Zack Snyder movies? Again, we’re talking about good tropes, so the answer is obviously no.