I just watched an action movie, name withheld. It was OK but I realised I could anticipate the entire plot as it rolled out. So let’s plot an action movie – no cliché to be left unturned. The setup:
Hero – American, he (and it is a he) is wronged due to his inability to accept corrupt authority or do the wrong thing
Baddie – foreign, maybe non specific “Asian”, almost certainly with a duplicitous Frenchman
Hero’s girlfriend – lovely, but homely, probably professional e.g. doctor, teacher
Setting – contained space e.g building, office block, shopping mall, café, factory, plus freeways where you can drive really fast at any time of the day (especially rush hour)
Baddie’s objective – downfall of America and / or baddie world domination (let’s face it the two are hardly mutually exclusive)
At the end the lead baddie fights the hero who takes a terrible beating but……
You fill in the gaps. (…through gritted teeth..) no cliché gets left behind…
Over to you.
This is rather timely because I’ve been binge-watching The Last Ship, which has all those Michael Bay hallmarks. Pure nonsense, but boy am I hooked. Several things I’ve noticed.
When a granite-jawed action man wishes to express approval of another ditto, he looks at him fixedly for several seconds, then simply nods very slightly, and gets a very slight nod in return. Massive savings on dialogue there.
Women are just as handy with guns, bombs, helicopters etc as men are, and will kill you soon as look at you. Service women go in for very tight buns (on their heads, Moose), while non-service women along for the ride go for pony-tails. They all have stupendous chests and wear tight t-shirts.
No sex. Ever. Just wordless exchange of glances.
Villains, as you say, generic SE Asian – although in series 1/2 the real villains were standard-issue Jason Statham-style cockernee, which made a change. (Played by actual Brits too.)
Kill ratio of villains to heroes about 100/1. Occasionally a hero (ie American) will get shot in some non-life-threatening area, but will recover quickly. Even more occasionally one will get killed…cue sobbing patriotic West-Wing-style music.
That’s all I can think of for now.
Is the hero a cop? If he is, he has to burst into the police chief’s office, shouting and screaming that he cannot, in all good conscience, do his job in a corrupt police department and he will threaten to resign. He will say “Goddam it, chief!” at some point in the proceedings and turn in his badge and revolver. The chief will say “… but you’re the best cop we got!” He will explain how he’s being pressured by city hall and that the situation is out of his hands. The hero will shout some more, pick up a chair and slam it down, pound his fist on the desk and then the chief will say “OK, you got 48 hours!”
Cop’s partner will be working his )or her) last week before retirement. Uh oh …
..better order the flag-draped coffin now.
He’s gonna die a hero (not as much of a hero as the lead, of course) and the lead is going to get angry/sad about it.
There’s a definite history of nasty British villains in US action movies. Our character actors are skilled in making the best of such roles.
Yeah – Jack Douglas, Derek Guyler, Arthur Mullard…
…I may have dreamt those films
Brit villains must be posh. Cockernees are good only for minor baddies, and usually incompetent. The Irish are either fearsome heavies or goodies with a liberal dose of darkness, template Liam Neesom. Scots are always goodies and always clever, but only in supporting roles. The Welsh never appear, or, if they do, in comedy roles.
Anyone but a few weeks away from a happy occasion – retirement, holiday, wedding, bhamitzva – is going to die.
If the hero suffers any physical privation (beaten up by goons, standing under a collapsing building) he just has to turn his head slightly sideways till he (and the audience) hears a click, then he will be good as gold again.
Oh, and if he doesn’t outrun an explosion, it will be because he walks away from it in slow motion.
Hero needs to be struggling with some demons. If not alcohol or drug addiction, then in a joke worthy of Naked Gun, we should see him actually struggling against a wrestling hold performed by two small people dressed as the devil.
In terms of structure:
Prologue – we meet our hero doing what he does best – running and shooting, usually – in a situation unrelated to the main story. He trades cheeky quips with his support team. So we know he’s tough as nails but kind of goofy too.
Act 1 – Set up. Back at HQ, the team receive an assignment from a shady government official. A charismatic villain has done something. The team dashes into action. A woman with a very serious job, usually an FBI officer or pathologist, gazes adoringly at the hero like she’s sixteen or something.
Act 2 – Reversal. But it all goes wrong! This villain is more powerful than we thought. The hero is captured while saving the silly woman who’s gone and got tricked, and the villain explains his dastardly scheme to him. A sidekick dies.
Act 3 – Redemption. Quipping like a motherfucker, the hero escapes with the girl and a chase ensues. After 30 minutes of explosions and very annoying music, there is a showdown. But before we can finish there has to be a twist. The villain is… the shady government official’s brother! Then he dies in an unnecessarily complicated way.
Epilogue – The hero’s broken bones and concussions are magically repaired, and the team gaze adoringly as he and the girl walk away down an empty street, and the camera rises high above the waking city.
… and the girl will say something like “that was a hell of a night” or “you really know how to show a girl a good time” and the hero will have the last word with something glib like “you got that right.”
Fade to black, cue credits. Caption and voiceover: “the summer blockbuster to end all summer blockbusters. Coming to a theatre near you in 2018 – “Cliche Action Movie 2 – A New Beginning”
Sam Raimi’s Rules;
1. The innocent must suffer
2. The guilty must be punished
3. You must taste blood to be a man.
Ooh heck.
3. Does getting a nosebleed count?
May I refer the collective to the pilot episode of ‘Taken’, the TV series just started on Amazon Prime. It’s as if they had read this thread before it was written.
The movie version is a classic of the genre. See also “Olympus has fallen”.
During the course of the film the hero & the baddie have 3 fights, the baddie kicks the shit out of him in the first 2, but what happens in the third? Yep, the hero bashes him up big style.
And while I am here, if the crime involves buying/selling/smuggling narcotics, then it is tested by using a wet finger & tasting it. No forensic lab for our hero.
…at which point he should look up and say, “Well, it isn’t icing sugar…but beyond that I don’t have a friggin clue”
The hero has to hugely disappoint/upset/alienate wife/significant other/kids but can’t say why leading to them rejecting him until much later, preferably final scene when they realise they misjudged his actions and its love all around.
You forgot the compulsory techno porn. Somebody has an unfeasibly efficient real-time database that can track down anyone in the world. The hero is able to overcome this with the help of a teenage hacker using a beat up laptop.
I refer you back to The Last Ship. Said ship under multiple missile attack via drone. No more anti-drone missiles? No problem, simply hack into satellite guiding the drone and direct it into the sea. Job done.