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I just turned 40. Last week I saw Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol, and afterwards I kind of felt that an era was over. 20 years ago, I would probably have loved a film like that. Not now though. I kind of half-slept through it and didn't really find it entertaining at all. Maybe it was, but not for me. I think I'm too old for a straight action movie. I have had the same feeling for quite a few years.
Thriller, drama, horror and comedy are all mostly still entertaining. I guess I have to stick to those.
Opinions?
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Posted: |
Feb 27, 2015 - 12:25 PM
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By: |
Recordman
(Member)
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Generic titles featuring mainly explosions on earth, car chases, car crashes, explosions in space, cgi creature armies at war,anything with dragons, invulnerable comic book heroes, ultra loud soundtracks to mask non-stories and blah, blah, blah. When action is the entire premise of the film, read a book.
"adjective: vapid
offering nothing that is stimulating or challenging.
"tuneful but vapid musical comedies"
synonyms: insipid, uninspired, colorless, uninteresting, feeble, flat, dull, boring, tedious, tired, unexciting, uninspiring, unimaginative, uninvolving, lifeless, tame, vacuous, bland, trite, jejune"
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Posted: |
Feb 27, 2015 - 12:28 PM
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By: |
betenoir
(Member)
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I'm far older than you, and mindless action movies, which just string one action scene after another with no meaningful plot and typically a lack of common sense, let alone intelligence, are boring. However, occasionally someone makes one with a halfway reasonable plot, that does not ignore the simplest laws of physics, has a bit of character development beyond the cartoonish, and where the action scenes move and enhance the plot instead of the other way around. In other words, a script written with an adult mentality, not the more common ones that seem to be done by junior-high schoolers, can be good. Too rare, alas. Special effects can greatly enhance a film, but when the film is strictly a sequence of special effects for their own sake and nothing more, it generally sucks.
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Posted: |
Feb 27, 2015 - 12:39 PM
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By: |
Ado
(Member)
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There is something that happens just by watching a lot of movies, and the older they are, generally, the more you have seen, especially if you love movies. So just by that it is obvious that you are going to feel less impressed the more that you watch.
If you were around for Die Hard, Lethal Weapon, Blade Runner and that kind, well those movies have been used as endless templates. Donner and MCTiernan fundamentally changed action movies.
To other degrees Tony Scott and Ridley Scott, and to worse degrees, Michael Bay.
I think they kind of hit the wall with action movies the past few years, they pushed as far as possible with CG enhancements and improbabilities and see how much the audience wants. I think it has flattened out where a hunger for more narrative is coming back, and there is an actual push back against CG overkilled effects. JJ is using a lot of practical model effects in the new Star Wars.
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Everybody's too old for some sort of action movies.
As Coburn says above, does the action serve the story, the message, the art, or IS the action all there is?
Recently I came across the old smallsword duel between Stu Granger and Mel Ferrer in 'Scaramouche'. It's on YouTube if anyone wants to look. Extreme elegance in extreme action. The athleticism of leaping over balconies, bouncing on divans, swinging on ropes, very fast fencing .... actually, though there's three times as much physical violence in a modern action movie, very few mainstream actors will attempt these things without stuntmen, and very few have understanding enough insurance companies that would let them. You're seeing more, thanks to special effects, slow motion, CGI, and slick editing, but you're also seeing LESS that is not illusion and real feats of skill and danger.
So even with pure action, you're only having the illusion. Health and Safety people on many movies are remarkably reluctant to let someone fall off a horse. Who can blame them?: I wouldn't want to do it, nor would you, but once upon a time people did these things routinely.
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Never.
So you think you will enjoy a commercial action movie as a 70-year old?
Not me.
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Happy belated 40th Jon!
Thanks! A couple of months ago now though...
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Posted: |
Mar 1, 2015 - 10:20 AM
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By: |
The Thing
(Member)
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For me, it depends on the movie.
A good action movie will always be a good action movie, even if you have to adjust your mind to accept the limitations of when it was made. When real stuntmen were involved, you knew it was "real".
It's only recently with the CGI overload, that film makers sometimes lose the plot (literally). Once believability goes out of the window, then if I don't really enjoy it now, then obviously won't in the future. The action needs to impress on a narrative level, and not just on a visual level.
Die Hard 5 or the new Star Treks have too many scenes with cartoon characters doing impossible acrobatics and surviving multiple poundings. Gamer (that Gerard Butler film) sent me to sleep in the cinema, because it was just wall to wall action (like a brickwalled CD). I found The Bourne Legacy similarly dull, and to a lesser degree The Bourne Ultimatum before it. Matrix Revolutions was dull because it was too much CGI action and a dull plot.
It seems a fair few of my examples are late entries in a successful film series (Die Hard 5, Bourne Legacy, Matrix 3), and it's obvious that actions scenes were becoming more prevalent and lengthy to try and cover a weak plot. They need to top the last movie, usually by adding more action scenes as "that's what everyone really wants". Then, of course, they've got to some up with something original that hasn't been seen before, so that's when action scenes stray into the realms of fantasy and cartoon unbelievability. And with less time for the plot to breathe, you lose some of the charisma of the actors/characters, and end up not caring what happens to them because you know they'll be alright. They just end up becoming a puppet on the CGI designer's computer screen.
So I think that the action movies which have a good balance between action and plot will have much more longevity than a lot of the recent ones.
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