Basically, if any sort of action movie introduces a giant person on the antagonists side, the film has to have the main character fist fight him at some point in the movie in order for it to pay off.
I’ve noticed a lot of movies recently do the subversion of this, they introduce a big guy but then have the main character just shoot him which is very unsatisfying. Skyfall had a really big guy who Bond just shoots in the middle of an action sequence. Mission Impossible III had a really tall guy who dies in an explosion. Countdown had Kane from WWE but just has him shoot somebody during an action sequence. It really pisses me off.
Yes, this, often, but the big guy is only the Dragon if they have some characterisation or serve as The Heavy, the rest of the time they’re just The Brute. The two sets of Brute and Dragon overlap (e.g. Jaws in the Bond films) - but the Dragon doesn’t need to be a Brute, nor the Brute a Dragon.
e.g. - in Hot Fuzz, Michael (Yarp!) is The Brute, but not The Dragon (that’s Skinner)
I hate the whole cliché. I’m not interested in Good Guy faces increasingly formidable (and increasingly higher ranked) Bad Guys and a final confrontation with the ultimate bad dude at the end. Go make another movie, dammit, we’ve all seen that one to death.
I like when it’s subverted. Like in Equilibrium, where the antagonist is built up to be an expert martial artist, and then gets killed in a flash during the final showdown.
It also works well in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World as it directly parodies video game bosses. Right down to the penultimate boss being an “evil” pixel swap of your character.