That’s a bizarre rule, if you actually look at the people who are acknowledged Action Stars on the male side of things.
I mean, Arnie had a decent number of films with a decent budget and special effects crew (Predator, T2, True Lies, etc.) but nearly all of the great and acknowledged action films of history are cheesy schlock made on a budget. If you watched the entire oeuvre of Jean-Claude Van Damme back-to-back with Michelle Yeoh’s Hong Kong films, they’re pretty comparable. Same for Snypes, Seagal, most of Stallone’s movies, etc. Even a lot of Arnie’s old films are not what you would call “sophisticated”. They’re really crappy and stupid:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wg07Jess5uU
I would argue that a big thing hurting most of the new ladies is that they had too big of a budget. It’s all just CGI and quick cuts.
Wonder Woman succeeded a fair ways because Gadot actually makes some real moves during a few scenes before we get to the end and it switches over to full-CGI for the finale. But, outside of that, the only comic book movie that I can think of where it felt like we were seeing a genuine action scene rather than a gloss, giving the impression but not the substance of an action scene, was in Kick-Ass.
Jason Statham has only ever been in cheesy made-to-a-budget schlock, like Crank. Crank is always going to be more of an action film than Iron Man. Robert Downey Jr. is not an action star, let alone one who would be on a men’s Mount Rushmore of Action. Jason Statham is.
While Aliens is certainly an iconic 80’s action movie that Sigourney headlined, I don’t think Alien or Alien 3 qualifies (most of the action consisted of running away or environmental traps, and both movies were purely in the horror genre). Alien:Resurrection maybe, but other than beating up some mercs with a basketball, I’m struggling to recall any notable action scenes she was a part of, and I don’t think any of her other movie roles qualify either.
Jolie has multiple roles in major blockbuster action movies (Tomb Raider Franchise, Wanted, Mr & Mrs Smith, Salt) that fit.
I don’t disagree with your ranking of RDJ vs Statham, but here’s just some of Statham’s Action movie Box Office, I think calling it all “made-to-a-budget schlock” isn’t really accurate:
Crank: $42.9 million
Crank 2: $34.6 million
Death Race: $75.7 million
Transporter: $43.9 million
Transporter 2: $85.2 million
The Mechanic: $76.3 million
Cobra and Commando are both (to me) hot garbage. I was shocked when I looked up Commando earlier in this thread and saw it had a 6.7 user rating on IMDb. 6.7?! I was expecting low-4s. Cobra is even worse than Commando, and it still manages a respectable 5.7 on IMDb.
I liked Marked for Death a lot, though. Seagal’s earlier films were pretty awesome. His first five (Above the Law, Hard to Kill, Marked for Death, Out for Justice, Under Siege) are all around 6.0 on IMDb, which sounds about right to me.
I totally agree with you when you draw a parallel between Michelle Yeoh’s films and Jean Claude Van Damme’s. That’s a perfect comparison. Much like I wouldn’t even consider JCVD for the male Rushmore, I’m resistant to Yeoh for the same reason.
Crank: $12m (2006) -> $14.3 (2016)
Iron Man: $140m (2008) -> $156m (2016)
Manchester by the Sea: $9m (2016)
Manchester by the Sea starred no A-list actors, it had no explosions, no special effects, was set in a single location, etc. and was definitely produced to be cheap-to-make.
Iron Man is a big budget film starring someone who was, at the time, just short of being an A-list actor.
It’s fair to say that Crank, given that it includes all of the special effects and action sequences, was straining to accomplish what it did given the budget that it had, and that budget is pretty close to the minimum that you need to be shown on a big screen.
Magnificent Warriors, Michelle Yeoh’s first big film was probably made for about $4m. In 2016 dollars, that would be about $8.5m. So it is lower budget than Crank, but that could just be a matter that it was cheaper to do things in Hong Kong, since they were able to use cheap Chinese labor for most of the grunt work. (Likely, less true these days.) My guess would be that they’re about equivalent, it’s just that the emphasis was on different things. Magnificent Warriors spent most of their budget on costumes and sets, Crank spent most of its budget on post-production effects.
In terms of production quality, sure. But Yeoh’s a better actor and more likable, the action pieces are all better since there aren’t as many good martial artists in the West, and the action pieces are all better since they don’t mind letting any of the performers (including the star) risk certain death as part of performing the stunts in Hong Kong.
More importantly, there’s no one who can outcompete her. If we lived in a world that only had Jean-Claude Van Damme, Orlando Bloom, Kevin Bacon, Nick Nolte, and Robert Downey Jr., Jean-Claude would be the only guy on Mt. Rushmore and we would be debating whether to throw Downey on.
Michelle Yeoh is a way better actor than JCVD, no question.
I still haven’t seen any box office numbers for her movies, though. Royal Warriors has been cited twice as a good example, but to me it looks like a cheesy straight-to-video B-movie. What did it gross during its theatrical run?
EDIT: I don’t understand the reference to Manchester by the Sea. That’s a drama, not an action movie.
You would need to compare to other Hong Kong films.
Let’s say that I am arguing that a type of cheese is bland.
To make this point, I compare it to water as 0 and blue cheese as 10, pointing out that the flavor is a 1.2 on that scale.
Yes, water is not a cheese, but it is a thing that we can safely say is flavorless.
Manchester is a minimum budget film with no special effects an no stars to speak of. If you’re doing a full-scale action film, where you’re having to do stunts, have lots of extras who are trained martial artists, lots of redoes due to the complexity of the scenes, lots of time out due to injuries, and a bunch of extra post-production on top of that, and your budget is still closer to Manchester by a long ways than it is to Iron Man, then it’s safe to say that you had a small budget for what you were doing and that you had to stretch every dollar to try and pull it off.
Michelle Williams is an A-list star, and Casey Affleck is almost one as well. Kyle Chandler is a top quality supporting actor. Kenneth Lonergan is a quality director. Not a top-top guy, but rock solid.
The reason the budget is so small is due to the reality of modern filmmaking, where mid-budget dramas can’t get funding anymore. Now all the budget dollars go to big tentpole franchises like superheroes, James Bond, Mission Impossible, etc…
A drama like Manchester by the Sea should be given a budget of $30 million or so, but due to the reality of the industry it only got $12 million. I have no doubt that the stars and director did it more out of love for the craft than for money. I’d be shocked if any of the major players got their quote.
I still don’t understand what it has to do with anything in this thread. If you’re trying to draw a comparison to production value, on a scale of 1 to 10 I’d say a cheesy action flick (action films by JCVD, Michelle Yeoh, etc…) would be somewhere around a 2 while Manchester by the Sea would be (relative to that 2) something like 7 billion.
I think Aliens and Terminator are action movies as well as thrillers/horror movies. Movies aren’t just one genre.
You don’t necessarily need to apply the same rules to male stars as women. Women are given far fewer action roles to begin with. Even these days, look at the Marvel films or Justice League, and note how there are loads more male characters than female. (Unless because they’re superhero movies you don’t count them as action movies too). If there were as few action roles for men as there were for women, then you could include Nolte and Bacon, but that’s not the case. I’m quite happy to hold women to a different standard given that they’re not given the same opportunities to begin with.
I’ll second the nomination for Geena Davis. Yes, she only did a couple of action pictures, but ‘The Long Kiss Goodnight’ was great, and she was great in it. It was just before its time, when it was still hard for females to be taken seriously as action leads.
Another reason I recommend her is because of her natural ability. After she did “The Long Kiss Goodnight” she got interested in archery, and despite never having picked up a bow before, within 2 years she almost made it into the 2000 Olympics (she qualified 24th on the U.S. Olympic archery team, barely missing the cut).
A real action star should have real physical talent. Too many of the female stars mentioned so far really have no real martial arts or fighting ability, and get by with stunt doubles, CGI, and ‘smash cut’ directing designed to hide the fact that they actually don’t know how to do what they are seen doing on screen.
Obvious exceptions: Cynthia Rothrock and Michelle Yeoh. Rothrock is a pretty good martial artist, but not a very good actor. So I’d have to give it to Michelle Yeoh, who is both. Gal Gadot, being ex-Israeli military, also gets credibility points. But she hasn’t made enough movies yet.
Statham, JCVD, Seagal, and many, many martial arts leads wouldn’t be on my male Mount Rushmore for the exact same reasons I’d exclude Rothrock and Yeoh. Schwarzenegger has some cheese, especially earlier in his career (Raw Deal makes Commando look Oscar-worthy), but he’s also got the big movies and staying power. Same for Stallone.
There are certainly fewer women to choose from for a top 4, and it gets really hard after a top 10. Additionally, most of them are fairly recent. Took too long, but better late than never. For men, I could probably get to 10 before even mentioning Seagal and Snipes.
Yes, it is a wide release movie with about as minimal of a budget as a wide release movie can have. That’s the point. There is no further point than that. YamatoTwinkie was arguing that Crank was not a small/stretching its budget film. To disprove that, I would need to find a film that no one would disagree has not just a small budget but the absolute minimum budget that you could expect (at this moment in time) a wide release film to have as a point of reference for the bottom of the scale. This is purely a financial reference.
If you agree that Manchester has about as small of a budget as we can expect a wide release film to have then we are agreed that anything close to $9m is a small budget film and that trying to do something complicated and special effects heavy with a budget near that point would require careful consideration of making the film to the budget.
Crank is a made to the budget film that succeeds on the basis of being silly and schlocky. It’s a completely representative film of the action genre. The grand majority are not high budget and requiring a high budget and high production value goes against action star history.
I know, I just think there’s something huge in being one of the first to do something and being so iconic that she gets put on there simply for being a trailblazer.
I hesitate to use this analogy, but it’s almost like putting Washington on the ACTUAL Mount Rushmore. He didn’t free the slaves or anything like Lincoln, but he was our first president and paved the way for every other one…and that deserves recognition.
For a minute I thought about Sandra Bullock (Demolition Man, Speed) but I don’t think that fits.
As for Jennifer Lawrence, she failed to open Red Sparrow, which wasn’t just an action movie star vehicle for her, but also her first “explicit” movie (her character goes to “whore school,” as she said in an interview) for additional drawing power, and still it was pretty much a flop. ($69 million budget, $47 million domestic, but another $104 million international so they probably made money in the end.) Theron’s Atomic Blonde was far more successful despite not being particularly successful, mainly by virtue of having half the budget of Red Sparrow.
That sounds good, but any definition of “action star” that excludes Arnold Schwarzenegger is a bad definition, I think.
I wouldn’t necessarily agree with that, no. I view action movies as akin to horror movies, and for example the original Saw had a $1.2 million budget, was given a wide release, and grossed $55 million domestic. (Which is why there are so many of them.) One thing I’ll say for the early Saw movies: They felt like they had good production values; definitely not a “B-movie” feel to them. The later ones (4 through 6 or so) were total B-movie cheese.
I’ve officially lost the thread of our conversation. (And your triple negative didn’t help! hehheh.) Let me back up and restate my position.
I don’t think B-movies count for getting on the Mt Rushmore of anything. I also don’t agree that nearly all of the acknowledged great action films of the past were cheesy schlock. Quite the opposite, actually.
Crank has the production value, wide release, and star power of a legitimate A-movie. It was in no way a B-movie despite its modest budget, and it performed admirably, grossing $27 million domestic on a $12 million budget. Grossing over double your budget is an unqualified success.
The movies that put Arnold on the mountain aren’t B-movies either: Conan, Terminator, Predator, Running Man, Total Recall, True Lies; the man was a prolific A-list action star. Probably the greatest ever. Stallone had the Rambo series, and Demolition Man, plus if you squint you could add in Daylight and the Rocky sequels. That’s pretty compelling without any need to bring in his B-movie drivel like Cobra.
By contrast, I think JCVD and Michelle Yeoh’s action flicks all have a B-movie stink about them regardless of the technical prowess on display during their fight sequences. As such, I disregard them out of hand. I could be convinced otherwise with box office numbers, though.
As for the budget discussion, there is a difference between a modest budget like Crank and a shoestring budget. With the former, you have to perform, while with the latter, almost any money you bring in is profit because the movie didn’t cost anything to make and likely had no advertising budget. I think that’s all D_Odds was saying.
Haywire (Protagonist), Fast and Furious 6 (Supporting), In the Blood (Protagonist), Heist (Supporting), Extraction (Supporting), Deadpool (Supporting), Kickboxer: Vengeance (Supporting), Scorched Earth (Protagonist), Daughter of the Wolf (Protagonist)
All of it action movies, no* “Meryl Streep once hunted Kevin Bacon with a bow and arrows in The River Wild so I count her as an action star”* nonsense.
There’s a couple of box office big hits (F&F and DP), and a bunch of duds… but really. in those duds she’s starred alongside the likes of Bruce Willis, Ewan McGregor, Michael Fassbender or Robert DeNiro. Not that doing B movies should really be a point against being included… Hell, Cynthia Rothrock literally did nothing but zero budget stuff.
I’ve googled around a bit, but there’s no (easy) way for me to come up with numbers that would actually mean anything. HK movies typically open in HK and Malaysia and Singapore, for the Chinese market. Not sure if they opened in Mainland China back in the '80s and early '90s. Not even sure about other Asian markets, like the Philippines, whether the movies opened simultaneously or after a delay.
For Yeoh, just tracking down the HK draw, even if I could do that, would miss the Malaysian market. Yeah is actually from Malaysia, which is not an inconsequential factor. Plus, during this time, the HK motion picture world was heavily influenced by the Triads, so I’d trust “official” box office numbers about as much as I’d trust Al Capone’s tax returns.