Modern Adventure/Action Movies: Where Did the Fun Go?

[The_Other_Waldo_Pepper]

@Reno_Nevada

So I just watched the 2014 Hercules at the local dollar theater. This movie is very much in the genre that Evil Captor was talking about. There are witty quips, some of them actually funny, thousands are slaughtered but very little blood is split, the heroes perform incredible feats…I enjoyed it, but I don’t think many people saw it. BoxOfficeMojo gives it a box office of 72M on a budget of 100M.

But it’s got a respectable $223M worldwide, with Japan still to come.

[Justin_Bailey]

@Shalmanese

Christopher Nolan rebooted Batman and all of a sudden, dark meant adult and adult meant serious and a bunch of slavish imitators dutifully went around reimagining every possible franchise in a dark, serious manner. Now that Guardians has done well, in 3 years time, we’ll get a bunch of awful “fun romps” and the cycle continues.

Guardians is riding a wave that started with Iron Man in 2008. “Fun” action movies never went away, not really. They now just share theater space with serious action movies, that make just as much, if not more, money in some cases.

[Evil_Captor]

@theR

Also Red and Red 2, the Men in Black franchise, and probably many more. How about Simon Pegg’s movies, which mostly are comedies with a fair amount of action but no nudity?

Evil Captor, you seem to be suffering from confirmation bias among other things people have pointed out, like comparing old fairly low budget movies to modern premium cable TV shows and big budget movies. Maybe you should compare those old movies to something like Sharknado though I don’t really know since I’ve seen none of them.

Also, lets not forget that the two movies mentioned, Deathstalker and Barbarian Queen both came out after Conan the Barbarian and mainly capitalized on Conan’s success. Conan was in pulp fiction and comic books long before he was ever in a successful movie franchise, so I’d argue it’s the same as it ever was.

Well “Gladiator” sparked a mini-revival of sword and sandal movies and I watched a lot of them, and most of them sucked. One of the best of the bunch, IMHO, was “Age of Treason” about the equivalent of a private investigator involved in conspiracies in ancient Rome. It was lighthearted and funny and smart, but lacked boobies and there wasn’t a lot of violence either. The worst was probably “Arena” which was about female gladiators in the northern provinces of Rome, which HAD boobies but was very stupid and was almost unwatchable because the director was addicted to jump cuts and no shot ever lasted for more than 2 or 3 seconds. There were also some incredibly boring TV movies such as “Caeser” and “Helen of Troy” and some kind of dark and gloomy adventure movies, such as “The Eagle” and “Centurion.” Bleh on all of them, except “Age of Treason.”

[Evil_Captor]

@Reno_Nevada

So I just watched the 2014 Hercules at the local dollar theater. This movie is very much in the genre that Evil Captor was talking about. There are witty quips, some of them actually funny, thousands are slaughtered but very little blood is split, the heroes perform incredible feats…I enjoyed it, but I don’t think many people saw it. BoxOfficeMojo gives it a box office of 72M on a budget of 100M.

Yeah, I missed “Hercules,” couldn’t get my family to go with me after blowing all my cred on getting them to go see the “The Immortals” … another reason I hate that movie.

[Evil_Captor]

@Miller

You seem to be comparing z-grade films from the '80s with contemporary flagship network productions. That seems to be a flaw in your methodology. I think a more useful comparison would be between stuff like Spartacus with, say, The Thorn Birds, and stuff like Deathstalker with the output of Asylum films.

I have some doubts about the veracity of that Wiki. Here’s an interesting quote from it:

Production

The Asylum work schedule is typically four hours from decision to create a title to finished product, with the script finished within four to six minutes.[5]

From idea to finished work in four hours, eh?

[JKilez]

@Evil_Captor

From idea to finished work in four hours, eh?

Have you seen their films? That sounds about right.

@GuanoLad

It might also be the beginning of a turn. I watched Edge of Tomorrow, and the violence is not very graphic, compared to most action movies anyway, and has a lot of humour, even about the macabre nature of the repeating deaths. I think that means filmmakers are also starting to get frustrated by the grim movies of late. If so, it will make me very happy.

I will second this. While there are not any one-liners in Edge of Tomorrow, there is a lot of situational humor. It easily could have been played grim and realistic with just a few editing changes, but they allowed it to be a little lighthearted and silly and I think the movie was stronger for it.

[Miller]

@JKilez

Have you seen their films? That sounds about right.

Maybe a bit long.

Actually, their steampunk Sherlock movie was kind of fun.