probably by keeping budgets low so those movies make a ton of money even if they are nobody’s favorite movies.
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I have half an idea forming in my mind, but has anyone already written something intelligent about this subgenre that John Wick has spawned. Wickalikes
i think i will be annoyed by the wick style movies sometime but after years of fully incompetent action filmmaking knowing that you can get like a C+ on a regular basis is a huge improvement
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yeah, that is the thing. these are all clearly derivative (if not just using some of the same production people), but it’s nice to have a steady stream of “comptently made action with random actors as stars” to just put on when I want to chill out. It’s certainly more relieving than the steady stream of comic book that seems to be the rest of action in theaters.
If action movies of the 00s were defined by the Matrix and action movies of the 20s will be defined by John Wick, what’s the action definition of the 10s? There’s the DTV renaissance, but like, in Hollywood. Is it the action-comedy - Tropic Thunder, Pineapple Express, 21 Jump Street, Kickass, Zombieland, Keanu?
Actually looking these up, all but Keanu were in the 08-10 range - a microgenre. I guess Marvel ate up all the cultural real estate previously taken up by Guys With Guns movies…
Yeah, unfortunately it just is Marvel, which could be generously seen as an extension of the action/comedy thing of the late 00s, but that is also being way too generous.
Also, The Other Guys
As I sit and think there was a long tail of action comedies thru the 10s I guess. Melissa McCarthy was in 3 of them (!!) if you count Ghostbusters. Kevin James had that “unlikely spy” one. That Sam Jackson/Ryan Reynolds vehicle.
They also kept pumping out Mission Impossible movies, but I guess Tom Cruise is basically his own studio at this point…
i think the answer is that it really does not neatly divide into calendar decades.
like john wick was 2014 and the first handful of wicklikes atomic blonde/hotel artemis were 17/18.
taken was pretty influential to 10s action (for the worse) and that was 2008
and that’s not even mentioning that fast five was like 2011 with that whole franchise as a factor for the last two decades
what we’re seeing now is sort of just the early 20s rsponse to the success of wick as franchise i suppose it’s too early to say this is the style of the 20s
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ah shit how did i forget the fast movies? yeah.
this is why i don’t make lists; i forget a lot.
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I mean yeah sure I was just using it as a shorthand. I’m interested in the throughlines: genre speciation.
Damn I can’t believe I forgot about Taken! Definitely the last “dad loves to watch this whenever he’s bored at 10pm” hallmark before John Wick.
john wick = taken + the transporter and we should all be disgusted by how well that simple equation worked out
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can we have karen gillan not do an american accent though. it’s not a bad accent it’s just…slightly off, and distracts me greatly
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the number of times i’ve been like “are they doing … is that Australian? Kiwi? British?? oh right South African”
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The Killer was one of my first DVDs I’ve ever bought. (Yeah, I’ve always had immaculate taste lol) Now I want it to be my first blu-ray!
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the first dvd i bought was Way of the Gun i didn’t even have a DVD player but bought it to watch at a friends house lol
i honestly had shitty taste as a teen but i think that one holds up
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Hell yeah. I got that one from the video store not much after and ripped it so I could share it with action cinema connoisseur friends. Good movie
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Dunno if it counts here, but I watched PG: Psycho Goreman last night and fucking loved it. It knows exactly what it is and what it has to work with, and just leans in all the way. It’s great.
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Way of the Gun is an all-timer for sure. And that first scene, yowza
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me and my gay uncle benecio del toro
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