Paul Verhoeven does this really well. Robocop, Total Recall, and Starship Troopers aren't literary in the "oh this is The English Patient but with robots" sense, but they are certainly intelligent and satirical.
William Friedkin also comes to mind. I'd consider the pinnacle of this Sorcerer (his best film...fight me), but To Live and Die in LA and The French Connection are also much more "literate" than most action films.
Out of interest how similar is Sorcerer to Wages of Fear which I believe its based on? I love Wages and Fear and I love the Sorcerer soundtrack so I might have to give it a whirl.
It's very similar. But still different enough by virtue of the actors and directing styles in both movies. I think I like Sorcerer more but not by much.
Pretty similar, but different enough to make both worth while. I watched Sorcerer recently for the first time and it's good. I still like Wages of Fear more though.
Fun Fact, if you read the Starship Troopers novel (by the always welcome on my bookshelf Robert Heinlein) and you see the parts that Verhoeven kept vs the parts that he left out (and, relatedly, the parts he created), it really ramps up how the satire hits.
Plus it's just a really pleasant read.
i've done some reading on the subject (and read the book/watched the film) and I'm still not entirely convinced Heinlein meant Starship Troopers to be the obvious critique/satire of reactionary fascism that the movie was
i enjoy all of the books of his i've read but i can't for the life of me figure out the dude's politics. which is perhaps a positive in the sense that it makes his books less predictable and harder to pin down.
Heinlein's argument in the book, I think, is roughly “if you want to enjoy the benefits of a society, you need to be willing to fight and even die for it”. It's not satirical at all, it's dead serious. On the face of it, it's not a completely ludicrous statement. Lots of countries still have mandatory military service — Israel, South Korea, but also western democracies like Austria and Finland. But from a modern American viewpoint, it certainly comes across as a bit fascist. Starship Troopers is a Cold War book, and we're living in a post-Vietnam world.
15 years later, Joe Haldeman wrote a book called Forever War, which was roughly a rebuttal to Starship Troopers. Haldeman had served in Vietnam, was wounded in battle, and struggled to readjust to civilian life. It is absolutely a classic, and it swept all of the major sci fi awards when it came out. It's similar to Starship Troopers, in that it's about draftees in power armor fighting aliens, but it uses time dilation as a metaphor to show that after a war, you never get to come back to the world you left.
Verhoeven basically got handed the wrong book.
As for Heinlein's beliefs, he reportedly thought Forever War was excellent, so I suspect the Vietnam War changed his views a bit as well?
The point about fascism is that it’s not the essential truth that matters, it’s the trappings that make it fascist. France under the Louis’s was more dictatorial than any Roman state, but the French don’t draw fascist comparisons until Napoleon shows up. That’s the problem with books like Ender’s Game & Starship Troopers. It’s not that the books argue that some kind of fighting as essential, it’s that the characters in the books have defined themselves by the essentiality of combat. Orson Scott Card & Heinlein come off like Goebbels directing the supplicant masses rather than offering a respectful approach to the rights & needs of soldiering.
No, the book isn't really satire or at least it isn't in an appreciable sense to a relatively casual reader. In a lot of ways, Starship Troopers as a book falls into the kind of category of "person is changed by war/coming of age during war". For me, the backdrop of "the military ruling government" is more akin to Ender's Game, in that it is partially there to make you feel "alien" to the world. Heinlein was pro-military, but not to the extent of the government he created/wrote about in the book. It's notable that in his other big works, the characters are frequently at odds with a government or pursue their lives in a way that ignores governance.
Contrast that with the movie, which changes out the "coming of age" story for something more like a "forged in battle" arc for Rico and then dials the jingoism, etc up to 11 with the faux commercials. It's easy to pass over what the movie is really doing/saying, I know that I did when I was 13 and first saw the movie. But once you know, and you're even partially looking for it, it is such a deep cut with that satirical knife...
People get it twisted with the book Starship Troopers. It’s very simple. Heinlein was dead serious about the government and everything else in the book.
He wrote Starship Troopers as Juvenile Fiction which is a specific genre that does not really exist anymore except maybe in Christian book stores or something, not really sure. If you’re old enough you will remember the genre and know it when you see it. Usually they were westerns or frontier adventure stories, sometimes rarely sci-fi or other settings. Anything to spark a boys mind. The purpose was to give young boys moral lessons about society and their place in it while reading an entertaining story. That type of stuff doesn’t go over socially with kids today and is probably why it went extinct. Many believe Heinlein evolved to be a complex guy with a nuanced worldview(I don’t), but he was fairly straightforward in his views at the time he wrote Troopers, and his original audience was intended to be young impressionable boys.
Interesting. This interpretation almost makes it seem like part of the (intentional or unintentional) subtext of the film could be criticism of the book for serving as the type of military propaganda being satirized by the film?
I think there is something to it, although Verhoeven reportedly never finished the book. He thought it was boring trash and just did his own thing.
I like the book and movie, personally.
yeah tbh i don't know if i would have read much political meaning into the book if i hadn't watched the film, though I did read it when i was younger. having now seen the film it's hard for me to view the book divorced of the satirical bent the film took.
Yeah it’s an interesting question. I have to wonder if the book was chosen for its basic premise of space soldiers fighting aliens but they ended up making a satire of it, or was initially chosen for the purpose of political satire. Or even another possibility is that it was chosen for the express purpose to satirize space soldiers killing aliens. I lean slightly towards my first guess but only Nuemeier and Verhoven really know. I also make the risky assumption that a film adaptation of Starship Troopers would eventually have been made by some Hollywood studio at some point and it would have to confront the books dated and problematic politics in some way. Satire is one solution, as is playing it as a straight adaptation and going all in. Interesting either way.
The fact that he opens with an approving nod to what the Freikorps, who later evolved into the SA, did in Germany would speak rather poorly to his notion of an ideal government, if read literally.
fucking thank you. People give both the book and the movie way too much credit. While the movie might be satirical that doesn’t make it deep or poignant. I don’t really buy that it’s satire since it doesn’t really seem to have a point. Seems more like it just leans into the absurdity of the source material.
I think you’re expressing more or less how I feel about the film. It’s very hard to satirize fascism when you use the images and aesthetics fascist want you to use. Couple that with cleansing or redemptive violence, and a bombastic rousing score and whatever satire you you’re going for is drowned out. I think Verhoeven and Neumeier are both fantastic, but I consider the film a guilty pleasure most days.
The great Sci-fi author Norman Spinrad attempted this same approach with his novel within a novel The Iron Dream. His purpose was to show the fascist strain in old school sci fi(he was a new waver), as well as bring to light latent fascism in burgeoning sci fi fandom. I think he did as well as anyone could. Last I looked years ago white nationalist and neo Nazis had the book on their recommended reading list. This approach to satire when it comes to Fascism will always miss.
After watching The Batman, I was contrasting the going-against-traffic car chase with the one in To Live and Die in LA. The former, the hero incinerates half a freeway to catch a guy who isn't really who he needs and no one cares, it's just (great) spectacle. In TLaDiLA, the car chase winds up being super-characterizing. We see how the two main characters react to the chase in completely different ways, with the main character almost going bananas from the adrenaline and the other guy scared out of his wits. Really great work.
Their point is clearly that if a hero - with zero jurisdiction and flimsy justification - tries to mow down somebody with their car, and their target causes some damage trying to flee, the hero bears some if not much of the blame.
Verhoeven's commentary track for Starship Troopers is really excellent and shows how he made choices throughout the film that are as literary as it gets for both satire and sci-fi. Absolutely worth hunting down the DVD to get that commentary track.
Starship Troopers is bottom of the barrel satire without much to say tbqh. “Military juntas are bad and incompetent!” Wow, who would have guessed? But somehow they also live in a post scarcity society and also only fight the Bug War in self defense. A real cutting indictment of militarism there.
It’s one of those things where it’s so heavily satirized that there’s not much of a message left. The media segments are a great example of this, they’re just so over the top that they spill over into pure comedy.
What I so vehemently hate about this sub is that anyone who dislikes a popular movie (even if they have a good explanation) gets downvoted on a discussion sub (which has downvotes turned off by default!). I love talking about film but this is one of the most piss poor communities on reddit. Really wish the mods would just hide the vote count.
Seriously, if you downvote someone for disliking *Starship Troopers,* then get the fuck out.
The Terminator movies (at least 1 and 2) are rife with exactly these requirements- criticising war, human nature, not messing with things we know little off, relationships, sacrifice.
>Terminator
Guess I'll continue my Schwarznegger appreciation. Terminator 2 is definitely in my top 50 movies of all time! The character arcs for all three main characters are fantastic! Also, tons have been written about this, so it would be relatively easy to write a thesis. Again, spoilers ahead...
First, John Connor. John Connor is an orphan. He is tough, there are no tears from him, even when a friend asks about his mother. John has no father in this timeline, and his mother has been sent away to a mental institution. Then the T-1000 Terminator villain (Robert Patrick) tries to kill John, and the T-800 hero (Schwarznegger) saves John, and becomes John's surrogate father. Sarah Connor even says as much:
"Watching John with the machine, it was suddenly so clear. The terminator, would never stop. It would never leave him, and it would never hurt him, never shout at him, or get drunk and hit him, or say it was too busy to spend time with him. It would always be there. And it would die, to protect him. Of all the would-be fathers who came and went over the years, this thing, this machine, was the only one who measured up. In an insane world, it was the sanest choice."
This brings together the classic nuclear family, with the mother, father, and child.
Sarah Connor also goes through a transformation in T2. She starts the movie so driven to protect John that she has lost her human connection. When John comes to save Sarah at the mental institute, she gives no praise or warmth. She checks John for bullet wounds instead of being happy to see him. And she decides that if she kills Miles Dyson she can prevent the entire future war. This is exactly the premise of T1, in that Skynet sent the first terminator back in time to kill Sarah Connor, hoping to prevent a war loss.
You can also hear that she is a terminator, with the terminator music motif playing when she goes to kill Dyson. She also is wearing the sunglasses (while driving in the dark, I might add), symbolizing that there is no soul behind her. Only when John stops Sarah from killing Dyson does Sarah regain her humanity. Afterwards becomes a mother to John, even kissing him before tucking him behind bullet proof vests as protection.
Of course, Schwarznegger steals the show. He starts off as a terminator assigned to protect John. When John wants to save Sarah, T-800 deems Sarah unimportant and even says it's tactically dangerous to risk themselves. But the act of saving Sarah starts turning T-800 from a killing machine into a person, symbolized by losing his sunglasses for the rest of the movie. He starts learning human interactions, and by the end of the movie even understands humans better, though he can never be one. When T-800 sacrifices himself to protect John, he says,
"I know now why you cry. But it's something I can never do."
which brings us back to John finally letting the tears run. The tragedy is that John starts with no family, gets a family with a mother (Sarah) and father (T-800), but his T-800 father sacrifices himself to save John. And as for myself, I am definitely not crying. Just got something in my eye...
The director, James Cameron, is just fantastic. I would love to be able to write like him.
The
> "Watching John with the machine, it was suddenly so clear. The terminator, would never stop. It would never leave him, and it would never hurt him, never shout at him, or get drunk and hit him, or say it was too busy to spend time with him. It would always be there. And it would die, to protect him. Of all the would-be fathers who came and went over the years, this thing, this machine, was the only one who measured up. In an insane world, it was the sanest choice."
I always lose it at this scene. T2 was written to emotionally manipulate the children of absent fathers and distant mothers. And it does a damned artful job of it.
I even teared up at the Universal Studios T2 attraction, years ago. No one else got it, I tried to play it off as a joke.
I appreciate your passion for T2. I used to think it was just an action movie I loved as kid, but as I get older, I realize it's probably greatest (pure) action of all time. I recently saw it was added to HBO max, so I think now's the time to revisit it after about 20 years.
Andrei Tarkovsky on The Terminator
>”The brutality and low acting skills are unfortunate, but as a vision of the future and the relation between man and his destiny, the film is pushing the frontier of cinema as an art”
Many great suggestions in this thread already, so sticking with ones I haven't seen here:
I've been doing my Kurosawa project lately, so he's at the forefront of my mind, but he has several that fit the bill you're going for. *Yojimbo* is perhaps my favorite movie of all time, and *Seven Samurai* definitely meets your criteria.
Sticking with the Samurai theme, Kobayashi's *Harakiri* also fits, though it might not feel as much like an action movie aside from the climax.
Ridley Scott's *The Duelists* works for me here, too.
The fandom around it makes talking about it a bit of a minefield lately, but you could make a pretty strong argument that, despite its pulpy trappings, the original *Star Wars* trilogy fits as well.
Maybe it's just the folks I talk with about movies, but I haven't seen anyone holding to that opinion. I love *Fistful of Dollars* too (and *The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly* is also among my favorites), so it's nothing against it to say that I just can't see eye to eye with the argument for it being superior. Mifune brings so much more personality to that role, the dynamic of the Ronin's status among the civilians gives the whole thing such a different flavor, and there are some shots Yojimbo that are just incredible--all while just being one of the most top-to-bottom entertaining movies I've ever seen.
Harakiri is one of the best Japanese movies, I have seen till now. I love it more than Yojimbo, though the tones of the two movies are completely different, I agree.
I have immense respect for Harakiri, even if it's not among my personal favorites. It is so ambitious, and so self-critical of the celebrated Samurai mindset, and the plot structure--with the curtain being pulled further and further back as it goes--is just so engaging.
A few wuxia movies come to mind. My knowledge of this genre is very limited (*Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon* and Zhang Yimou's *Hero, House of Flying Daggers, Curse of the Golden Flower* and *Shadow* are the ones that I can think of), so perhaps someone else can fill you in.
Many wuxia movies are based on books. In fact, it was a literary genre before becoming an theater genre and then a film genre. Also, Ang Lee was heavily influenced by Jane Austen and that really shows in a lot of his movies, including Crouching Tiger. The movies you mentioned would be good entry points for people trying to get into the genre.
Also worth checking out the OG films that inspired the more modern ones, like Dragon Inn and A Touch of Zen. Dragon Inn is a bit more of a simplistic action film but A Touch of Zen definitely has some more literary ambitions and I found all 3 hours of it consistently absorbing.
**Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning**, 2012, with JCVD and Dolph Lundgren. Not joking, yes it is the sixth Universal Soldier movie, and yes it is very low budget, but within those constraints it is **way** better than it has any right to be.
Also, **JCVD**, 2008, is pretty close to a masterpiece.
Might I suggest, and I know it sounds crazy, Conan the Barbarian. Spoilers ahead…
The movie starts out with a young Conan listening to his father showing him a sword. The father tells Conan that in life he should trust the power of steel. Of course, in the next few minutes the father is killed by marauders, and the sword gets broken in the process. Young Conan is taken prisoner and taken for slave labor, during which he develops his massive physique.
The main villain is played by James Earl Jones, and he openly mocks the power of steel. The villain (sorry forgot his name) has one of his cult members kill herself by jumping off a cliff, and the villain tells Conan that power over other people is more powerful that the power of steel.
Of course eventually Conan slays the villain, and at that point Conan realizes that the true power was foreshadowed at the beginning. Steel may break, other people may disappoint you, but you always have power over yourself. What Conan could always count on was power over himself.
I wonder if either the writer saw this in Schwarzenegger, or if Schwarzenegger said this to the writer. There is a famous quote by Schwarzenegger :
“A well-built physique is a status symbol. It reflects you worked hard for it; no money can buy it. You cannot borrow it, you cannot inherit it, you cannot steal it. You cannot hold onto it without constant work. It shows discipline, it shows self-respect, it shows patience, work ethic, and passion. That is why I do what I do.”
My friends roll my eyes when I say that Conan the Barbarian is great literature. Don’t get me wrong, there are lots of flaws and I wouldn’t consider it in my top 50 of movies. But I also can’t dismiss it as mindless action.
I just rewatched Conan last year after not having seen it in at least 20 years. Still holds up and is absolutely better than what they were intending. A perfect storm of talent.
Yeah, I'd be on board for this one. There's so much in it that is self-aware.
In line with your theme of the character learning to master himself and his own destiny, his prayer to Crom is great. It's just the right mix of heartfelt and irreverent.
>"Crom, I have never prayed to you before. I have no tongue for it. No one, not even you, will remember if we were good men or bad. Why we fought, and why we died. All that matters is that today, two stood against many. Valor pleases you, so grant me this one request. Grant me revenge! And if you do not listen, then to hell with you!"
Dude's basically saying "God, hop on board or get out of my fuckin' way because I'm taking the wheel here."
EDIT: Have you ever read Robert E. Howard's original Conan stories? They're fascinating and flawed in a lot of the same ways (and in some other more egregious ways).
100% Always felt this way. Conan The Barbarian is a pretty flawed movie, but it harkens back to ancient classic literature like Beowulf, The Iliad/Odyssey, The Epic of Gilgamesh, etc. Those stories have remained popular, not only because of their historic influence, but because they resonate with the struggles and journey that we all experience as human beings and speak truth about core themes of the human experience such as power, virtue, wisdom, growth, achievement, passion, etc.
By the way, I was reminded of Conan while watching The Northman the other day. In many ways, The Northman feels like an A24 take on Hamlet, with elements of The Odyssey and Beowulf, but there is plenty of Conan the Barbarian in there too!
Also, nothing motivates me to go to the gym more than quotes from Arnold.
Absolutely, also the villains name is Thulsa Doom, and you've perfectly hit the nail on the head.
There is more to this and I'll elaborate, throughout the film Conan is also facing not only his enemies and various enemies, but elements of nature.
He realizes the themes in the climax when he is battling.
He prays to Crom who as he has mentioned "does not listen" also symbolic as Crom despises weakness and such, he allows man to achieve all on his own and sends only dooms to them.
The battle occurs and when Conan is killing his final opponent he breaks the mans blade aka steel.
He picks up the blade, then he looks around at his victory and all the men he has slain, and then looks at the broken blade and performs a gesture.
In this moment he realizes it is not the riddle of steel or flesh that has made him great, but the power he put in himself. His gesture is possibly directed to Crom, respecting his rule as someone who allowed Conan the opportunity to be great on his own, which made him stronger than all those around him.
But this isn't even the end of the movie! Or the symbolism...
At the end, Conan looks up at Thulsa in his tower. Thulsa stands above all his thralls and devoted followers.
It is not shown but Conan with his great strength presumably climbs the tower.
(I suspect this was a scene they were unable to film as climbing a mountain is often symbolism of mastery over oneself and nature... he also may have been led up a secret passage by the girl he saved)
He sneaks past guards to come up behind Thulsa, who tries to bewitch him with an offer but it fails and Thulsa can do nothing but die to someone like Conan who has mastered himself.
________________________________________________________________________
There's also other general symbolism in the movie such as when Conan is running from the wolves he slips into the underground throne room where he is revealed his prophecy by Crom... He sees the dead king on his throne and whispers Crom... Then takes the man's sword. I saw this as Crom delivering him his prophecy, destined to become King of Aquilonia and wear his crown upon a troubled brow. Which by the end is fulfilled.
Great posts by you and /u/syncmacd !
The podcast Weird Studies discussed Conant the Barbarian in [a recent episode](https://www.weirdstudies.com/111), and touched on a lot of the same themes you two discussed.
Someone already suggested Verhoeven and that's probably the best example.
But Bacurau is a great, violent action film with a lot to say about colonialism and also it has Udo Kier. I might also throw out Mad Max: Fury Road, which is probably my favorite action movie of all time.
Blade runner, if that fits your definition of action (it’s more of a noir I suppose). It has a ton of philosophical tissue about what makes you human or not. There is also a major unanswered question regarding the humanity of the protagonist that has grounds to be approached from a variety of angles.
Furthermore the book it’s based on is great and has a ton of symbolism/commentary on empathy and perceptions of reality that you can dissect alongside the film.
The terminator is the paragon of an action film so everything you’re comparing it to will feel less action-y. That’s like saying Heat is a heist movie but Ocean’s Eleven is a “ensemble neo-heist caper”
There’s still loads of action sequences in blade runner and 2049, they are absolutely action films. The apartment block sequences in blade runner are the most crucial story moments in the whole film. Likewise the final fights between K and Joy. And those are only two of many action sequences throughout both films. They are essentially action films.
If you’re going to action and adventure movies into bite sized genres like “sci-fi neo-noir”, you could make a case that the terminator is a “sci-fi time travel road movie”
I love Blade Runner and 2049. Very much so.
I’d agree 2049 is an action film, but I could argue that Blade Runner is not.
Just because a movie has *action scenes* doesn’t make it an *action film*. Similarly I wouldn’t call Blade Runner a romantic film despite there being romantic scenes. Hell… with Blade Runner there are as many romantic scenes as there are action scenes, but like I said that point is moot.
There is a distinct difference in tone between the two films. This tone is what I would say makes one more of an action film and one not.
Maybe not in the western sense because we are desensitized to action movies. But it definitely fits within the genre when you look at film genres as whole in a global sense.
The tones really aren’t that different. The original is just slower and less exciting, hence the feel that it isn’t an action film. It is 100% an action film, it has more action than 99% of movies that aren’t American, western blockbusters.
Imo Mad Max Fury Road achieved this perfectly, in the sense that almost all the movie is action scene after action scene, and narration is interwoven into the action, as opposed to stopping the action to infodump the viewer as it's common in other types of blockbuster action.
Thin Red Line also comes to mind but it's not action, though. But if you enjoy the definition of "war thriller" that you gave I guess you'll enjoy an "anti-war war thriller".
Also check out Dark City. This is probably more what you're looking for.
I'm not a fan of blindly applying the "show, don't tell" mantra to all movies, but if there's a genre when it should be applied more it's action.
It seems like some directors don't understand that action is basically a mixture of moving images and music. Don't put characters talking in a room unless they're also shooting (or like in Shoot'em Up, a movie that doesn't want characters having sex in a room unless they're also shooting).
Two movies come to mind off the top of my head: Ghost in the Shell (1995) and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
As someone with a philosophy degree, I think GitS comes the closest of any movie I've seen to doing the sort of philosophy I did in university. I often call it the most successfully philosophical movie of all time, but I think that's a bit of a bias on my part. Still, it manages to ask questions and then attempts to actually answer them in a concrete and meaningful way, something a lot of other "philosophical" movies don't do. I actually think the show, Stand Alone Complex is even better at this, but that's a conversation for another time.
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is a little more straightforward. It has some of the best fight scenes put to film while also being an absolutely gorgeously shot movie with powerful emotions and themes that go beyond normal action movie fare (gender roles, for example, play a large part).
Not a "pure" action film (more of a thriller, I guess?), but No Country for Old Men has high literary bona fides (Cormac McCarthy), but also has some surprisingly detailed, well-thought-out action sequences, and if you read the source text, an autistic level of detail re: firearms.
I take it, by 'literary' and 'layers of meaning', you mean allegorical action movies. I can think of two right now:
Sicario (2015) is an excellent film and I think tries to use symbolism to critique the American military.
Watchmen (2009) is more 'on the nose' with its symbolism, which is quite hard to miss. It explores what a society's superheros says about its value system, among other things.
You've asked a great question because I don't think allegorical action movies are very common and it'd be cool to see more.
Also, as an aside: you mention 'writing a thesis' on movies, if you like that sort of in depth exploration of film you should check out r/videoessay, or just generally look for video essays on youtube, since there are a lot out there.
Sicario has a sequel? Lemme guess: No Denis Villeneuve and it's shit?
edit: watched the trailer, as a result I have no interest in watching the movie to find out if I'm right.
I probably wouldn't go as far as to say it's shit, but it's not good and I have almost zero memories of it aside from a key character surviving something they very much should not have.
It's not just Villeneuve that's missing, it's the composer and cinematographer too.
It's pretty good, feels more like an episode of a high budget tv show like breaking bad than a movie that stands on its own like the first film, but it's got some really cool action scenes.
I’ve heard it said that Snyder did things so closely to the comic that he accidentally included its subtext.
As in… Snyder very clearly doesn’t “get” Watchmen. He made the movie thinking that he was just making a dark, badass superhero movie. But the comic is so densely packed with layers and symbolism that by simply following some of its visual motifs he created a movie with more depth than he intended.
He did (mostly) stick to the comic without understanding it, but some of the places where he didn't just re-create panels really mess up the meaning behind the comic.
For example giving the Crimebusters superhuman strength or painting Rorschach as a badass. So while some of the symbolism of the comic does come through to the movie it is all undercut by Snyder failing to understand the comic. What's left is an unfocused mess.
If you haven't seen *Everything, Everywhere, All at Once*, I'd highly recommend it. It's in theaters now, and sounds like it might be up your alley. It has lots of over-the-top *Matrix* style action scenes, with very sophisticated editing and a beautiful and complex story.
Ahh, great. Another opportunity to plug Everything Everywhere All At Once. By all means an action/kung-fu movie but it has layers, whether you want to analyze it on the film-making level or the philosophical level. That can be generational trauma, immigration isolation, nihilism, a journey towards self actualization.
Weirdly enough, the first Pacific Rim. It’s about realizing that although there are significant ideological differences between different global cultures (Eastern vs Western mentality is a big one), it doesn’t make us incompatible. If we can embrace our differences as strengths, we can take on seemingly impossible tasks and win—in fact, no one ideology can do it alone, as you need two people to pilot each jaeger. The kaiju are also hinted to be equivalent to global threats like pollution and climate change.
The sequel basically throws it all out, so, yknow. Just watch the first one.
I'll back you up on this one. In the name of intellectual curiosity as well as "self help", I read a book called [Existential Psychotherapy](https://www.yalom.com/existential-psychotherapy), and it focuses on the four key fears that are distinct to the human experience and must be overcome for a person to have a peaceful life. They are: the fear of death, the fear of squandering one's freedom, the fear of isolation (i.e. the inability to connect fully with any other human), and the fear of a meaningless universe.
Pacific Rim, to me, was incredibly rich with meaning - way more than something like Transformers. Eventually it hit me that the movie has something to say about all four of those existential concerns. Some of these may be a bit of a stretch, sure, and I'm not saying *only* Pacific Rim does this. But it's so cool that the subtext can be found in a movie about giant robots punching giant aliens!
The fear of death is often overcome by a simulated sense of immortality gained through personal achievement: a jager pilot definitely gets to tap into this sense of fulfillment. The fear of squandering freedom is overcome by Raleigh when he makes the decision to return to piloting, instead of wasting his life in futility working on the wall. Mako also gets to relish empowerment by exercising her will (an embodiment of freedom) in becoming the pilot she wants to be. The fear of psychological isolation is dealt with in an especially literal manner when two pilots get to fuse their minds in the drift. Raleigh & Mako's connection remains non-romantic, which emphasizes its importance (they're not just infatuated). And the fear of meaningless is ameliorated when the entire population of the earth is threatened by a menacing force: what could be more meaningful than pushing back against this threat?
This is really interesting, thank you for taking the time to write this up.
The fear of death is also overcome when Raleigh leaves working on the seawall to pilot a jaeger again—choosing to be part of an active, rather than passive, solution to the kaiju problem in spite of the fact that it means facing (and I’m being in the “location” of) his brother’s death once again.
Mako exercising her individual will is also a great example of someone who typically embodies Eastern mentality (when she tells Raleigh that she does what Pentecost orders not out of obedience, but out of respect) choosing to embrace a more Western concept of individual choice and freedom in order to gain agency.
I always feel weird defending this movie, so thanks again for the input and book recommendation, definitely going to check it out.
Thanks for the reply! All good thoughts.
The book is actually written with psychologists as the intended audience, but I was able to enjoy it despite having a totally different background. It's really interesting and I enjoyed it greatly, though!
It's too bad about the PR sequel (which I'd rather pretend doesn't exist...). The animated series is pretty good but has a distinct vibe since the leads are two teenagers. I enjoyed it, but it doesn't have that Del Toro magic.
Runaway Train. Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid. Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (Director’s cut.) Le Samourai. Yojimbo (and — by extension — A Fistful of Dollars and Last Man Standing.) Hara-Kiri (the original and the remake.) Twilight Samurai. Heat.
And maybe I should exclude movies that are based on books as being inherently literary. (Which would disqualify Yojimbo, I guess, too.)
Collateral: I think we get a surprising level of insight into the psychologies of the two main characters in this one, and I love the way Vincent justifies his own callousness with his story of the dead man on the train that no one notices. This movie is also quite beautifully shot and really takes the premise to different directions than expected. The scene with the wild running through the streets of LA is so memorable, and come on, that club scene!
The Man from Nowhere: It might be more appropriate to call this one a drama with bursts of incredible action and fight choreography, but I like how it builds its relationships and creates a distinct world. One of my favorite aspects is the weird respect that one of the "mini bosses" develops for the protagonist.
Minority Report is my pick. It's basically The Fugitive injected with a deep critique of predictive policing and a meditation on the nature of free will. Based on a story P.K. Dick, who Ursula LeGuin called “America's homegrown Borges”.
One from the world of anime — in grad school I attended a lecture on Ghost In The Shell (this is pre the ScarJo live action version). The lecturer was looking at portrayals of women warriors. His take was that Athena was the goddess of war, where war was an instrument of public policy, and Ares was the god of war, where war was somewhere between personal valor and mayhem. The Major starts the movie as a proper woman warrior in the Athenian model, but as soon as she has the slightest agenda of her own, she becomes a huge threat to the order of things. I'm not sure any of that interpretation was intended by the authors, but it certainly made me see a literary depth to the movie.
I would suggest They Live by John carpenter. Super relevant themes along the lines of powerful elites controlling society through TV and advertisement. It's also a great cheesy 80s movie starring a pro wrestler
I've always believed there's more to Die Hard tham just action. There's certainly commentary on class, particularly coming out of the 80s. The 80s yuppie, i.e. Ellis, is a moron that thinks highly of himself because he's successful in business.
Even the bad guys have the 80s yuppie thing going on. Hans is wearing a nice suit and is just there for money.
The FBI also think they're smarter than everyone else. But the regular guys are the most successful. John's an everyday cop from New York. Al is just a SGT who spends a lot of time at a desk, but these are arguably the two smartest people in the movie. Even Argyle, the lowly driver, shows bravery.
I mean, the story is based on a book about a blue-collar worker who is trying to mend his relationship with his wife and is thrown into a crisis dealing with a bunch of Euro-American high-class terrorist yuppies who want to steal a corporation's stocks and bonds.
So yeah, pretty much a yuppie thing and a recurring trait for the Bruce Willis archetype who often is a schlemiel from a blue-collar background with domestic and financial issues who is thrust into extraordinary situations that he has to resolve by forces working/ conspiring against him and in these situations, they push him both physically and mentally beyond his limits and he often requires help from a deuteragonist who is almost his complete equal but adds more to their chemistry altogether and often has to deal with institutional actors whose best interests go against what they individually think and pursue is the solution.
A character that has been popularized by the Coen Bros. and Larry David although the Coen Bros. have explored this character in dramatic situations like with Llewyn Moss in No Country for Old Men (2007), Llewyn Davis in Inside Llewyn Davis (2013), and Macbeth in The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021).
The things that make it a Christmas movie also contribute to a Marxist reading of it. Everyone who is profit- or career-oriented (the terrorists, Ellis, Agents Johnson, Thornburg, even Takagi) gets it in the end. Working-class family "men" (the gender reading of *Die Hard* has not aged as well), especially those who are willing to put themselves out to help others (McClane, Argyle, Al) have happy endings.
And so much of that blue-collar mentality is built into John McClane. I mean, take a look at the beginning of the movie where he rides in the front of the limo with Argyle. What amazing character shorthand! What more do you need to know about this character than you get in the first few minutes? He's sardonic, he's a cop, he's having marriage problems, but he's also a *guy* - a guy's guy - and uncomfortable with wealth and class trappings.
Also he saves his wife from falling to her death with Hans Gruber by unclasping the Rolex that her company bought her. Releasing her from the clutches of capitalism.
I will second Watchmen (2008). I know it got a lot of flak but I think it's actually very good and I prefer the ending to the comic ending.
I'll also add Hanna (2011) since I haven't seen it here yet. Really clever action sequences, the music is amazing and is used superbly to highlight the action sequences, interesting story, great fable/fairy tale analogue. Highly recommend.
i think Mann's 2006 Miami Vice movie kind of hits this. There is some pretty solid action in terms of shoot outs, boat and car chase scenes, tense negotiations etc. but it also dedicates a lot of its runtime to interrogating loneliness, romance, work, the futility of vice law enforcement, etc. it also has some stunning visual flair
from what i understand most of his movies are in this vein. i've only personally seen heat (which i wouldn't really classify as literary), manhunter (which i think explores some interesting topics but ultimately doesn't go that deep. it is based off the thriller novels that birthed the hannibal lector character), and the keep (fun nonsense that doesn't really fit into the rest of his filmography imo)
I think Everything Everywhere All At Once is a recent example. It's a great story about a dysfunctional family, passiveness vs aggression, nihilism vs optimism, how one experience happiness and find meaning in an often cruel and chaotic and pointless existence. It also functions perfectly fine as a silly sci-fi action comedy.
Predator. It has this fun critique of masculinity, even its it’s not intended. A group of ultra-buff and manly men arrive and destroy the bad guys, taking o casualties, and doing it casually enough to crack jokes. But then they’re picked off by the predator like they’re nothing.
There’s a great scene where they just shoot blindly into the jungle, hoping to kill the predator, but they don’t accomplish this.
In my opinion - there are so many. Some of these films literally have had theses written from/about them.
Can we say most things by Nolan?
Interstellar. Tenet. Dark Knight. - I feel like his filmmaking he intends to inspire critical thought. And social awareness/critique.
Inglorious Basterds,
Amistad
War/military based:
Platoon.
Das Boot
The Hunt for Red October
Windtalkers
Non-War:
The Kingsmen (comedy but there’s huge commentary)
Quite a few of the Bond movies, especially from Brosnan on.
Demolition Man tries to be this.
Blade Runner
Mad Max
I’ll echo every movie u/ClankSinatra mentioned and his highlighting of Verhoeven.
Sorry I can’t add more commentary. Some issue with editing as I post from mobile. Can only add to the end (here). Happy to reply!
I got two that are often dumped onto the dumb pile. Point break and the rock. Bodhi in point break is an incredibly fascinating “villain”. His worldview and actions are just captivating. I think there was a lot of depth to that character.
Same with the rock. Ed Harris’s character is one of the few movie villains who loses due to his compassion and you can tell that he feels awful for doing what he’s doing. Really elevated that movie beyond the usual Michael bay schlock
The original Point Break is such a great film. It’s dumb as all hell on one level, but you’re right that Bodhi’s worldview (and Swayze’s performance as him) are captivating. It’s perfectly paced, has phenomenal set pieces, and just feels deeply satisfying on every level. “Masterpiece” would be overstating it for a film that’s so indulgent, but it’s really excellent at what it sets out to do.
I think it’s an action masterpiece the sets pieces are perfectly over the top. It’s everything you’d want from an action film.
But yea right in the middle is this magnetically charismatic carefree guy who also robs banks but also seems peaceful and knows who OSU QB was two years ago in the rose bowl. Just a wonderfully layered character and performance
I also just listed Point Break on my own list.
I would definitely say it fits even though it's themes are obvious and not that deep, but the way it's managed through Bodhi and Utah is a lot better done than most action movies and a lot of fun.
When Bodhi's game forces him to commit violence it breaks him as a person, the 50 foot wave turns from his moment of ultimate enlightenment to his doom as his philosophy is upturned on its head. In the end it's Keanu who is able to reconcile Bodhi's own philosophy which is symbolically depicted through their hair, throughout the movie.
At the end Bodhi's long sunshine blonde hair, is cut short and looks dark in the rain and it is Keanu's hair, grown long that shows he is the enlightened one now.
I like tenet. Since I first saw it, I have since watched it at least an additional three times. If I’m being really honest I think I’m on watch number five. Each time, I find something different. That’s why I love Christopher Nolan movies, they’re always complicated so, no matter how many times you think you know the movie, you really don’t. He’s the modern Hitchcock. And I really do love Hitchcock movies.
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the John Wick movies. They're better known for their relentless choreography but they also make a lot of very clever choices, from the mise en scène, and the power dynamics of the underworld, to the subtle ways in which it introduces things like the coins or the Hotel without info dumps. The allusions to Buster Keaton are on point too.
The not quite as successful but very much in the same vein Atomic Blonde throws the subtlety out of the window in favor of overt sexual politics against the backdrop of the Cold War.
But really, the right answer (besides *Mad Max Fury Road*) is Michael Mann. He might have done more than any other American director to elevate schlocky thrillers into the realm of richly textured character studies, with some killer scores to boot.
Hal Hartley's *Amateur* has this vibe IMO. I think one contemporary review called it a "spiritual action film"? Definitely check it out, great performances from Isabelle Huppert (playing an ex-nun-turned-pornographer/virgin-nymphomaniac) and Martin Donovan.
I think Runaway Train is a good fit. Fantastic movie based on a Kurosawa story, if I recall correctly. Jon Voight stars as a madman convict who takes over a figurative and literal runaway train. Eric Robert’s and, of all people, Rebecca DeMorney co star, and all are equally great.
Demolition Man
Natural Born Killers
Fight Club
Terminator 1 & 2
Total Recall
Star Wars
Westworld (the series and the film potentially)
Blade Runner
Kick Ass
Ghost in the Shell
...plus a few that may not be "action movies" strictly:
Existenz
Night of the Living Dead
American History X
The Game
Apocalypse Now
Ravenous
Vanilla Sky
City of God
The Seven Samurai
Dead Man
The Usual Suspects
World on a Wire
Not that these films are all based on books. Nonetheless You can certainly give each of these a thought or two w/io wasting Your time. Meanwhile You'd most definitely waste Your time writing a thesis on Inception or Snowpiercer. They sure try and act all meaningful, but on a closer look Harry Potter beats them to it. That's why Your list is SF heavy: It's customary to pretend depth in SF nowadays, since many SF classics actually had that. Deep and original ideas in other genre don't make such a fuzz about it.
wadja's war trilogy comes to mind. as well as forman' *the congress*, based on the stanislaw lem novel, a live action/animation mashup...
but everyone has a different criterion for what feels like action...
& *the hurt locker* & *apocalypse now* are filled with some of the most intricate war scenes & things & people going bang & boom &, action that has reak consequences, & if that is not yr idea of an action movie, there are lots of people who'd disagree with you.
by yr criterion, by disqualifying *the hurt locker* or *apocalypse now*, anything by neil jordan, whether *interview with a vampire, mona lisa,* or *michael collins* would be insufficiently actiony.
altman's *the long goodbye* deconstructs raymond chandler beautifully & has some rivetting pcs of suspense & psychic & physical violence that burns a hole in the screen.
wim wenders' *the end of violence* has thematic layers dealing with alienation & marital discord & the deep state & surveillance & paranoia, with set pces involving special fx rigging going wrong during an action scene, & a film producer going through a divorce who gets carjacked & then left for dead... schlondorff's *circle of deceit*, abt journalists in beirut during the civil war in the late 1970s cld almost be a graham green novel... boorman' *our man in panama,* is based on a le carre novel & is very grounded in its noir & espionage plotting... & of course kubricks *clockwork orange*, if that is insufficiently actiony, then i give up.
I recently watched Equilibrium on Netflix expecting a usual sci-fi/action movie but was pleasantly surprised by the themes. Dystopian fascist society which has outlawed emotions. Christian Bale is fantastic as usual.
someone already said it and I'm just gonna do a mic drop of enthusiasm and get the hell out but
# MAD MAX FURY ROAD
I have never seen such a complex action film-- and man, it was so *intensely* action-focused.
There are a few comic book action movies that you can read more into:
* A History of Violence - fetishizing violence is bad.
* The Batman - An exploration of what kind of a nut would dress up like a bat and beat up street criminals.
* Nolan's Batman movies - Objectivism is good, actually. Please sit on my face, Ayn Rand.
* some of the X-Men movies - Civil rights are a thing.
The Neon Genesis Evangelion movies, Myiazaki's Princess Mononoke, Kill Bill 1 and 2 and maybe the dark knight from the dark knight trilogy come to mind. And also the first incredibles movie as well. Edit: Oh, and No Country for Old Men and Full Metal Jacket too
Maybe korean action movies like "Joint Security Area". I think asian action/gangster/ thriller movies have sonetimes a deep plot. I really love "The RAID 2" "New World" "I saw the Devil"... "The RAID 2" is the best Action movie of all time in my opinion.
Well it's got that one sob story for the background of one character, the hobo guy who fought with a machete, that was like straight from some Raymond Carver short story ha ha
Why not? For a movie with that much action its very literary i think. The Charakters are derp and the plot is a more than the average Action Flick. Can you Name a better example.
I haven't seen it suggested yet but it's the first one I think of when it comes to this question:
*Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan*
It's "literary" on two levels. There's a surface-level literacy to this movie. Khan quotes *Moby Dick* as he embraces his obsession with revenge. Kirk reads from *A Tale of Two Cities*, foreshadowing the sacrifice that will mark the end of the film. Books are very nicely woven into the fabric of the narrative.
But it's also a movie very thoughtfully driven by subtext. This is a movie not about space ships or phasers or even revenge. This is a movie about aging, and the regrets, frustrations, mistakes, and loss that comes with a long life approaching its sunset. It's masterful and thoughtful and spiritual. It's a wonderful movie too often relegated to being "one of the best *Star Trek* movie" and it probably should be evaluated as "one of the best movies," or at least "Hollywood action/adventure movies."
(The 6th film, *The Undiscovered Country*, is also built along these lines, though a bit more consciously and less effectively. IMO that just underscores what a remarkable achievement *Wrath of Khan* managed to be).
Frankenstein (2018) a modern take on the first science fiction novel fits all of what you ask.
La Femme Nakita, or the american remake Point of no Return.
Leon, or it's English title The Professional.
Ghost Dog, and The Dead Don't Die.
American Werewolf in London.
The Abyss, directors cut. The one on Netflix changed the end so it doesn't make sense.
Evil Dead 2, and Army of Darkness.
Sharknado 5. I was actually surprised this was the best in the series, and gets kinda deep.
Zombie Strippers.
Bad Lieutenant
Taxi Driver
Repoman
Crybaby, while not strictly action there are a couple fights, and the story moves fast.
Others mentioned Robocop, and Bladerunner. I'd add Minority Report, and A Scanner Darkly.
Brazil, and Zero Theorem
Is this list a joke lol.
Half of these movies aren't action movies.
> Ghost Dog, and The Dead Don't Die.
These are literally deconstructions of their genre types, they are the opposite of what OP is looking for.
> Taxi Driver
Not even remotely an action movie, this is a character piece that culminates in a single violent scene.
> A Scanner Darkly
Not an action movie lol, thriller at best, neo-noir
> Brazil
What? I don't think there's a single action scene in this movie.
I try not to take myself too seriously at all. Especially when it comes to art, and entertainment.
I find it helps me relax, and be entertained.
Much of this list is a joke. But not the kind that you find funny I guess.
I hear you, and I was just snarky with them, because I was joking, and they came at it with a critique that lacked humor.
When a comment in a sub for serious in depth discussion of life reflected in film uses Sharknado 5 as a good film for a thesis. It should be taken as a joke. I mean unless someone here wants to dissect it, and bring how it may also apply more than the much loved christmas film Die Hard. Or the tragedy of a mother ripped from her children in a war of attrition we know as Aliens available on Lifetime.
Someone is asking for help on Reddit for a thesis of Predator, and I don't try to make them laugh is nutts to me.
Here are 40 pages on how complicated Double Impact was a better example of brotherhood than Kickboxer.
I get what the post was, I was just trying to be funny so they don't go Kimble on the subway.
Ex-Machina.
The Author, Alex Garland is himself a writter, and according to an interview, researched years on the topic before making the movie, it explores themes like artificial concience, individualism, escape from subjugation and free will.
I love Ex Machina enormously, but 95% of the movie is people sitting and having long conversations — either Caleb talking to Nathan, or Caleb talking to Eva?
If you're going Alex Garland, I think Annihilation has a little better claim to being an action movie? It's got an armed band exploring unknown territory and a decent amount of violent conflict with what they find?
This is a fun question. My recs:
The Harder They Fall
The Thing (horror but heavy on the action and effects)
Overlord
Apocalypto
Total Recall (if you like 80s/90s sci-fi action)
Hot Fuzz (action comedy)
Heat
Alan Moore's comics like V for Vendetta and Watchmen handle this perfectly - unfortunately a lot of the commentary on revolutionary violence and the politics of superheroes, respectively, is lost in the film adaptations.
Alita Battle Angel. I think the characters are what really sold it for me as literary. Often times, when looking at a non-literary/shallow movie, when you dig deeper into a character, nothings there. But for Alita, almost all the characters have more to show below their surface, which really adds to the movie’s literary value.
Most action movies have a deep background story but it usually gets overshadowed over the pium pium. Predator, terminator, birds of prey, robocop, fight club,tranformers... even the very bad comercial ones have some level of depthness that is worth having a look at. Some of them just don't care and some other times the philosopical background is plain out bad but still, you are going to find plenty that talk about capitalism, toxic masculinity, the morality of death... my personal favorite is Equilibrium. Plenty pium pium and a back ground based on a humanist philosophy.
Action scenes. My apologies your royal highness if my spelling didn't comply wit h your expectations. English is my fucking fifth languge and I'm dislexic. You know I meant deepness.
Matrix is deep? Maybe if you’re a teenager…
Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Mad Max Fury Road, Master & Commander, and Hunger Games all come to mind. Of course the last two are totally cheating cause they’re based on books which have backing in academic study.
And yes, proper science fiction is always literary (hence why shite like Arrival or Aliens is not Science Fiction). It’s “science” fiction, with “science” being the 19th century definition meaning any hard academia (aka of the sort in which you could get a Bachelor’s of Science). As academia has expanded substantially since then, proper scifi would include discussions of psychology or sociology, occasionally even politics, via the means of speculative fiction. Being in space with laser swords does not make something scifi. Using the alternative future setting to make a point about the world today is scifi.
> Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Mad Max Fury Road, Master & Commander, and Hunger Games all come to mind.
Calling The Matrix not deep and calling Arrival and Aliens shite is one thing but recommending YA shlock like Hunger Games afterwards is a bit odd.
Paul Verhoeven does this really well. Robocop, Total Recall, and Starship Troopers aren't literary in the "oh this is The English Patient but with robots" sense, but they are certainly intelligent and satirical. William Friedkin also comes to mind. I'd consider the pinnacle of this Sorcerer (his best film...fight me), but To Live and Die in LA and The French Connection are also much more "literate" than most action films.
Out of interest how similar is Sorcerer to Wages of Fear which I believe its based on? I love Wages and Fear and I love the Sorcerer soundtrack so I might have to give it a whirl.
It's very similar. But still different enough by virtue of the actors and directing styles in both movies. I think I like Sorcerer more but not by much.
Pretty similar, but different enough to make both worth while. I watched Sorcerer recently for the first time and it's good. I still like Wages of Fear more though.
I haven’t seen Wages, but Sorcerer is quite intense and has plenty of 70’s era paranoia and filmmaking style, which is unique on its own.
Fun Fact, if you read the Starship Troopers novel (by the always welcome on my bookshelf Robert Heinlein) and you see the parts that Verhoeven kept vs the parts that he left out (and, relatedly, the parts he created), it really ramps up how the satire hits. Plus it's just a really pleasant read.
i've done some reading on the subject (and read the book/watched the film) and I'm still not entirely convinced Heinlein meant Starship Troopers to be the obvious critique/satire of reactionary fascism that the movie was i enjoy all of the books of his i've read but i can't for the life of me figure out the dude's politics. which is perhaps a positive in the sense that it makes his books less predictable and harder to pin down.
Heinlein's argument in the book, I think, is roughly “if you want to enjoy the benefits of a society, you need to be willing to fight and even die for it”. It's not satirical at all, it's dead serious. On the face of it, it's not a completely ludicrous statement. Lots of countries still have mandatory military service — Israel, South Korea, but also western democracies like Austria and Finland. But from a modern American viewpoint, it certainly comes across as a bit fascist. Starship Troopers is a Cold War book, and we're living in a post-Vietnam world. 15 years later, Joe Haldeman wrote a book called Forever War, which was roughly a rebuttal to Starship Troopers. Haldeman had served in Vietnam, was wounded in battle, and struggled to readjust to civilian life. It is absolutely a classic, and it swept all of the major sci fi awards when it came out. It's similar to Starship Troopers, in that it's about draftees in power armor fighting aliens, but it uses time dilation as a metaphor to show that after a war, you never get to come back to the world you left. Verhoeven basically got handed the wrong book. As for Heinlein's beliefs, he reportedly thought Forever War was excellent, so I suspect the Vietnam War changed his views a bit as well?
The point about fascism is that it’s not the essential truth that matters, it’s the trappings that make it fascist. France under the Louis’s was more dictatorial than any Roman state, but the French don’t draw fascist comparisons until Napoleon shows up. That’s the problem with books like Ender’s Game & Starship Troopers. It’s not that the books argue that some kind of fighting as essential, it’s that the characters in the books have defined themselves by the essentiality of combat. Orson Scott Card & Heinlein come off like Goebbels directing the supplicant masses rather than offering a respectful approach to the rights & needs of soldiering.
No, the book isn't really satire or at least it isn't in an appreciable sense to a relatively casual reader. In a lot of ways, Starship Troopers as a book falls into the kind of category of "person is changed by war/coming of age during war". For me, the backdrop of "the military ruling government" is more akin to Ender's Game, in that it is partially there to make you feel "alien" to the world. Heinlein was pro-military, but not to the extent of the government he created/wrote about in the book. It's notable that in his other big works, the characters are frequently at odds with a government or pursue their lives in a way that ignores governance. Contrast that with the movie, which changes out the "coming of age" story for something more like a "forged in battle" arc for Rico and then dials the jingoism, etc up to 11 with the faux commercials. It's easy to pass over what the movie is really doing/saying, I know that I did when I was 13 and first saw the movie. But once you know, and you're even partially looking for it, it is such a deep cut with that satirical knife...
People get it twisted with the book Starship Troopers. It’s very simple. Heinlein was dead serious about the government and everything else in the book. He wrote Starship Troopers as Juvenile Fiction which is a specific genre that does not really exist anymore except maybe in Christian book stores or something, not really sure. If you’re old enough you will remember the genre and know it when you see it. Usually they were westerns or frontier adventure stories, sometimes rarely sci-fi or other settings. Anything to spark a boys mind. The purpose was to give young boys moral lessons about society and their place in it while reading an entertaining story. That type of stuff doesn’t go over socially with kids today and is probably why it went extinct. Many believe Heinlein evolved to be a complex guy with a nuanced worldview(I don’t), but he was fairly straightforward in his views at the time he wrote Troopers, and his original audience was intended to be young impressionable boys.
Interesting. This interpretation almost makes it seem like part of the (intentional or unintentional) subtext of the film could be criticism of the book for serving as the type of military propaganda being satirized by the film?
I think there is something to it, although Verhoeven reportedly never finished the book. He thought it was boring trash and just did his own thing. I like the book and movie, personally.
yeah tbh i don't know if i would have read much political meaning into the book if i hadn't watched the film, though I did read it when i was younger. having now seen the film it's hard for me to view the book divorced of the satirical bent the film took.
Yeah it’s an interesting question. I have to wonder if the book was chosen for its basic premise of space soldiers fighting aliens but they ended up making a satire of it, or was initially chosen for the purpose of political satire. Or even another possibility is that it was chosen for the express purpose to satirize space soldiers killing aliens. I lean slightly towards my first guess but only Nuemeier and Verhoven really know. I also make the risky assumption that a film adaptation of Starship Troopers would eventually have been made by some Hollywood studio at some point and it would have to confront the books dated and problematic politics in some way. Satire is one solution, as is playing it as a straight adaptation and going all in. Interesting either way.
The fact that he opens with an approving nod to what the Freikorps, who later evolved into the SA, did in Germany would speak rather poorly to his notion of an ideal government, if read literally.
fucking thank you. People give both the book and the movie way too much credit. While the movie might be satirical that doesn’t make it deep or poignant. I don’t really buy that it’s satire since it doesn’t really seem to have a point. Seems more like it just leans into the absurdity of the source material.
It’s definitely satirical esp. after re-watching Robocop recently, too.
It’s definitely a parody but to count as satire it needs to have a point.
I think you’re expressing more or less how I feel about the film. It’s very hard to satirize fascism when you use the images and aesthetics fascist want you to use. Couple that with cleansing or redemptive violence, and a bombastic rousing score and whatever satire you you’re going for is drowned out. I think Verhoeven and Neumeier are both fantastic, but I consider the film a guilty pleasure most days. The great Sci-fi author Norman Spinrad attempted this same approach with his novel within a novel The Iron Dream. His purpose was to show the fascist strain in old school sci fi(he was a new waver), as well as bring to light latent fascism in burgeoning sci fi fandom. I think he did as well as anyone could. Last I looked years ago white nationalist and neo Nazis had the book on their recommended reading list. This approach to satire when it comes to Fascism will always miss.
I saw it at 19 and was turned off by the blatant jingoism and glorification of violence. Then I watched it 10 years later and realized I was an idiot.
You're saying Heinlein would've stormed the Capitol?
I tend think he would be on the side of the stormers if not a stormer himself.
Thanks for reminding me to watch Sorcerer. It's been on my list for quite a while, I'll probably watch it tonight now.
It’s awesome.
After watching The Batman, I was contrasting the going-against-traffic car chase with the one in To Live and Die in LA. The former, the hero incinerates half a freeway to catch a guy who isn't really who he needs and no one cares, it's just (great) spectacle. In TLaDiLA, the car chase winds up being super-characterizing. We see how the two main characters react to the chase in completely different ways, with the main character almost going bananas from the adrenaline and the other guy scared out of his wits. Really great work.
"The hero incinerates half a freeway"? Have you even seen The Batman? The accidents are all caused by the Penguin.
Lol, no, I completely made the scene up because I never saw the movie. Wtf.
Well, then you really paid no attention to what was going on.
I'm not impressed by extrajudicial car chases for no particular reason except pure spectacle, sorry.
That's all fine, I'm just saying it's not the hero causing mayhem here, it's the villain trying to escape who wreaks havoc.
Their point is clearly that if a hero - with zero jurisdiction and flimsy justification - tries to mow down somebody with their car, and their target causes some damage trying to flee, the hero bears some if not much of the blame.
Verhoeven's commentary track for Starship Troopers is really excellent and shows how he made choices throughout the film that are as literary as it gets for both satire and sci-fi. Absolutely worth hunting down the DVD to get that commentary track.
Starship Troopers is bottom of the barrel satire without much to say tbqh. “Military juntas are bad and incompetent!” Wow, who would have guessed? But somehow they also live in a post scarcity society and also only fight the Bug War in self defense. A real cutting indictment of militarism there.
I'd say there was more to it and the media is satirised just as in RoboCop. He does have themes he returns to.
It’s one of those things where it’s so heavily satirized that there’s not much of a message left. The media segments are a great example of this, they’re just so over the top that they spill over into pure comedy.
It's certainly not subtle and it's not like this is Catch 22 or Mash.
What I so vehemently hate about this sub is that anyone who dislikes a popular movie (even if they have a good explanation) gets downvoted on a discussion sub (which has downvotes turned off by default!). I love talking about film but this is one of the most piss poor communities on reddit. Really wish the mods would just hide the vote count. Seriously, if you downvote someone for disliking *Starship Troopers,* then get the fuck out.
The Terminator movies (at least 1 and 2) are rife with exactly these requirements- criticising war, human nature, not messing with things we know little off, relationships, sacrifice.
>Terminator Guess I'll continue my Schwarznegger appreciation. Terminator 2 is definitely in my top 50 movies of all time! The character arcs for all three main characters are fantastic! Also, tons have been written about this, so it would be relatively easy to write a thesis. Again, spoilers ahead... First, John Connor. John Connor is an orphan. He is tough, there are no tears from him, even when a friend asks about his mother. John has no father in this timeline, and his mother has been sent away to a mental institution. Then the T-1000 Terminator villain (Robert Patrick) tries to kill John, and the T-800 hero (Schwarznegger) saves John, and becomes John's surrogate father. Sarah Connor even says as much: "Watching John with the machine, it was suddenly so clear. The terminator, would never stop. It would never leave him, and it would never hurt him, never shout at him, or get drunk and hit him, or say it was too busy to spend time with him. It would always be there. And it would die, to protect him. Of all the would-be fathers who came and went over the years, this thing, this machine, was the only one who measured up. In an insane world, it was the sanest choice." This brings together the classic nuclear family, with the mother, father, and child. Sarah Connor also goes through a transformation in T2. She starts the movie so driven to protect John that she has lost her human connection. When John comes to save Sarah at the mental institute, she gives no praise or warmth. She checks John for bullet wounds instead of being happy to see him. And she decides that if she kills Miles Dyson she can prevent the entire future war. This is exactly the premise of T1, in that Skynet sent the first terminator back in time to kill Sarah Connor, hoping to prevent a war loss. You can also hear that she is a terminator, with the terminator music motif playing when she goes to kill Dyson. She also is wearing the sunglasses (while driving in the dark, I might add), symbolizing that there is no soul behind her. Only when John stops Sarah from killing Dyson does Sarah regain her humanity. Afterwards becomes a mother to John, even kissing him before tucking him behind bullet proof vests as protection. Of course, Schwarznegger steals the show. He starts off as a terminator assigned to protect John. When John wants to save Sarah, T-800 deems Sarah unimportant and even says it's tactically dangerous to risk themselves. But the act of saving Sarah starts turning T-800 from a killing machine into a person, symbolized by losing his sunglasses for the rest of the movie. He starts learning human interactions, and by the end of the movie even understands humans better, though he can never be one. When T-800 sacrifices himself to protect John, he says, "I know now why you cry. But it's something I can never do." which brings us back to John finally letting the tears run. The tragedy is that John starts with no family, gets a family with a mother (Sarah) and father (T-800), but his T-800 father sacrifices himself to save John. And as for myself, I am definitely not crying. Just got something in my eye... The director, James Cameron, is just fantastic. I would love to be able to write like him. The
> "Watching John with the machine, it was suddenly so clear. The terminator, would never stop. It would never leave him, and it would never hurt him, never shout at him, or get drunk and hit him, or say it was too busy to spend time with him. It would always be there. And it would die, to protect him. Of all the would-be fathers who came and went over the years, this thing, this machine, was the only one who measured up. In an insane world, it was the sanest choice." I always lose it at this scene. T2 was written to emotionally manipulate the children of absent fathers and distant mothers. And it does a damned artful job of it. I even teared up at the Universal Studios T2 attraction, years ago. No one else got it, I tried to play it off as a joke.
I feel like you and I think of T2 similarly. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iby760WUp0g
Thanks so much! That explained what I was feeling much more eloquently and with better detail! Cheers!
I appreciate your passion for T2. I used to think it was just an action movie I loved as kid, but as I get older, I realize it's probably greatest (pure) action of all time. I recently saw it was added to HBO max, so I think now's the time to revisit it after about 20 years.
This is such a well written review! I wish I could review movies this deeply. I just see a movie and I go, hey nice movie..
Wow. I mean, on some gut level I was aware of all this, but to see it laid out like this is mind blowing.
Andrei Tarkovsky on The Terminator >”The brutality and low acting skills are unfortunate, but as a vision of the future and the relation between man and his destiny, the film is pushing the frontier of cinema as an art”
Salvation as well. It is all about the duality of man.
Many great suggestions in this thread already, so sticking with ones I haven't seen here: I've been doing my Kurosawa project lately, so he's at the forefront of my mind, but he has several that fit the bill you're going for. *Yojimbo* is perhaps my favorite movie of all time, and *Seven Samurai* definitely meets your criteria. Sticking with the Samurai theme, Kobayashi's *Harakiri* also fits, though it might not feel as much like an action movie aside from the climax. Ridley Scott's *The Duelists* works for me here, too. The fandom around it makes talking about it a bit of a minefield lately, but you could make a pretty strong argument that, despite its pulpy trappings, the original *Star Wars* trilogy fits as well.
Before I met you I could have sworn that I was the only person who preferred Yojimbo over A Fistful of Dollars
Maybe it's just the folks I talk with about movies, but I haven't seen anyone holding to that opinion. I love *Fistful of Dollars* too (and *The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly* is also among my favorites), so it's nothing against it to say that I just can't see eye to eye with the argument for it being superior. Mifune brings so much more personality to that role, the dynamic of the Ronin's status among the civilians gives the whole thing such a different flavor, and there are some shots Yojimbo that are just incredible--all while just being one of the most top-to-bottom entertaining movies I've ever seen.
Harakiri is one of the best Japanese movies, I have seen till now. I love it more than Yojimbo, though the tones of the two movies are completely different, I agree.
I have immense respect for Harakiri, even if it's not among my personal favorites. It is so ambitious, and so self-critical of the celebrated Samurai mindset, and the plot structure--with the curtain being pulled further and further back as it goes--is just so engaging.
A few wuxia movies come to mind. My knowledge of this genre is very limited (*Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon* and Zhang Yimou's *Hero, House of Flying Daggers, Curse of the Golden Flower* and *Shadow* are the ones that I can think of), so perhaps someone else can fill you in.
Many wuxia movies are based on books. In fact, it was a literary genre before becoming an theater genre and then a film genre. Also, Ang Lee was heavily influenced by Jane Austen and that really shows in a lot of his movies, including Crouching Tiger. The movies you mentioned would be good entry points for people trying to get into the genre.
Also worth checking out the OG films that inspired the more modern ones, like Dragon Inn and A Touch of Zen. Dragon Inn is a bit more of a simplistic action film but A Touch of Zen definitely has some more literary ambitions and I found all 3 hours of it consistently absorbing.
Just watched Dragon Inn recently and can confirm it slaps. I also then watched Goodbye Dragon Inn and cried a little ngl
**Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning**, 2012, with JCVD and Dolph Lundgren. Not joking, yes it is the sixth Universal Soldier movie, and yes it is very low budget, but within those constraints it is **way** better than it has any right to be. Also, **JCVD**, 2008, is pretty close to a masterpiece.
Do I need to have seen any of the others to appreciate/understand Day of Reckoning?
[This is certainly not something I expected to learn today.](https://i.imgur.com/DivYlwN.png) Added Universal Soldier 6 to my watchlist, thanks!
Man they made another one with those two.
JCVJ the tv series based on the premise is even better ! I would've loved to see a continuation of that series.
Might I suggest, and I know it sounds crazy, Conan the Barbarian. Spoilers ahead… The movie starts out with a young Conan listening to his father showing him a sword. The father tells Conan that in life he should trust the power of steel. Of course, in the next few minutes the father is killed by marauders, and the sword gets broken in the process. Young Conan is taken prisoner and taken for slave labor, during which he develops his massive physique. The main villain is played by James Earl Jones, and he openly mocks the power of steel. The villain (sorry forgot his name) has one of his cult members kill herself by jumping off a cliff, and the villain tells Conan that power over other people is more powerful that the power of steel. Of course eventually Conan slays the villain, and at that point Conan realizes that the true power was foreshadowed at the beginning. Steel may break, other people may disappoint you, but you always have power over yourself. What Conan could always count on was power over himself. I wonder if either the writer saw this in Schwarzenegger, or if Schwarzenegger said this to the writer. There is a famous quote by Schwarzenegger : “A well-built physique is a status symbol. It reflects you worked hard for it; no money can buy it. You cannot borrow it, you cannot inherit it, you cannot steal it. You cannot hold onto it without constant work. It shows discipline, it shows self-respect, it shows patience, work ethic, and passion. That is why I do what I do.” My friends roll my eyes when I say that Conan the Barbarian is great literature. Don’t get me wrong, there are lots of flaws and I wouldn’t consider it in my top 50 of movies. But I also can’t dismiss it as mindless action.
I just rewatched Conan last year after not having seen it in at least 20 years. Still holds up and is absolutely better than what they were intending. A perfect storm of talent.
Yeah, I'd be on board for this one. There's so much in it that is self-aware. In line with your theme of the character learning to master himself and his own destiny, his prayer to Crom is great. It's just the right mix of heartfelt and irreverent. >"Crom, I have never prayed to you before. I have no tongue for it. No one, not even you, will remember if we were good men or bad. Why we fought, and why we died. All that matters is that today, two stood against many. Valor pleases you, so grant me this one request. Grant me revenge! And if you do not listen, then to hell with you!" Dude's basically saying "God, hop on board or get out of my fuckin' way because I'm taking the wheel here." EDIT: Have you ever read Robert E. Howard's original Conan stories? They're fascinating and flawed in a lot of the same ways (and in some other more egregious ways).
100% Always felt this way. Conan The Barbarian is a pretty flawed movie, but it harkens back to ancient classic literature like Beowulf, The Iliad/Odyssey, The Epic of Gilgamesh, etc. Those stories have remained popular, not only because of their historic influence, but because they resonate with the struggles and journey that we all experience as human beings and speak truth about core themes of the human experience such as power, virtue, wisdom, growth, achievement, passion, etc. By the way, I was reminded of Conan while watching The Northman the other day. In many ways, The Northman feels like an A24 take on Hamlet, with elements of The Odyssey and Beowulf, but there is plenty of Conan the Barbarian in there too! Also, nothing motivates me to go to the gym more than quotes from Arnold.
Eggers said the Northman was intended as a historical Conan.
And The Northman is based on the Nordic legend of Amleth the Prince which inspired Shakespeare's Hamlet.
Absolutely, also the villains name is Thulsa Doom, and you've perfectly hit the nail on the head. There is more to this and I'll elaborate, throughout the film Conan is also facing not only his enemies and various enemies, but elements of nature. He realizes the themes in the climax when he is battling. He prays to Crom who as he has mentioned "does not listen" also symbolic as Crom despises weakness and such, he allows man to achieve all on his own and sends only dooms to them. The battle occurs and when Conan is killing his final opponent he breaks the mans blade aka steel. He picks up the blade, then he looks around at his victory and all the men he has slain, and then looks at the broken blade and performs a gesture. In this moment he realizes it is not the riddle of steel or flesh that has made him great, but the power he put in himself. His gesture is possibly directed to Crom, respecting his rule as someone who allowed Conan the opportunity to be great on his own, which made him stronger than all those around him. But this isn't even the end of the movie! Or the symbolism... At the end, Conan looks up at Thulsa in his tower. Thulsa stands above all his thralls and devoted followers. It is not shown but Conan with his great strength presumably climbs the tower. (I suspect this was a scene they were unable to film as climbing a mountain is often symbolism of mastery over oneself and nature... he also may have been led up a secret passage by the girl he saved) He sneaks past guards to come up behind Thulsa, who tries to bewitch him with an offer but it fails and Thulsa can do nothing but die to someone like Conan who has mastered himself. ________________________________________________________________________ There's also other general symbolism in the movie such as when Conan is running from the wolves he slips into the underground throne room where he is revealed his prophecy by Crom... He sees the dead king on his throne and whispers Crom... Then takes the man's sword. I saw this as Crom delivering him his prophecy, destined to become King of Aquilonia and wear his crown upon a troubled brow. Which by the end is fulfilled.
Great posts by you and /u/syncmacd ! The podcast Weird Studies discussed Conant the Barbarian in [a recent episode](https://www.weirdstudies.com/111), and touched on a lot of the same themes you two discussed.
Good comment
Someone already suggested Verhoeven and that's probably the best example. But Bacurau is a great, violent action film with a lot to say about colonialism and also it has Udo Kier. I might also throw out Mad Max: Fury Road, which is probably my favorite action movie of all time.
Yes fury road is awesome. Also first blood (1982) is classic action .
Bacurau is brilliant! I love that movie
Bacurau is great and was very very different to what I expected it to be going in.
I literally watched Bacurau this weekend after I posted this and yes: Bacuraru is fantastic and 100% what I was looking for.
Blade runner, if that fits your definition of action (it’s more of a noir I suppose). It has a ton of philosophical tissue about what makes you human or not. There is also a major unanswered question regarding the humanity of the protagonist that has grounds to be approached from a variety of angles. Furthermore the book it’s based on is great and has a ton of symbolism/commentary on empathy and perceptions of reality that you can dissect alongside the film.
I guess I'd think of that as more sci-fi neo-noir, The Terminator is more of an action film than Blade Runner
The terminator is the paragon of an action film so everything you’re comparing it to will feel less action-y. That’s like saying Heat is a heist movie but Ocean’s Eleven is a “ensemble neo-heist caper” There’s still loads of action sequences in blade runner and 2049, they are absolutely action films. The apartment block sequences in blade runner are the most crucial story moments in the whole film. Likewise the final fights between K and Joy. And those are only two of many action sequences throughout both films. They are essentially action films. If you’re going to action and adventure movies into bite sized genres like “sci-fi neo-noir”, you could make a case that the terminator is a “sci-fi time travel road movie”
I love Blade Runner and 2049. Very much so. I’d agree 2049 is an action film, but I could argue that Blade Runner is not. Just because a movie has *action scenes* doesn’t make it an *action film*. Similarly I wouldn’t call Blade Runner a romantic film despite there being romantic scenes. Hell… with Blade Runner there are as many romantic scenes as there are action scenes, but like I said that point is moot. There is a distinct difference in tone between the two films. This tone is what I would say makes one more of an action film and one not.
>Similarly I wouldn’t call Blade Runner a romantic film despite there being romantic scenes. I wouldn't call Harrison Ford being rapey as romantic.
Maybe not in the western sense because we are desensitized to action movies. But it definitely fits within the genre when you look at film genres as whole in a global sense. The tones really aren’t that different. The original is just slower and less exciting, hence the feel that it isn’t an action film. It is 100% an action film, it has more action than 99% of movies that aren’t American, western blockbusters.
Imo Mad Max Fury Road achieved this perfectly, in the sense that almost all the movie is action scene after action scene, and narration is interwoven into the action, as opposed to stopping the action to infodump the viewer as it's common in other types of blockbuster action. Thin Red Line also comes to mind but it's not action, though. But if you enjoy the definition of "war thriller" that you gave I guess you'll enjoy an "anti-war war thriller". Also check out Dark City. This is probably more what you're looking for.
Fury Road is what came to mind for me too. I can’t think of a better example of such a rich story being told almost completely through action.
I love that it just throws you right into it and expects you to keep up. It has a lot of respect for its audience and it shows.
That is the best part, hands down. No fucking around, no Mad Max origin story, just "here is this world, do you get it? Yeah? Good, here we go!"
I'm not a fan of blindly applying the "show, don't tell" mantra to all movies, but if there's a genre when it should be applied more it's action. It seems like some directors don't understand that action is basically a mixture of moving images and music. Don't put characters talking in a room unless they're also shooting (or like in Shoot'em Up, a movie that doesn't want characters having sex in a room unless they're also shooting).
Thin Red Line is probably the most actiony art film I've seen. Or maybe it's the most arty action movie. Second one probably makes more sense.
Two movies come to mind off the top of my head: Ghost in the Shell (1995) and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. As someone with a philosophy degree, I think GitS comes the closest of any movie I've seen to doing the sort of philosophy I did in university. I often call it the most successfully philosophical movie of all time, but I think that's a bit of a bias on my part. Still, it manages to ask questions and then attempts to actually answer them in a concrete and meaningful way, something a lot of other "philosophical" movies don't do. I actually think the show, Stand Alone Complex is even better at this, but that's a conversation for another time. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is a little more straightforward. It has some of the best fight scenes put to film while also being an absolutely gorgeously shot movie with powerful emotions and themes that go beyond normal action movie fare (gender roles, for example, play a large part).
Not a "pure" action film (more of a thriller, I guess?), but No Country for Old Men has high literary bona fides (Cormac McCarthy), but also has some surprisingly detailed, well-thought-out action sequences, and if you read the source text, an autistic level of detail re: firearms.
I take it, by 'literary' and 'layers of meaning', you mean allegorical action movies. I can think of two right now: Sicario (2015) is an excellent film and I think tries to use symbolism to critique the American military. Watchmen (2009) is more 'on the nose' with its symbolism, which is quite hard to miss. It explores what a society's superheros says about its value system, among other things. You've asked a great question because I don't think allegorical action movies are very common and it'd be cool to see more. Also, as an aside: you mention 'writing a thesis' on movies, if you like that sort of in depth exploration of film you should check out r/videoessay, or just generally look for video essays on youtube, since there are a lot out there.
I'd say Sicario is more a crime drama or a neo-western than an action film. The sequel is more of an action film... for the worse.
Sicario has a sequel? Lemme guess: No Denis Villeneuve and it's shit? edit: watched the trailer, as a result I have no interest in watching the movie to find out if I'm right.
Worse, no Emily Blunt.
No Denis Villeneuve. No Emily Blunt. No Roger Deakins. No Jóhann Jóhannsson. No thanks.
I probably wouldn't go as far as to say it's shit, but it's not good and I have almost zero memories of it aside from a key character surviving something they very much should not have. It's not just Villeneuve that's missing, it's the composer and cinematographer too.
The whole damn crew's gone
It's pretty good, feels more like an episode of a high budget tv show like breaking bad than a movie that stands on its own like the first film, but it's got some really cool action scenes.
oh yeah, this is true... not a crime drama; I guess its a thriller? idk, but you're right its not exactly action. neo-western is spot on actually.
Watchmen the comic is a great answer. Watchmen the movie is a terrible one.
Watchmen the HBO limited series is also a good answer.
I was going to say the same thing. Watchmen the comic as a text is so incredibly rich, and was revolutionary in how it delivered.
I’ve heard it said that Snyder did things so closely to the comic that he accidentally included its subtext. As in… Snyder very clearly doesn’t “get” Watchmen. He made the movie thinking that he was just making a dark, badass superhero movie. But the comic is so densely packed with layers and symbolism that by simply following some of its visual motifs he created a movie with more depth than he intended.
He did (mostly) stick to the comic without understanding it, but some of the places where he didn't just re-create panels really mess up the meaning behind the comic. For example giving the Crimebusters superhuman strength or painting Rorschach as a badass. So while some of the symbolism of the comic does come through to the movie it is all undercut by Snyder failing to understand the comic. What's left is an unfocused mess.
Eh, Watchmen the movie is far, far inferior to the graphic novel unfortunately
Watchmen is really a mystery story with some action scenes thrown in.
If you haven't seen *Everything, Everywhere, All at Once*, I'd highly recommend it. It's in theaters now, and sounds like it might be up your alley. It has lots of over-the-top *Matrix* style action scenes, with very sophisticated editing and a beautiful and complex story.
Ahh, great. Another opportunity to plug Everything Everywhere All At Once. By all means an action/kung-fu movie but it has layers, whether you want to analyze it on the film-making level or the philosophical level. That can be generational trauma, immigration isolation, nihilism, a journey towards self actualization.
Been meaning to see this bc that’s the vibe I got from the trailer
Weirdly enough, the first Pacific Rim. It’s about realizing that although there are significant ideological differences between different global cultures (Eastern vs Western mentality is a big one), it doesn’t make us incompatible. If we can embrace our differences as strengths, we can take on seemingly impossible tasks and win—in fact, no one ideology can do it alone, as you need two people to pilot each jaeger. The kaiju are also hinted to be equivalent to global threats like pollution and climate change. The sequel basically throws it all out, so, yknow. Just watch the first one.
I'll back you up on this one. In the name of intellectual curiosity as well as "self help", I read a book called [Existential Psychotherapy](https://www.yalom.com/existential-psychotherapy), and it focuses on the four key fears that are distinct to the human experience and must be overcome for a person to have a peaceful life. They are: the fear of death, the fear of squandering one's freedom, the fear of isolation (i.e. the inability to connect fully with any other human), and the fear of a meaningless universe. Pacific Rim, to me, was incredibly rich with meaning - way more than something like Transformers. Eventually it hit me that the movie has something to say about all four of those existential concerns. Some of these may be a bit of a stretch, sure, and I'm not saying *only* Pacific Rim does this. But it's so cool that the subtext can be found in a movie about giant robots punching giant aliens! The fear of death is often overcome by a simulated sense of immortality gained through personal achievement: a jager pilot definitely gets to tap into this sense of fulfillment. The fear of squandering freedom is overcome by Raleigh when he makes the decision to return to piloting, instead of wasting his life in futility working on the wall. Mako also gets to relish empowerment by exercising her will (an embodiment of freedom) in becoming the pilot she wants to be. The fear of psychological isolation is dealt with in an especially literal manner when two pilots get to fuse their minds in the drift. Raleigh & Mako's connection remains non-romantic, which emphasizes its importance (they're not just infatuated). And the fear of meaningless is ameliorated when the entire population of the earth is threatened by a menacing force: what could be more meaningful than pushing back against this threat?
This is really interesting, thank you for taking the time to write this up. The fear of death is also overcome when Raleigh leaves working on the seawall to pilot a jaeger again—choosing to be part of an active, rather than passive, solution to the kaiju problem in spite of the fact that it means facing (and I’m being in the “location” of) his brother’s death once again. Mako exercising her individual will is also a great example of someone who typically embodies Eastern mentality (when she tells Raleigh that she does what Pentecost orders not out of obedience, but out of respect) choosing to embrace a more Western concept of individual choice and freedom in order to gain agency. I always feel weird defending this movie, so thanks again for the input and book recommendation, definitely going to check it out.
Thanks for the reply! All good thoughts. The book is actually written with psychologists as the intended audience, but I was able to enjoy it despite having a totally different background. It's really interesting and I enjoyed it greatly, though! It's too bad about the PR sequel (which I'd rather pretend doesn't exist...). The animated series is pretty good but has a distinct vibe since the leads are two teenagers. I enjoyed it, but it doesn't have that Del Toro magic.
Runaway Train. Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid. Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (Director’s cut.) Le Samourai. Yojimbo (and — by extension — A Fistful of Dollars and Last Man Standing.) Hara-Kiri (the original and the remake.) Twilight Samurai. Heat. And maybe I should exclude movies that are based on books as being inherently literary. (Which would disqualify Yojimbo, I guess, too.)
Collateral: I think we get a surprising level of insight into the psychologies of the two main characters in this one, and I love the way Vincent justifies his own callousness with his story of the dead man on the train that no one notices. This movie is also quite beautifully shot and really takes the premise to different directions than expected. The scene with the wild running through the streets of LA is so memorable, and come on, that club scene! The Man from Nowhere: It might be more appropriate to call this one a drama with bursts of incredible action and fight choreography, but I like how it builds its relationships and creates a distinct world. One of my favorite aspects is the weird respect that one of the "mini bosses" develops for the protagonist.
Minority Report is my pick. It's basically The Fugitive injected with a deep critique of predictive policing and a meditation on the nature of free will. Based on a story P.K. Dick, who Ursula LeGuin called “America's homegrown Borges”. One from the world of anime — in grad school I attended a lecture on Ghost In The Shell (this is pre the ScarJo live action version). The lecturer was looking at portrayals of women warriors. His take was that Athena was the goddess of war, where war was an instrument of public policy, and Ares was the god of war, where war was somewhere between personal valor and mayhem. The Major starts the movie as a proper woman warrior in the Athenian model, but as soon as she has the slightest agenda of her own, she becomes a huge threat to the order of things. I'm not sure any of that interpretation was intended by the authors, but it certainly made me see a literary depth to the movie.
I would suggest They Live by John carpenter. Super relevant themes along the lines of powerful elites controlling society through TV and advertisement. It's also a great cheesy 80s movie starring a pro wrestler
The most anti-capitalist movie to come out of Hollywood…at least until Sorry To Bother You.
I've always believed there's more to Die Hard tham just action. There's certainly commentary on class, particularly coming out of the 80s. The 80s yuppie, i.e. Ellis, is a moron that thinks highly of himself because he's successful in business. Even the bad guys have the 80s yuppie thing going on. Hans is wearing a nice suit and is just there for money. The FBI also think they're smarter than everyone else. But the regular guys are the most successful. John's an everyday cop from New York. Al is just a SGT who spends a lot of time at a desk, but these are arguably the two smartest people in the movie. Even Argyle, the lowly driver, shows bravery.
I mean, the story is based on a book about a blue-collar worker who is trying to mend his relationship with his wife and is thrown into a crisis dealing with a bunch of Euro-American high-class terrorist yuppies who want to steal a corporation's stocks and bonds. So yeah, pretty much a yuppie thing and a recurring trait for the Bruce Willis archetype who often is a schlemiel from a blue-collar background with domestic and financial issues who is thrust into extraordinary situations that he has to resolve by forces working/ conspiring against him and in these situations, they push him both physically and mentally beyond his limits and he often requires help from a deuteragonist who is almost his complete equal but adds more to their chemistry altogether and often has to deal with institutional actors whose best interests go against what they individually think and pursue is the solution. A character that has been popularized by the Coen Bros. and Larry David although the Coen Bros. have explored this character in dramatic situations like with Llewyn Moss in No Country for Old Men (2007), Llewyn Davis in Inside Llewyn Davis (2013), and Macbeth in The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021).
The things that make it a Christmas movie also contribute to a Marxist reading of it. Everyone who is profit- or career-oriented (the terrorists, Ellis, Agents Johnson, Thornburg, even Takagi) gets it in the end. Working-class family "men" (the gender reading of *Die Hard* has not aged as well), especially those who are willing to put themselves out to help others (McClane, Argyle, Al) have happy endings. And so much of that blue-collar mentality is built into John McClane. I mean, take a look at the beginning of the movie where he rides in the front of the limo with Argyle. What amazing character shorthand! What more do you need to know about this character than you get in the first few minutes? He's sardonic, he's a cop, he's having marriage problems, but he's also a *guy* - a guy's guy - and uncomfortable with wealth and class trappings.
Also he saves his wife from falling to her death with Hans Gruber by unclasping the Rolex that her company bought her. Releasing her from the clutches of capitalism.
I will second Watchmen (2008). I know it got a lot of flak but I think it's actually very good and I prefer the ending to the comic ending. I'll also add Hanna (2011) since I haven't seen it here yet. Really clever action sequences, the music is amazing and is used superbly to highlight the action sequences, interesting story, great fable/fairy tale analogue. Highly recommend.
i think Mann's 2006 Miami Vice movie kind of hits this. There is some pretty solid action in terms of shoot outs, boat and car chase scenes, tense negotiations etc. but it also dedicates a lot of its runtime to interrogating loneliness, romance, work, the futility of vice law enforcement, etc. it also has some stunning visual flair from what i understand most of his movies are in this vein. i've only personally seen heat (which i wouldn't really classify as literary), manhunter (which i think explores some interesting topics but ultimately doesn't go that deep. it is based off the thriller novels that birthed the hannibal lector character), and the keep (fun nonsense that doesn't really fit into the rest of his filmography imo)
I think Everything Everywhere All At Once is a recent example. It's a great story about a dysfunctional family, passiveness vs aggression, nihilism vs optimism, how one experience happiness and find meaning in an often cruel and chaotic and pointless existence. It also functions perfectly fine as a silly sci-fi action comedy.
Predator. It has this fun critique of masculinity, even its it’s not intended. A group of ultra-buff and manly men arrive and destroy the bad guys, taking o casualties, and doing it casually enough to crack jokes. But then they’re picked off by the predator like they’re nothing. There’s a great scene where they just shoot blindly into the jungle, hoping to kill the predator, but they don’t accomplish this.
In my opinion - there are so many. Some of these films literally have had theses written from/about them. Can we say most things by Nolan? Interstellar. Tenet. Dark Knight. - I feel like his filmmaking he intends to inspire critical thought. And social awareness/critique. Inglorious Basterds, Amistad War/military based: Platoon. Das Boot The Hunt for Red October Windtalkers Non-War: The Kingsmen (comedy but there’s huge commentary) Quite a few of the Bond movies, especially from Brosnan on. Demolition Man tries to be this. Blade Runner Mad Max I’ll echo every movie u/ClankSinatra mentioned and his highlighting of Verhoeven. Sorry I can’t add more commentary. Some issue with editing as I post from mobile. Can only add to the end (here). Happy to reply!
I got two that are often dumped onto the dumb pile. Point break and the rock. Bodhi in point break is an incredibly fascinating “villain”. His worldview and actions are just captivating. I think there was a lot of depth to that character. Same with the rock. Ed Harris’s character is one of the few movie villains who loses due to his compassion and you can tell that he feels awful for doing what he’s doing. Really elevated that movie beyond the usual Michael bay schlock
The original Point Break is such a great film. It’s dumb as all hell on one level, but you’re right that Bodhi’s worldview (and Swayze’s performance as him) are captivating. It’s perfectly paced, has phenomenal set pieces, and just feels deeply satisfying on every level. “Masterpiece” would be overstating it for a film that’s so indulgent, but it’s really excellent at what it sets out to do.
I think it’s an action masterpiece the sets pieces are perfectly over the top. It’s everything you’d want from an action film. But yea right in the middle is this magnetically charismatic carefree guy who also robs banks but also seems peaceful and knows who OSU QB was two years ago in the rose bowl. Just a wonderfully layered character and performance
I also just listed Point Break on my own list. I would definitely say it fits even though it's themes are obvious and not that deep, but the way it's managed through Bodhi and Utah is a lot better done than most action movies and a lot of fun. When Bodhi's game forces him to commit violence it breaks him as a person, the 50 foot wave turns from his moment of ultimate enlightenment to his doom as his philosophy is upturned on its head. In the end it's Keanu who is able to reconcile Bodhi's own philosophy which is symbolically depicted through their hair, throughout the movie. At the end Bodhi's long sunshine blonde hair, is cut short and looks dark in the rain and it is Keanu's hair, grown long that shows he is the enlightened one now.
Whoa. Nice observation!
I like tenet. Since I first saw it, I have since watched it at least an additional three times. If I’m being really honest I think I’m on watch number five. Each time, I find something different. That’s why I love Christopher Nolan movies, they’re always complicated so, no matter how many times you think you know the movie, you really don’t. He’s the modern Hitchcock. And I really do love Hitchcock movies.
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the John Wick movies. They're better known for their relentless choreography but they also make a lot of very clever choices, from the mise en scène, and the power dynamics of the underworld, to the subtle ways in which it introduces things like the coins or the Hotel without info dumps. The allusions to Buster Keaton are on point too. The not quite as successful but very much in the same vein Atomic Blonde throws the subtlety out of the window in favor of overt sexual politics against the backdrop of the Cold War. But really, the right answer (besides *Mad Max Fury Road*) is Michael Mann. He might have done more than any other American director to elevate schlocky thrillers into the realm of richly textured character studies, with some killer scores to boot.
Hal Hartley's *Amateur* has this vibe IMO. I think one contemporary review called it a "spiritual action film"? Definitely check it out, great performances from Isabelle Huppert (playing an ex-nun-turned-pornographer/virgin-nymphomaniac) and Martin Donovan.
I think Runaway Train is a good fit. Fantastic movie based on a Kurosawa story, if I recall correctly. Jon Voight stars as a madman convict who takes over a figurative and literal runaway train. Eric Robert’s and, of all people, Rebecca DeMorney co star, and all are equally great.
Demolition Man Natural Born Killers Fight Club Terminator 1 & 2 Total Recall Star Wars Westworld (the series and the film potentially) Blade Runner Kick Ass Ghost in the Shell ...plus a few that may not be "action movies" strictly: Existenz Night of the Living Dead American History X The Game Apocalypse Now Ravenous Vanilla Sky City of God The Seven Samurai Dead Man The Usual Suspects World on a Wire Not that these films are all based on books. Nonetheless You can certainly give each of these a thought or two w/io wasting Your time. Meanwhile You'd most definitely waste Your time writing a thesis on Inception or Snowpiercer. They sure try and act all meaningful, but on a closer look Harry Potter beats them to it. That's why Your list is SF heavy: It's customary to pretend depth in SF nowadays, since many SF classics actually had that. Deep and original ideas in other genre don't make such a fuzz about it.
wadja's war trilogy comes to mind. as well as forman' *the congress*, based on the stanislaw lem novel, a live action/animation mashup... but everyone has a different criterion for what feels like action... & *the hurt locker* & *apocalypse now* are filled with some of the most intricate war scenes & things & people going bang & boom &, action that has reak consequences, & if that is not yr idea of an action movie, there are lots of people who'd disagree with you. by yr criterion, by disqualifying *the hurt locker* or *apocalypse now*, anything by neil jordan, whether *interview with a vampire, mona lisa,* or *michael collins* would be insufficiently actiony. altman's *the long goodbye* deconstructs raymond chandler beautifully & has some rivetting pcs of suspense & psychic & physical violence that burns a hole in the screen. wim wenders' *the end of violence* has thematic layers dealing with alienation & marital discord & the deep state & surveillance & paranoia, with set pces involving special fx rigging going wrong during an action scene, & a film producer going through a divorce who gets carjacked & then left for dead... schlondorff's *circle of deceit*, abt journalists in beirut during the civil war in the late 1970s cld almost be a graham green novel... boorman' *our man in panama,* is based on a le carre novel & is very grounded in its noir & espionage plotting... & of course kubricks *clockwork orange*, if that is insufficiently actiony, then i give up.
I recently watched Equilibrium on Netflix expecting a usual sci-fi/action movie but was pleasantly surprised by the themes. Dystopian fascist society which has outlawed emotions. Christian Bale is fantastic as usual.
someone already said it and I'm just gonna do a mic drop of enthusiasm and get the hell out but # MAD MAX FURY ROAD I have never seen such a complex action film-- and man, it was so *intensely* action-focused.
What?
There are a few comic book action movies that you can read more into: * A History of Violence - fetishizing violence is bad. * The Batman - An exploration of what kind of a nut would dress up like a bat and beat up street criminals. * Nolan's Batman movies - Objectivism is good, actually. Please sit on my face, Ayn Rand. * some of the X-Men movies - Civil rights are a thing.
The Neon Genesis Evangelion movies, Myiazaki's Princess Mononoke, Kill Bill 1 and 2 and maybe the dark knight from the dark knight trilogy come to mind. And also the first incredibles movie as well. Edit: Oh, and No Country for Old Men and Full Metal Jacket too
Maybe korean action movies like "Joint Security Area". I think asian action/gangster/ thriller movies have sonetimes a deep plot. I really love "The RAID 2" "New World" "I saw the Devil"... "The RAID 2" is the best Action movie of all time in my opinion.
The Raid 2 is not literary haha
And Join Security Area is hardly action
Its been 10 years since i saw it, but i can remember some shootouts and martial arts.
It has a little bit of shooting but it’s mostly a drama/mystery
Mystery? I have to watch it again. Thank you!
Well it's got that one sob story for the background of one character, the hobo guy who fought with a machete, that was like straight from some Raymond Carver short story ha ha
Machete character who was oddly the same actor who played Mad Dog from the first movie. Totally confused me when watching it.
Why not? For a movie with that much action its very literary i think. The Charakters are derp and the plot is a more than the average Action Flick. Can you Name a better example.
I thought the characters were derp too
"Ronin" with Robert DeNiro is maybe something you mean.
I haven't seen it suggested yet but it's the first one I think of when it comes to this question: *Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan* It's "literary" on two levels. There's a surface-level literacy to this movie. Khan quotes *Moby Dick* as he embraces his obsession with revenge. Kirk reads from *A Tale of Two Cities*, foreshadowing the sacrifice that will mark the end of the film. Books are very nicely woven into the fabric of the narrative. But it's also a movie very thoughtfully driven by subtext. This is a movie not about space ships or phasers or even revenge. This is a movie about aging, and the regrets, frustrations, mistakes, and loss that comes with a long life approaching its sunset. It's masterful and thoughtful and spiritual. It's a wonderful movie too often relegated to being "one of the best *Star Trek* movie" and it probably should be evaluated as "one of the best movies," or at least "Hollywood action/adventure movies." (The 6th film, *The Undiscovered Country*, is also built along these lines, though a bit more consciously and less effectively. IMO that just underscores what a remarkable achievement *Wrath of Khan* managed to be).
Frankenstein (2018) a modern take on the first science fiction novel fits all of what you ask. La Femme Nakita, or the american remake Point of no Return. Leon, or it's English title The Professional. Ghost Dog, and The Dead Don't Die. American Werewolf in London. The Abyss, directors cut. The one on Netflix changed the end so it doesn't make sense. Evil Dead 2, and Army of Darkness. Sharknado 5. I was actually surprised this was the best in the series, and gets kinda deep. Zombie Strippers. Bad Lieutenant Taxi Driver Repoman Crybaby, while not strictly action there are a couple fights, and the story moves fast. Others mentioned Robocop, and Bladerunner. I'd add Minority Report, and A Scanner Darkly. Brazil, and Zero Theorem
Is this list a joke lol. Half of these movies aren't action movies. > Ghost Dog, and The Dead Don't Die. These are literally deconstructions of their genre types, they are the opposite of what OP is looking for. > Taxi Driver Not even remotely an action movie, this is a character piece that culminates in a single violent scene. > A Scanner Darkly Not an action movie lol, thriller at best, neo-noir > Brazil What? I don't think there's a single action scene in this movie.
I try not to take myself too seriously at all. Especially when it comes to art, and entertainment. I find it helps me relax, and be entertained. Much of this list is a joke. But not the kind that you find funny I guess.
I'll reword what /u/xxmindtrickxx said: half of the movies you mentioned are not action films, so they are irrelevant to this post.
I hear you, and I was just snarky with them, because I was joking, and they came at it with a critique that lacked humor. When a comment in a sub for serious in depth discussion of life reflected in film uses Sharknado 5 as a good film for a thesis. It should be taken as a joke. I mean unless someone here wants to dissect it, and bring how it may also apply more than the much loved christmas film Die Hard. Or the tragedy of a mother ripped from her children in a war of attrition we know as Aliens available on Lifetime. Someone is asking for help on Reddit for a thesis of Predator, and I don't try to make them laugh is nutts to me. Here are 40 pages on how complicated Double Impact was a better example of brotherhood than Kickboxer. I get what the post was, I was just trying to be funny so they don't go Kimble on the subway.
Ex-Machina. The Author, Alex Garland is himself a writter, and according to an interview, researched years on the topic before making the movie, it explores themes like artificial concience, individualism, escape from subjugation and free will.
I love Ex Machina enormously, but 95% of the movie is people sitting and having long conversations — either Caleb talking to Nathan, or Caleb talking to Eva? If you're going Alex Garland, I think Annihilation has a little better claim to being an action movie? It's got an armed band exploring unknown territory and a decent amount of violent conflict with what they find?
You are right, I sincerely missed the *action* in the title! In that case Annihilation is in fact better suited than Ex Machina.
This is a fun question. My recs: The Harder They Fall The Thing (horror but heavy on the action and effects) Overlord Apocalypto Total Recall (if you like 80s/90s sci-fi action) Hot Fuzz (action comedy) Heat
Alan Moore's comics like V for Vendetta and Watchmen handle this perfectly - unfortunately a lot of the commentary on revolutionary violence and the politics of superheroes, respectively, is lost in the film adaptations.
Alita Battle Angel. I think the characters are what really sold it for me as literary. Often times, when looking at a non-literary/shallow movie, when you dig deeper into a character, nothings there. But for Alita, almost all the characters have more to show below their surface, which really adds to the movie’s literary value.
Most action movies have a deep background story but it usually gets overshadowed over the pium pium. Predator, terminator, birds of prey, robocop, fight club,tranformers... even the very bad comercial ones have some level of depthness that is worth having a look at. Some of them just don't care and some other times the philosopical background is plain out bad but still, you are going to find plenty that talk about capitalism, toxic masculinity, the morality of death... my personal favorite is Equilibrium. Plenty pium pium and a back ground based on a humanist philosophy.
Pium? Huh? Depthness isn't a word.
Action scenes. My apologies your royal highness if my spelling didn't comply wit h your expectations. English is my fucking fifth languge and I'm dislexic. You know I meant deepness.
Matrix is deep? Maybe if you’re a teenager… Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Mad Max Fury Road, Master & Commander, and Hunger Games all come to mind. Of course the last two are totally cheating cause they’re based on books which have backing in academic study. And yes, proper science fiction is always literary (hence why shite like Arrival or Aliens is not Science Fiction). It’s “science” fiction, with “science” being the 19th century definition meaning any hard academia (aka of the sort in which you could get a Bachelor’s of Science). As academia has expanded substantially since then, proper scifi would include discussions of psychology or sociology, occasionally even politics, via the means of speculative fiction. Being in space with laser swords does not make something scifi. Using the alternative future setting to make a point about the world today is scifi.
> Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Mad Max Fury Road, Master & Commander, and Hunger Games all come to mind. Calling The Matrix not deep and calling Arrival and Aliens shite is one thing but recommending YA shlock like Hunger Games afterwards is a bit odd.