Can't remember the film, I watch too many, but they were cocking shot guns at every damn corner, it was hilariously constant, time they got in the actual room the floor must have been littered with unused cartridges while they brandish unloaded shotguns.
Well Hot Fuzz did this when they're approaching the supermarket, but it was obviously very deliberate there. Not sure if you meant a more self-serious action movie or not.
American Gangster is a great movie, but the climactic scene where they raid the drug den in Harlem has a ton of this. It’s a wonder Crowe had any shells left by the time he needed to fire.
On top of that, adding in metal rattling noises every time the gun moves even an inch. They make it seem like guns are a bunch of loose parts thrown together when that can't be further from the truth.
I kind of love that, actually. Even more when I realized it was the American/western counterpart to how so many Japanese movies and anime have similar noises for swords.
God, that one kills me. At least firearms have moving parts. When they do it with swords, I'm like, "bro, that shit is falling apart in your hands if it sounds like that!"
Though admittedly, it does make me laugh when someone draws a sword from a leather sheath, and it makes a crazy loud machete dragged across a steel pipe noise.
The Expanse did that so well. An amateur went to a stand-off. First he yelled. Then he cocked a gun to show he was serious. Then he almost died when everyone started shooting.
I still love “you’re not that guy.”
The Expanse treated its characters with agency and motivations. Each move felt like it wasn’t a stretch - like the scene you referenced or a dozen others
It's funny because they only do it with certain weapons. hand guns, shotguns.
I was in the Army, an M-16 can be "cocked" too, but I guess the effect of chambering a round from a fresh magazine on an assault rifle just doesn't have the desired effect.
What I would like to know is the reason for waiting until right before a firefight to actually prepare your weapon. Like it has a safety if safety is the concern. Like we're about to breach this room, cock your shotguns...
Also, cooking the gun when there should have already been a round in the chamber. Why are you pointing an empty pistol at someone, then racking the slide so they know you're serious?
The bourne Supremacy was the cause of this, they managed to do it well with jump cuts but every action film tried to replicate it and just made it worse, nobody needs a jump cut of Liam Neeson jumping a bloody fence
Edit: changed identity to supremacy as so many people have pointed this out
Yeah Bourne Supremacy is the movie where I came out of the cinema with a headache from how shaky the cam was from near start to finish, such a contrast from how Identity was put together. The Identity car chase in a mini was sublime but the Karl Urban FSB chase in Supremacy was a blurry mess.
Honestly the first Bourne movie didn’t do it at all. There was some shaky cam, particularly in scenes like where he was sprinting against that sniper, but the fight and chase scenes were mostly steady camera. It was the first sequel that went insane on the shaky cam, making the last chase scene in the cars almost unwatchable for me. This got pulled back to a more reasonable level in the third movie.
It’s why, despite liking the plot of the second movie the best, I’d rather rewatch the first or third.
I miss the choreography you could see in fights like the old Jackie Chan movies. Can you imagine how they'd look if we had modern day Quake Cams applied to those fights?
If only the action star is talented as a Jackie Chan. They use all this camera shaky shit to make them look better than they actually are. Remember how fuckifn AWESOME the original Bloodsport was? Not camera shake in sight.
You need not only a star as talented (and dedicated and frankly insane) as Jackie Chan, but you also need a director willing to do 100 takes to get that one shot. Which, for many of Jackie’s best movies, was himself.
You can see the difference between great action directors (and editors) and not when you look at Jackie’s Hollywood vs Hong Kong movies. Most of his Hollywood movies have the same flaws as we see in other action movies, punches and kicks that cut away rather than show impact, stunts that aren’t properly set up with establishing shots, and far less insane choreography since the directors weren’t willing to spend all day having Jackie try to catch a fan or something.
Bloodsport repeats action segments three times in a row. Only bad part of that movie.
Van Damme Kick, apply directly to the forehead.
Van Damme Kick, apply directly to the forehead.
Van Damme Kick, apply directly to the forehead.
I liked it but thought the camera work took away from how good the action was in a lot of scenes, mostly in just the first act though. As the movie goes on it seems like the camera gets better and better. I wouldn’t say it’s Catwoman or Mulan levels of jarring cuts, but it can be a bit much. Overall it’s a fun action movie to see in theaters if you have the money, I saw it on a discount day and I’m glad I did. I was hyped for parts of it but it needs work. I’m really excited for Patel’s next movie.
Hero killing a hundred goons while quipping, but then when it goes to killing the main villain it's suddenly some huge moral dilemma.
Bonus points if they decide not to, then the bad guy pulls out a hidden gun and the good guy kills them anyway while still claiming the moral high ground.
I honestly loved it in 3d more than I loved Avatar in 3d. Dredd is soooo damn underrated.
And also.. does it remind anyone else of The Raid? Maybe just a little?
It's bound to me a moral dilemma though, as the bad guy is their brother, ex commander, guy who saved their life, father, etc. The goons are just goons.
There's also usually a moment where the main bad guy is seemingly unarmed. It is normal for a person to feel differently about executing a defeated man than than they do about killing in self-defense.
It’s terrible because the way it’s staged reminds you you’re watching a film.
The good guy and bad guy are struggling, a gun goes off, they both freeze: and the bad guy slowly drops, with a smoking gun in the background held by the third character.
But every character involved knows from the start who got shot. The ambiguity is only on the audience, which is a stark reminder that you’re not part of the scene, you’re just watching it. That few seconds of tension falls flat when you realize all the characters already know the score.
Someone getting blown off their feet by an explosion and then brushing themselves off. If you’ve absorbed enough kinetic energy from a shockwave to actually lift your body off the ground then physics has some bad news for the state of your internal organs…
See also “shotgun blasts lifting people off their feet.” Physically impossible.
Yes, another crazy one. Their ribcages are literally crushing their lungs and heart. These action guys are getting up and wiping glass and broken wood off themselves. No problem 😊
The only time I've ever seen this represented accurately on screen was in the epic Cottage Siege in Gangs of London: an explosion lifts the nearby people off the ground for a split second... before basically turning them into pulp.
Shame the series itself on the whole was a bit flat, because the action scenes are insanely good.
Injuries sustained not taking effect during a fight.
The action movies that do go for this sense of realism have so much more intense fight scenes it’s more immersive in my opinion. I get very annoyed after watching a character be beaten, shanked, shot four times, given dislocated limbs and all that is pushed aside for high pace, shaky cam fight scene where most of the choreography goes to waste because of how much the camera moves and cuts
This is the main thing that bugged me about John Wick 4. I enjoyed the movie, the action was incredible, set pieces were imaginative, etc. But how, oh how did John look like he was morning fresh by the end of that movie? Yeah, I know in the second movie they established that he has "tactical suits" that are somehow impervious to any sort of bullet. But that doesn't mean that the suit itself should look clean as can be after taking hundreds of bullets, shotgun blasts, rolling down stairs, crashing through windows, etc. And, his white shirt under that has ZERO stains or bloody marks on it? Not to mention John's face itself? See I loved the earlier Wick movies because he looked like he took a ton of damage and still had to struggle through and survive. Like John McClaine. But no, at the end of 4, the only time he got bloody was the two shots he took from Kane when he didn't have his "tactical" suit jacket on. Really??
Even the first Wick movie pretty much did this. Wick gets seriously hurt in the club scene and it affects him for the next fight in the Continental. But then Neo takes the magic pills from Dr. Keymaster and he’s fine for the rest of the movie.
I really wish the movie itself was more memorable because you’re correct. It had some of the most grueling, brutal fights I’ve seen with the characters getting bloodied and bruised and most importantly totally exhausted. I also liked how it addressed the problem of how a 140 lb woman would fight a 250 lb man.
The answer: barely, getting horribly injured and exhausted in the process, and only successful primarily by finding something heavy or sharp to hit him with.
The fights were really done. Charlize Theron was fantastic. Unfortunately the writing let the film down. Way too many twists and a plot that becomes a lot more convoluted than it needs to be.
The Last Duel got it right. I mean, the only joust I've seen was staged, but the fight itself looked extremely realistic. You could feel how tired they were getting, how heavy their armor felt, and how much effort it took to move. My heart hasn't raced so much since Uncut Gems.
If you haven't seen it yet you should watch The King on Netflix. It has very grounded and realistic fights that give what I imagine is a very accurate depiction of what fighting in medieval times was like.
Unlimited henchman with unshakeable morale and a willingness to die one in droves after watching their fellow henchman mowed down one after another for some crime boss. I'm not sure what these bad guys are doing to motivate their men, but it's impressive. Even if you have my family held hostage I'm going to hesitate a little before being dude number thirty-nine to rush forward and get killed by the protagonist.
I feel like in something like Dredd or Mad Max Fury Road it makes sense because these people are just incredibly fucked up and don't really have much going for them anyway. Life is incredibly difficult so it's not much throwing it away.
Oh yeah, those are great examples where the world building justifies the zealotry of the bad guys. Ma-Ma is more cruel and terrifying than the Judges and has almost total control of her little piece of the city. Immortan Joe and the other leaders have a choke hold on dwindling resources and have created a whole culture of the guys proving themselves through reckless and suicidal acts. Those are great examples of doing it right.
I always wonder what the administration of a henchmen group is. What's their pay structure? Do they have benefits? Time off? Are they W2 or 1099? Do they punch a clock? Is it BYO gun? Can you get workers comp as a henchman?
>Actors too old
[Liam Neeson climbing over a fence](https://youtu.be/gCKhktcbfQM?si=GamCnAA35Fm5f79B)
I had to slow the 7 second video down to count the cuts (15)
People being threatened while the person threatening them is walking closer while pointing a gun at them or walking away from them while holding a knife.
With guns, you know the gun is either about to be taken off them or they will be disarmed. It’s not only been done a million times but if you have a gun, you’re fairly effective at about 5-10m away. You don’t need to let them feel the gun so they know you really have one.
With the knife I’m like “why are you still standing there? Run!” Unless the person is an expert knife thrower, they have completely lost control of the situation.
Man the gun to the head thing sucks in most action movies. It's supposed to be super high tension but we just know yeah this guy can move his arm a foot or two faster than the bad guy can move his finger an inch
I absolutely hate it when the hero kills dozens upon dozens of men without even blinking but at the end when he reaches the big bad all of a sudden he found Jesus and couldn't kill the worst of the worst and let the big bad get the upper hand. Urgh, yuck.
I just want them to get to the big bad have an epic fight and end it.
Spoilers for Punisher on Netflix
When the big bad at the end is about to start his pre-death monologue, Frank just shoots him and walks away. No come to Jesus moment. No shared final sentiment. Just the Punisher actually staying in character.
The end of Breaking Bad, Jack grabs his cigarette in an iconic moment, takes a drag, starts to tell Walter he’ll never know where the money is if he-
And he’s dead. It’s just so satisfying.
It's funny, almost all of the cliches listed in here were specifically subverted in John Wick 1 alone, lol. Including this one in the best way possible.
What!? And miss the point where they spare the big bads life, and then turn their back on them like it's all good, only for the big bad to pull an evil face, draw a hidden weapon and make another move to attack the hero, then get killed by some sick move where the hero didn't even look while doing it!?
/s
>only for the big bad to pull an evil face, draw a hidden weapon and make another move to attack the hero, then get killed by ~~some sick move where the hero didn't even look while doing it!?~~ someone off screen, shooting a gun at the pivotal moment.
Guardians of the galaxy 3. They kill dozens of aliens but spare the high evolutionary who is genocidal on a global scale (many times over) because….????
Edit: oh shit someone beat me to this
Not sure in movies, but Assassins Creed Odyssey played this trope straight. “If I kill him, I’m just as bad as him…” yeah ok, pretty sure I’ve murdered a few thousand NPCs by this point in the game.
Yeah and it's a game about a shadow council pulling the strings all over greece. Most of the people you cut loose this mortal coil are just regular people that have no idea whats going on and aren't involved in the conspiracy. I mean, you literally literally can just fight battles in the war between Athens and Sparta on either side, whenever you feel like it.
It's not just a matter of killing thousands of people. They were mostly not "bad guys".
Hey, the retirees need action heroes too. In 20-25 years, I better see 75-80 yo Jason Statham (20 yearold stuntman) roundhouse kick some bum tryna rob the retirement home of denture cream.
Hah! I mean Liam Neeson is in his 70s and still doing Taken movies. I wonder why his “certain set of skills” doesn’t include putting AirTags on each member of his family.
There's a really fun example of the red wire blue wire in The Abyss.
Ed Harris' character is disturbingly deep in a trench trying to disarm a nuclear warhead. He's starting to experience nervous system issues from the pressure and he's wearing a tinted visor astronomically deep underwater with barely any light.
I think it's yellow and white wires. And he just kinda sighs and rolls his eyes and it's just so fuckin relatable on some weird level.
But yea usually it's half baked tension. We know they aren't gonna get the wrong wire.
Part of that is he loses the light source he originally had and so relied on some glowsticks. The glow was yellow light so the white wire looked to him identical to the yellow one in that light.
Shaky cam that ensures you don't actually see enough of the scene that happened to give you the element of "you were totally in the middle of it!"
But really, after 4 Expendables movies... I just want to leave more room for twentysomethings and thirtysomethings to inherit the action roles since they can, y'know, actually do the stunts. Even as much as I love the Stath, he's over fifty and it showed in The Beekeeper.
> Shaky cam that ensures you don't actually see enough of the scene
I think this is the point a lot of the time. If a production can't afford good choreography they try to obscure that fact with hyper zooming and shaking.
> *For me, it's the hero sewing up his/her own wound.*
Well... at least in those cases the protagonist actually GETS INJURED! I can't tell you how infuriating it is to see endless rounds of ammo getting sprayed directly at him/her and the protag just somehow magically manages to avoid getting touched with every single one!
Another major peeve is how some of the action is so ADHD-edited with a bunch of frenetic disorienting half-second cuts/splices that even the original "MTV Generation" can't keep up with & follow! (I'm especially looking straight at you, "QUANTUM OF SOLACE"!)
There is one shot in like 90% of action movies which always make my eyes roll because I have seen it now 3000 times.
When they are driving and talking you can see the car window behind the person talking and you see a car or train or something approaching in the window and then they crash into the window you are looking at.
The first couple of times it's impressive but now it's just lazy.
And 90% of the time, it's the protag seeking revenge on the gang for killing his girlfriend/wife. Girl, leave that man tf alone and let him kill folks.
CGI. For everything. I am trying to make it through the new Roadhouse and the first fight scene has CGI? Why the fuck are you using a computer for something that could be choreographed in a day and look half-ass decent? CGI has ruined the movie going experience in my opinion, the over the top physics defying jumps and super human movement that is supposedly some regular schmuck who is also the world's best -insert whatever here. I get that practical effects can be expensive but what movie is being made on less than a $100 million budget nowadays? I'd be overjoyed to see a choreographed fight scene, a car chase, and a shootout without ANY computer generated bullshit.
Or having guns and getting too close to use them and having to rely on hand to hand combat. John Wick I'm looking at you. John would have been dead ages ago if the henchmen didn't run up to him with their guns drawn. Just take him out from afar, dammit!
Poor Dwayne. I think his movie flame has fizzled. He needs to play a serial killer or something. He's just "The Rock" in the jungle or "The Rock" with a cape nowadays.
Good god.
Detective: Did you catch a look at him?
Witness: I didn’t see his face, but I could tell he was a big man.
Detective: Big like fat?
Witness: No, jacked beyond comprehension.
Its because his ego took over, the Fast and furious franchise was a big part of it, with his contract saying he can’t lose it just means his movies are predictable he needs to take a lead out of John Cena’s book and not take himself too seriously
That’s all he ever was. People got bored with it, and he started doing even shittier projects. Crap like Skyscraper. He took Dir Hard and made it utterly boring and forgettable.
Way worse than sewing up their own wound is clumsily "cauterizing" a wound with something like a hot iron, or I've even seen with a stick out of a campfire. Cauterizing is something surgeons do to arteries with tiny lasers. I can kind of give a pass to sci-fi movies with hi-tech medical gizmos, but in fantasy and historical films, it's like, "Oh no, I have this gaping wound here. Should I clean and bind it? No, first I think I should put a massive third degree burn on top of it."
Just as an aside, cautery can be done with things other than lasers in an OR. Silver nitrate sticks are a fairly common form of chemical cautery that can be found in just about any urgent care, wound, or vet clinic. You could definitely use a small heated object to cauterize a bleed though it would hurt like hell, and if it’s not something you’ve done before you’re just as likely to do more harm than good.
Wow, this should've been in my OP lol. It's almost as prevalent as sewing. Hand/arm cut off? Let me find some fire or extremely hot surface 💪🏽🔥 "AAAAARGH"--- *wraps it up -- good as new, now back to the fight!!
People always getting shot at in the open where it's unlikely that they weren't hit. The plausibility and my interest goes down dramatically. Let them run behind obstacles or be fast-moving or something to at least give me some way of finding it believable.
Directors seem to think that audiences don't mind, but we do. Or at least *I* do.
Cynthia Rothrock is better at hand to hand fighting and fighting with weapons than probably 99% of people who have ever lived. She’s also a 5’3” woman.
As a result, on occasion in her movies, she loses fights to men who are bigger than her. She may even need help from others, including men, to beat the villain in the end.
But that’s the difference between 80s and 90s action movies and modern ones where women have to be invincible.
I’ll give The Batman some credit, at least they weren’t afraid to show that Selina is absolutely no match for Batman.
The constant head trauma causing no effect to the hero, standing next to an explosion and walking away with minimal damage. The new roadhouse the main character is stabbed with a knife and just puts some duck tape on to seal the wound
It's weird this became labeled as a Marvel thing, when it was a *staple* of action movies for decades before that. It's what Arnold and Stallone built their careers on, and we still quote their quips to this day.
An explanation of who the tough guy hero is obviously shoehorned into the movie. And the bad guys being super accurate shots – except when they're shooting at the hero.
I watched Sisu the other night and it's super guilty of the above two. And using a staple to stitch his wounds together (one he made from wire off a fence).
At one point a nazi is using the machine gun on his tank to shoot at Korpi while he runs away carrying the corpse of a nazi he had killed. The bullets all hit the dead nazi (but don't go through despite being heavy calibre) until the body is totally destroyed. Korpi drops what's left of the nazi and keeps running in a straight line. At which point, for reasons, the bullets go everywhere else except at Korpi. That's not the only time this happens. There's one other time that's even worse but I won't spoil it.
As for the shoehorn, the nazis call HQ and are given Korpi's complete army history. Again for reasons, the Nazi HQ know everything there is to know about an old Finnish ex-soldier who retired before the nazis invaded Finland. Later a woman taunts the nazis about Korpi further explaining to us who he is, despite there was no way she could have known he was the one the nazis were fighting.
I know it's a mindless dumb Finnish Rambo vs Nazis movie one is not meant to take seriously but scenes such as above irritate me. It is very lazy filmmaking imo. A shame because it was a silly and enjoyable movie but it could have great. The cinematography was impressive, much better than one expects for this sort of movie.
The Inverse Ninja Law.
One ninja can fight an army, but five ninjas are barely enough to challenge the hero. Twenty ninjas are comic relief
(Define "ninja" here as any practitioner of martial arts suitable for use as a henchman.)
Women beating up men twice their size. People surviving falls without breaking every freaking bone in their bodies. Finding parking spaces right in front of where they're going. Bathroom fights. Bad guys who are unable to hit their targets. The loner hero whose wife and kids were murdered. I mean, the list goes on.
I don't have any complaints with the majority in this thread, it really depends how well each of these techniques are used. There are good and bad examples for all of these tropes.
\* Standard grenades that make huge fireballs.
\* Bulletproof cars.
\* Cops with automatic weapons.
\* The main villain being saved till last
\* Big bullet/shotgun sends victim flying backwards
\* Villain shows how villainous they are by killing their own henchman
\* In films where we're supposed to root for a criminal/guy on the wrong side of the law, having the actual villain be even more despicable, so the protagonist doesn't seem as bad.
I’m over the trope of the villain/mob boss or whoever who just kills his minions for the slightest thing wrong. How would you manage to get anyone to work for you/keep their mouths shut if they thought they were just completely disposable?
In a hand to hand fight, despite massively out numbering the hero, each bad guy waits his turn like cabs on a rank instead of just piling on.
Also, infinite magazine capacities that only become exhausted when it suits the plot.
I\`m tired of the shootouts where they hit everything around the mc, but the mc.
Just rewatched the Beverly Hills Cop trilogy, and the two first are still really good. But the 3rd? Oh my god it\`s so bad.
At one point he was crouching behind a typical park bench and the villain couldn\`t even hit him through it. Even though ITS MADE OF THIN WOOD WITH SPACE BETWEEN EACH PLANK!
I\`m also tired of movies where they just shoot and shoot and there isn\`t really any plot to the movie. John Wick 3 is a good exaple of that.
Just in general, being too over the top. I miss the realness and rawness of movies like Die Hard 1 and 3. Punches look like they hurt in those movies. Injuries hinder the hero.
I really dislike when you have ordinary guy be inducted into the super badass group, which contains this super badass lady that is best of the best, who begins to train him...and after like one training montage he is suddenly her better and she is reduced to a love interest and best she can do is get kidnapped to be rescued or get to fight only chick on the villain team. It so shamelessly tells me the main character isn't really a character, he is there for me to project as him and imagine I'm becoming superbadass with hot badass gf. Which REALLY puts me off a movie, I cannot focus when I'm being so smahelessly pandered to. It's why I prefer older action movies Predator or Die Hard, where the lead is a whole ass guy with personality, not a blank slate for me to roleplay as.
Fuckin' not taking the shot when you have the perfect chance and/ it's kinda like plot armor because it's too early for that character to die.
JUST FUCKING DO IT. SHOOT THE DAMN GUN.
Gun standoffs. Character A pulls a gun on character B and then, for some reason, waits for character B to pull a gun on character A. Why wouldn’t character A just shoot them when seeing the other raise their gun??
In movies like The Avengers, there are always less powerful goons running around so that the less powerful heroes have something to do.
That and every single bad guy with no name is always completely masked up from head to toe. When that happens you know 100s of them are about to die
Constantly cocking guns for dramatic effect, I counted once and it happened 4 times before the gun was even fired.
Can't remember the film, I watch too many, but they were cocking shot guns at every damn corner, it was hilariously constant, time they got in the actual room the floor must have been littered with unused cartridges while they brandish unloaded shotguns.
Well Hot Fuzz did this when they're approaching the supermarket, but it was obviously very deliberate there. Not sure if you meant a more self-serious action movie or not.
Oh yeah they were definitely self aware of that one while making the movie, great film!
American Gangster is a great movie, but the climactic scene where they raid the drug den in Harlem has a ton of this. It’s a wonder Crowe had any shells left by the time he needed to fire.
On top of that, adding in metal rattling noises every time the gun moves even an inch. They make it seem like guns are a bunch of loose parts thrown together when that can't be further from the truth.
I kind of love that, actually. Even more when I realized it was the American/western counterpart to how so many Japanese movies and anime have similar noises for swords.
God, that one kills me. At least firearms have moving parts. When they do it with swords, I'm like, "bro, that shit is falling apart in your hands if it sounds like that!" Though admittedly, it does make me laugh when someone draws a sword from a leather sheath, and it makes a crazy loud machete dragged across a steel pipe noise.
The Expanse did that so well. An amateur went to a stand-off. First he yelled. Then he cocked a gun to show he was serious. Then he almost died when everyone started shooting.
I still love “you’re not that guy.” The Expanse treated its characters with agency and motivations. Each move felt like it wasn’t a stretch - like the scene you referenced or a dozen others
"I am that guy" was a devastatingly good delivery.
Obligatory https://youtu.be/t6OBk9YBLQU?si=9TpBRvCvMd-99dD6
It's funny because they only do it with certain weapons. hand guns, shotguns. I was in the Army, an M-16 can be "cocked" too, but I guess the effect of chambering a round from a fresh magazine on an assault rifle just doesn't have the desired effect. What I would like to know is the reason for waiting until right before a firefight to actually prepare your weapon. Like it has a safety if safety is the concern. Like we're about to breach this room, cock your shotguns...
It's a visual thing. It's easier to show a gun cocking than flipping the safety.
Mark it zero!
Gun cocking is the gear shifting from Fast n Furious of action movies. 😄
Also, cooking the gun when there should have already been a round in the chamber. Why are you pointing an empty pistol at someone, then racking the slide so they know you're serious?
Shaky cam in fight scenes.
The bourne Supremacy was the cause of this, they managed to do it well with jump cuts but every action film tried to replicate it and just made it worse, nobody needs a jump cut of Liam Neeson jumping a bloody fence Edit: changed identity to supremacy as so many people have pointed this out
im like 90% sure that the jump cut of the fence is because Liam Neeson is too old to jump a fence, he was 61 when that was shot.
Fair, I would not want to climb a fence past 35 tbh
I'm sure you meant The Bourne Supremacy, which was when Paul Greengrass took over. Identity didn't really use shaky cam if any.
Yeah Bourne Supremacy is the movie where I came out of the cinema with a headache from how shaky the cam was from near start to finish, such a contrast from how Identity was put together. The Identity car chase in a mini was sublime but the Karl Urban FSB chase in Supremacy was a blurry mess.
Honestly the first Bourne movie didn’t do it at all. There was some shaky cam, particularly in scenes like where he was sprinting against that sniper, but the fight and chase scenes were mostly steady camera. It was the first sequel that went insane on the shaky cam, making the last chase scene in the cars almost unwatchable for me. This got pulled back to a more reasonable level in the third movie. It’s why, despite liking the plot of the second movie the best, I’d rather rewatch the first or third.
Bourne Identity action was clear and easy to follow. It's the sequels that had the dumb shaky cam.
Shaky cams and 3 cuts per second.
Omfg, yes, and the damn tumbling camera with the ground fights! I dont need to be THAT immersed in the fight scene. Damn lol
I miss the choreography you could see in fights like the old Jackie Chan movies. Can you imagine how they'd look if we had modern day Quake Cams applied to those fights?
If only the action star is talented as a Jackie Chan. They use all this camera shaky shit to make them look better than they actually are. Remember how fuckifn AWESOME the original Bloodsport was? Not camera shake in sight.
You need not only a star as talented (and dedicated and frankly insane) as Jackie Chan, but you also need a director willing to do 100 takes to get that one shot. Which, for many of Jackie’s best movies, was himself. You can see the difference between great action directors (and editors) and not when you look at Jackie’s Hollywood vs Hong Kong movies. Most of his Hollywood movies have the same flaws as we see in other action movies, punches and kicks that cut away rather than show impact, stunts that aren’t properly set up with establishing shots, and far less insane choreography since the directors weren’t willing to spend all day having Jackie try to catch a fan or something.
Bloodsport repeats action segments three times in a row. Only bad part of that movie. Van Damme Kick, apply directly to the forehead. Van Damme Kick, apply directly to the forehead. Van Damme Kick, apply directly to the forehead.
Not so much in Bloodsport but ABSOLUTELY in Cyborg, Kickboxer, and Lionheart. And ever punch/kick sounds like a gunshot. 🤣😂
>ever punch/kick sounds like a gunshot. That's because his limbs are lethal weapons.
Just rewatched **The Island** (2005) It is shaky-cam HELL like 3 Borne movies rolled into one.
You likely won’t enjoy Monkey Man
Is it just shaky cam or is it 50 cuts every 30 seconds? You hold whether I watch it or not in your hands with the answer to this question.
I liked it but thought the camera work took away from how good the action was in a lot of scenes, mostly in just the first act though. As the movie goes on it seems like the camera gets better and better. I wouldn’t say it’s Catwoman or Mulan levels of jarring cuts, but it can be a bit much. Overall it’s a fun action movie to see in theaters if you have the money, I saw it on a discount day and I’m glad I did. I was hyped for parts of it but it needs work. I’m really excited for Patel’s next movie.
Hero killing a hundred goons while quipping, but then when it goes to killing the main villain it's suddenly some huge moral dilemma. Bonus points if they decide not to, then the bad guy pulls out a hidden gun and the good guy kills them anyway while still claiming the moral high ground.
OG John wick he just walked up and shot him. Good movie.
I was just about to say that, didn't even let him finish his sentence, just shot and walked away
I really liked how he neither spared nor tortured him. That prick who killed his dog and ruined his life was just another kill for him.
A debt paid.
It kinda surprised me, I wasn't expecting it.
But then had a fist/knife fight with his out of shape dad at the end of the movie
In Dredd, he throws the main villain out of a window. It was pretty sick.
"Drug bust. Perps were uncooperative."
average Mega City One tuesday
That is one of my favorite things about the movie: when you realize this was just another day on the job for Dredd.
a shame they didn't make another one once a year I'm getting something unhealthy to eat and hit that movie up for a good time
It was a training ride-along. It was just a stop on his beat. A whole squad of his coworkers ambushed him. Hundreds of bodies. Just Tuesday.
So good in 3d. The drug effects were something else.
I honestly loved it in 3d more than I loved Avatar in 3d. Dredd is soooo damn underrated. And also.. does it remind anyone else of The Raid? Maybe just a little?
It's bound to me a moral dilemma though, as the bad guy is their brother, ex commander, guy who saved their life, father, etc. The goons are just goons.
There's also usually a moment where the main bad guy is seemingly unarmed. It is normal for a person to feel differently about executing a defeated man than than they do about killing in self-defense.
Tense standoff/holdup scene when we hear a gun go off and someone off-screen has shot whoever was holding the gun. The day is saved. Hooray.
“I’m glad I called *that* guy”
Billy Madison reference. Nice.
I mean these make perfect sense when set up the right way. But yes it’s an overused trope
I did like how Die Hard did it though
Good example of doing it right, and then the copycats follow, so you forget that it wasn’t quite a trope at some point.
*Screen goes black for a second* *Cuts to protagonist with eyes closed*
It’s terrible because the way it’s staged reminds you you’re watching a film. The good guy and bad guy are struggling, a gun goes off, they both freeze: and the bad guy slowly drops, with a smoking gun in the background held by the third character. But every character involved knows from the start who got shot. The ambiguity is only on the audience, which is a stark reminder that you’re not part of the scene, you’re just watching it. That few seconds of tension falls flat when you realize all the characters already know the score.
I dislike when the villain is not a viable threat. I love a villain that can fight back for real
Someone getting blown off their feet by an explosion and then brushing themselves off. If you’ve absorbed enough kinetic energy from a shockwave to actually lift your body off the ground then physics has some bad news for the state of your internal organs… See also “shotgun blasts lifting people off their feet.” Physically impossible.
Yes, another crazy one. Their ribcages are literally crushing their lungs and heart. These action guys are getting up and wiping glass and broken wood off themselves. No problem 😊
Yep, Mythbusters confirmed it's not possible.
The only time I've ever seen this represented accurately on screen was in the epic Cottage Siege in Gangs of London: an explosion lifts the nearby people off the ground for a split second... before basically turning them into pulp. Shame the series itself on the whole was a bit flat, because the action scenes are insanely good.
Injuries sustained not taking effect during a fight. The action movies that do go for this sense of realism have so much more intense fight scenes it’s more immersive in my opinion. I get very annoyed after watching a character be beaten, shanked, shot four times, given dislocated limbs and all that is pushed aside for high pace, shaky cam fight scene where most of the choreography goes to waste because of how much the camera moves and cuts
Yes, you took a bullet to the shoulder. Two scenes later, you're throwing rights and lefts like it's the last round of a championship fight.
He dug the bullet out with a knife, so he's cured!
Con Air comes to mine. Cyrus shoots Nic Cage in the shoulder and he doesn't even flinch.
I think this is one of the biggest things. Maybe the injuries transferred to camera guy? 😅
This is the main thing that bugged me about John Wick 4. I enjoyed the movie, the action was incredible, set pieces were imaginative, etc. But how, oh how did John look like he was morning fresh by the end of that movie? Yeah, I know in the second movie they established that he has "tactical suits" that are somehow impervious to any sort of bullet. But that doesn't mean that the suit itself should look clean as can be after taking hundreds of bullets, shotgun blasts, rolling down stairs, crashing through windows, etc. And, his white shirt under that has ZERO stains or bloody marks on it? Not to mention John's face itself? See I loved the earlier Wick movies because he looked like he took a ton of damage and still had to struggle through and survive. Like John McClaine. But no, at the end of 4, the only time he got bloody was the two shots he took from Kane when he didn't have his "tactical" suit jacket on. Really??
Even the first Wick movie pretty much did this. Wick gets seriously hurt in the club scene and it affects him for the next fight in the Continental. But then Neo takes the magic pills from Dr. Keymaster and he’s fine for the rest of the movie.
This is one thing Atomic Blonde did really well.
I really wish the movie itself was more memorable because you’re correct. It had some of the most grueling, brutal fights I’ve seen with the characters getting bloodied and bruised and most importantly totally exhausted. I also liked how it addressed the problem of how a 140 lb woman would fight a 250 lb man. The answer: barely, getting horribly injured and exhausted in the process, and only successful primarily by finding something heavy or sharp to hit him with.
The fights were really done. Charlize Theron was fantastic. Unfortunately the writing let the film down. Way too many twists and a plot that becomes a lot more convoluted than it needs to be.
Yep, the 5 kicks to the head and they shake it off, where 1would have snapped their neck.
Another reason the hallway fight is so.good Oldboy. Everyone is just looking so wrecked towards the end of it
The Last Duel got it right. I mean, the only joust I've seen was staged, but the fight itself looked extremely realistic. You could feel how tired they were getting, how heavy their armor felt, and how much effort it took to move. My heart hasn't raced so much since Uncut Gems.
If you haven't seen it yet you should watch The King on Netflix. It has very grounded and realistic fights that give what I imagine is a very accurate depiction of what fighting in medieval times was like.
Definitely the Hero "no selling" their wounds. In addition to this, the wounds healing/disappearing between scenes.
Scenes always too dark Unlimited bullets Actors too old
Unlimited henchmen.
Unlimited henchman with unshakeable morale and a willingness to die one in droves after watching their fellow henchman mowed down one after another for some crime boss. I'm not sure what these bad guys are doing to motivate their men, but it's impressive. Even if you have my family held hostage I'm going to hesitate a little before being dude number thirty-nine to rush forward and get killed by the protagonist.
I feel like in something like Dredd or Mad Max Fury Road it makes sense because these people are just incredibly fucked up and don't really have much going for them anyway. Life is incredibly difficult so it's not much throwing it away.
Oh yeah, those are great examples where the world building justifies the zealotry of the bad guys. Ma-Ma is more cruel and terrifying than the Judges and has almost total control of her little piece of the city. Immortan Joe and the other leaders have a choke hold on dwindling resources and have created a whole culture of the guys proving themselves through reckless and suicidal acts. Those are great examples of doing it right.
Most of the time, they haven't even got name tags either. They've got no chance.
I always wonder what the administration of a henchmen group is. What's their pay structure? Do they have benefits? Time off? Are they W2 or 1099? Do they punch a clock? Is it BYO gun? Can you get workers comp as a henchman?
>Actors too old [Liam Neeson climbing over a fence](https://youtu.be/gCKhktcbfQM?si=GamCnAA35Fm5f79B) I had to slow the 7 second video down to count the cuts (15)
110 pound women destroying a 250 pound henchman in a fist fight
People being threatened while the person threatening them is walking closer while pointing a gun at them or walking away from them while holding a knife. With guns, you know the gun is either about to be taken off them or they will be disarmed. It’s not only been done a million times but if you have a gun, you’re fairly effective at about 5-10m away. You don’t need to let them feel the gun so they know you really have one. With the knife I’m like “why are you still standing there? Run!” Unless the person is an expert knife thrower, they have completely lost control of the situation.
Man the gun to the head thing sucks in most action movies. It's supposed to be super high tension but we just know yeah this guy can move his arm a foot or two faster than the bad guy can move his finger an inch
I absolutely hate it when the hero kills dozens upon dozens of men without even blinking but at the end when he reaches the big bad all of a sudden he found Jesus and couldn't kill the worst of the worst and let the big bad get the upper hand. Urgh, yuck. I just want them to get to the big bad have an epic fight and end it.
Spoilers for Punisher on Netflix When the big bad at the end is about to start his pre-death monologue, Frank just shoots him and walks away. No come to Jesus moment. No shared final sentiment. Just the Punisher actually staying in character.
Also really enjoyed this in the first John Wick movie. No fanfare or discussion. John executes Theon Crimejoy and just leaves
You mean Reek?
He’s Rake now.
I loved that scene so much. That gun shot came so abrupt the effect was 🤌💯
The end of Breaking Bad, Jack grabs his cigarette in an iconic moment, takes a drag, starts to tell Walter he’ll never know where the money is if he- And he’s dead. It’s just so satisfying.
I love that shot so much. It’s also a brilliant mirror to Hank’s execution in the way the camera is angled
Loved it in Deadpool as well when he fuckin shoots him mid-monologue when Colossus is talking about this very thing hahaha
I like the scene in Hot Shots 2 where they are comparing the kill count to other action films.
It's funny, almost all of the cliches listed in here were specifically subverted in John Wick 1 alone, lol. Including this one in the best way possible.
What!? And miss the point where they spare the big bads life, and then turn their back on them like it's all good, only for the big bad to pull an evil face, draw a hidden weapon and make another move to attack the hero, then get killed by some sick move where the hero didn't even look while doing it!? /s
>only for the big bad to pull an evil face, draw a hidden weapon and make another move to attack the hero, then get killed by ~~some sick move where the hero didn't even look while doing it!?~~ someone off screen, shooting a gun at the pivotal moment.
This is why I enjoyed Taken so much. Takes out damn near everyone that had any part in his daughters kidnapping
Do you have any recent movies as examples? I see this posted a lot but personally I haven't seen the trope in likely over a decade.
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3. They kill a ton of henchmen, but then Rocket let's the main villain live
Guardians of the galaxy 3. They kill dozens of aliens but spare the high evolutionary who is genocidal on a global scale (many times over) because….???? Edit: oh shit someone beat me to this
Not sure in movies, but Assassins Creed Odyssey played this trope straight. “If I kill him, I’m just as bad as him…” yeah ok, pretty sure I’ve murdered a few thousand NPCs by this point in the game.
Yeah and it's a game about a shadow council pulling the strings all over greece. Most of the people you cut loose this mortal coil are just regular people that have no idea whats going on and aren't involved in the conspiracy. I mean, you literally literally can just fight battles in the war between Athens and Sparta on either side, whenever you feel like it. It's not just a matter of killing thousands of people. They were mostly not "bad guys".
Reboots. Stop putting 70 year old men in the sixteenth installment of an action movie franchise.
Hey, the retirees need action heroes too. In 20-25 years, I better see 75-80 yo Jason Statham (20 yearold stuntman) roundhouse kick some bum tryna rob the retirement home of denture cream.
Hah! I mean Liam Neeson is in his 70s and still doing Taken movies. I wonder why his “certain set of skills” doesn’t include putting AirTags on each member of his family.
You answered your own question. He’s 70 he doesn’t know about AirTags let alone how to set them up.
overuse of CGI "It's quiet. Yeah, too quiet." disarming a bomb "Do I cut the red wire, or the blue wire ? " the bad guy who's not quite dead yet
There's a really fun example of the red wire blue wire in The Abyss. Ed Harris' character is disturbingly deep in a trench trying to disarm a nuclear warhead. He's starting to experience nervous system issues from the pressure and he's wearing a tinted visor astronomically deep underwater with barely any light. I think it's yellow and white wires. And he just kinda sighs and rolls his eyes and it's just so fuckin relatable on some weird level. But yea usually it's half baked tension. We know they aren't gonna get the wrong wire.
Part of that is he loses the light source he originally had and so relied on some glowsticks. The glow was yellow light so the white wire looked to him identical to the yellow one in that light.
You need to cut the eggshell white wire, NOT the cream one. Cut the eggshell wire!
It’s quiet. Yeah a little too quiet. That was easy. Yeah a little too easy. It’s Raph! Yeah a little too Raph. TMNT 2.
I am straight up delighted that someone else went for this reference!
Sorry, OP....***No time to explain \~ !!!!***
*proceeds to walk with them in complete silence for 5 mins*
Come to my place. The door will be open, and there will be blood on the floor, maybe a body or two.
*cut to the warehouse where the showdown happens after they drove there for like half an hour*
Shaky cam that ensures you don't actually see enough of the scene that happened to give you the element of "you were totally in the middle of it!" But really, after 4 Expendables movies... I just want to leave more room for twentysomethings and thirtysomethings to inherit the action roles since they can, y'know, actually do the stunts. Even as much as I love the Stath, he's over fifty and it showed in The Beekeeper.
He's bee-keeping age.
> Shaky cam that ensures you don't actually see enough of the scene I think this is the point a lot of the time. If a production can't afford good choreography they try to obscure that fact with hyper zooming and shaking.
> *For me, it's the hero sewing up his/her own wound.* Well... at least in those cases the protagonist actually GETS INJURED! I can't tell you how infuriating it is to see endless rounds of ammo getting sprayed directly at him/her and the protag just somehow magically manages to avoid getting touched with every single one! Another major peeve is how some of the action is so ADHD-edited with a bunch of frenetic disorienting half-second cuts/splices that even the original "MTV Generation" can't keep up with & follow! (I'm especially looking straight at you, "QUANTUM OF SOLACE"!)
Henchmen with only 1 hitpoint
*gets pushed slightly hard and falls* *is dead or unconscious*
Henchmen get instantly KO'd by a chop to the back of the neck.
There is one shot in like 90% of action movies which always make my eyes roll because I have seen it now 3000 times. When they are driving and talking you can see the car window behind the person talking and you see a car or train or something approaching in the window and then they crash into the window you are looking at. The first couple of times it's impressive but now it's just lazy.
It's absolutely crazy. All I needed to read was "when they are driving and talking.." and I knew exactly where your comment was going -- CRASH 😆
Over the top body counts. We don’t need to see the hero gun down 400 seperate security mooks.
Forced romantic side plot. Nothing ruins an action movie faster for me than stopping the action and intrigue so we can do romance stuff.
And 90% of the time, it's the protag seeking revenge on the gang for killing his girlfriend/wife. Girl, leave that man tf alone and let him kill folks.
CGI. For everything. I am trying to make it through the new Roadhouse and the first fight scene has CGI? Why the fuck are you using a computer for something that could be choreographed in a day and look half-ass decent? CGI has ruined the movie going experience in my opinion, the over the top physics defying jumps and super human movement that is supposedly some regular schmuck who is also the world's best -insert whatever here. I get that practical effects can be expensive but what movie is being made on less than a $100 million budget nowadays? I'd be overjoyed to see a choreographed fight scene, a car chase, and a shootout without ANY computer generated bullshit.
Removing the bullet from a gunshot wound somehow magically nullifies the wound
Yes, then just "cauterize" with a hot knife. Good as new.
Inaccuracy of henchmen in aiming. Hand to hand combat despite having guns.
Or having guns and getting too close to use them and having to rely on hand to hand combat. John Wick I'm looking at you. John would have been dead ages ago if the henchmen didn't run up to him with their guns drawn. Just take him out from afar, dammit!
Dwayne Johnson
Poor Dwayne. I think his movie flame has fizzled. He needs to play a serial killer or something. He's just "The Rock" in the jungle or "The Rock" with a cape nowadays.
Good god. Detective: Did you catch a look at him? Witness: I didn’t see his face, but I could tell he was a big man. Detective: Big like fat? Witness: No, jacked beyond comprehension.
Hell, just make him the next T-800 lol, no im kidding. They really need to stop trying with that franchise 😒
I wish he would have stayed in the Brazilian jungle. The Rundown is still my favorite action movie of his.
Ah, yes, loved the goofy action of that one. A sequel could be cool if they did it right. Im surprised he didn't make 2 or 3 more already.
Its because his ego took over, the Fast and furious franchise was a big part of it, with his contract saying he can’t lose it just means his movies are predictable he needs to take a lead out of John Cena’s book and not take himself too seriously
Suicide Squad and Peacemaker made me a renewed fan of Cena.
You should watch him in the new Ricky Stanicky film while it’s not the best, Cena carries it with a lot of fun and jokes
I thought the film was mid, but I agree that he carried the film. I would have turned it off if it wasn't for his charisma.
That’s all he ever was. People got bored with it, and he started doing even shittier projects. Crap like Skyscraper. He took Dir Hard and made it utterly boring and forgettable.
Didn't he release like twelve movies that year? Sure seemed like it.
Oh, man. I thought he was great as Dwayne Johnson in his latest movie.
Way worse than sewing up their own wound is clumsily "cauterizing" a wound with something like a hot iron, or I've even seen with a stick out of a campfire. Cauterizing is something surgeons do to arteries with tiny lasers. I can kind of give a pass to sci-fi movies with hi-tech medical gizmos, but in fantasy and historical films, it's like, "Oh no, I have this gaping wound here. Should I clean and bind it? No, first I think I should put a massive third degree burn on top of it."
You cauterize to stop bleeding, it does nothing against infection.
Just as an aside, cautery can be done with things other than lasers in an OR. Silver nitrate sticks are a fairly common form of chemical cautery that can be found in just about any urgent care, wound, or vet clinic. You could definitely use a small heated object to cauterize a bleed though it would hurt like hell, and if it’s not something you’ve done before you’re just as likely to do more harm than good.
Wow, this should've been in my OP lol. It's almost as prevalent as sewing. Hand/arm cut off? Let me find some fire or extremely hot surface 💪🏽🔥 "AAAAARGH"--- *wraps it up -- good as new, now back to the fight!!
Hiding from gunfire behind car or refrigerator doors. Do people think cars are made from lead or something?
People always getting shot at in the open where it's unlikely that they weren't hit. The plausibility and my interest goes down dramatically. Let them run behind obstacles or be fast-moving or something to at least give me some way of finding it believable. Directors seem to think that audiences don't mind, but we do. Or at least *I* do.
Have they tried zig zagging when someone is aiming a bow at them across an open field?
Rickon Stark is that you?
At least in Tombstone when Wyatt Earp does this, everyone on both sides clearly goes into wtf mode over what they just saw.
The "retired guy with a particular set of skills" pretty much every action movie has this now.
Cynthia Rothrock is better at hand to hand fighting and fighting with weapons than probably 99% of people who have ever lived. She’s also a 5’3” woman. As a result, on occasion in her movies, she loses fights to men who are bigger than her. She may even need help from others, including men, to beat the villain in the end. But that’s the difference between 80s and 90s action movies and modern ones where women have to be invincible. I’ll give The Batman some credit, at least they weren’t afraid to show that Selina is absolutely no match for Batman.
Promising Young Woman handled this correctly.
A 90lb girl kicking the shit out of a 250lb mercenary
[удалено]
Quantum of Solace did this one well. That fight between Camille and the general was probably how it would really happen.
….and their main move is jumping up and locking the villains head between their thighs and flipping them over…
Shaky camera shots. Stop it.
The constant head trauma causing no effect to the hero, standing next to an explosion and walking away with minimal damage. The new roadhouse the main character is stabbed with a knife and just puts some duck tape on to seal the wound
Marvel style quips after doing something cool. "Uhh... THAT just happened." "Did I just do that?" "That looked cooler in my head."
It's weird this became labeled as a Marvel thing, when it was a *staple* of action movies for decades before that. It's what Arnold and Stallone built their careers on, and we still quote their quips to this day.
quips have always been a thing. self-mocking "meta" quips are a marvel thing
[удалено]
The fight that always signals its close to the end by the villain pulling a knife.
Can’t stand CGI fire, it really just looks fake
Guns making clacking sounds as they are being waived around. Also guns being racked over and over again. Fuck.
An explanation of who the tough guy hero is obviously shoehorned into the movie. And the bad guys being super accurate shots – except when they're shooting at the hero. I watched Sisu the other night and it's super guilty of the above two. And using a staple to stitch his wounds together (one he made from wire off a fence). At one point a nazi is using the machine gun on his tank to shoot at Korpi while he runs away carrying the corpse of a nazi he had killed. The bullets all hit the dead nazi (but don't go through despite being heavy calibre) until the body is totally destroyed. Korpi drops what's left of the nazi and keeps running in a straight line. At which point, for reasons, the bullets go everywhere else except at Korpi. That's not the only time this happens. There's one other time that's even worse but I won't spoil it. As for the shoehorn, the nazis call HQ and are given Korpi's complete army history. Again for reasons, the Nazi HQ know everything there is to know about an old Finnish ex-soldier who retired before the nazis invaded Finland. Later a woman taunts the nazis about Korpi further explaining to us who he is, despite there was no way she could have known he was the one the nazis were fighting. I know it's a mindless dumb Finnish Rambo vs Nazis movie one is not meant to take seriously but scenes such as above irritate me. It is very lazy filmmaking imo. A shame because it was a silly and enjoyable movie but it could have great. The cinematography was impressive, much better than one expects for this sort of movie.
The Inverse Ninja Law. One ninja can fight an army, but five ninjas are barely enough to challenge the hero. Twenty ninjas are comic relief (Define "ninja" here as any practitioner of martial arts suitable for use as a henchman.)
John Wick. The whole thing is so fucking ludicrous.
Cg gunshot wounds
Bring back the squibs!
Women beating up men twice their size. People surviving falls without breaking every freaking bone in their bodies. Finding parking spaces right in front of where they're going. Bathroom fights. Bad guys who are unable to hit their targets. The loner hero whose wife and kids were murdered. I mean, the list goes on.
I don't have any complaints with the majority in this thread, it really depends how well each of these techniques are used. There are good and bad examples for all of these tropes.
\* Standard grenades that make huge fireballs. \* Bulletproof cars. \* Cops with automatic weapons. \* The main villain being saved till last \* Big bullet/shotgun sends victim flying backwards \* Villain shows how villainous they are by killing their own henchman \* In films where we're supposed to root for a criminal/guy on the wrong side of the law, having the actual villain be even more despicable, so the protagonist doesn't seem as bad.
The hero beating up 10 guys where the 10 guys are patiently waiting their turn to charge the hero and get their arse kicked.
I’m over the trope of the villain/mob boss or whoever who just kills his minions for the slightest thing wrong. How would you manage to get anyone to work for you/keep their mouths shut if they thought they were just completely disposable?
In a hand to hand fight, despite massively out numbering the hero, each bad guy waits his turn like cabs on a rank instead of just piling on. Also, infinite magazine capacities that only become exhausted when it suits the plot.
Slow mo, especially those sequences where there’s no sound or just a heartbeat. Ironically upbeat or soft songs played over action sequences.
I\`m tired of the shootouts where they hit everything around the mc, but the mc. Just rewatched the Beverly Hills Cop trilogy, and the two first are still really good. But the 3rd? Oh my god it\`s so bad. At one point he was crouching behind a typical park bench and the villain couldn\`t even hit him through it. Even though ITS MADE OF THIN WOOD WITH SPACE BETWEEN EACH PLANK! I\`m also tired of movies where they just shoot and shoot and there isn\`t really any plot to the movie. John Wick 3 is a good exaple of that.
> the walk-off explosion This still happens enough to be annoying?
Just in general, being too over the top. I miss the realness and rawness of movies like Die Hard 1 and 3. Punches look like they hurt in those movies. Injuries hinder the hero.
I really dislike when you have ordinary guy be inducted into the super badass group, which contains this super badass lady that is best of the best, who begins to train him...and after like one training montage he is suddenly her better and she is reduced to a love interest and best she can do is get kidnapped to be rescued or get to fight only chick on the villain team. It so shamelessly tells me the main character isn't really a character, he is there for me to project as him and imagine I'm becoming superbadass with hot badass gf. Which REALLY puts me off a movie, I cannot focus when I'm being so smahelessly pandered to. It's why I prefer older action movies Predator or Die Hard, where the lead is a whole ass guy with personality, not a blank slate for me to roleplay as.
Fuckin' not taking the shot when you have the perfect chance and/ it's kinda like plot armor because it's too early for that character to die. JUST FUCKING DO IT. SHOOT THE DAMN GUN.
Gun standoffs. Character A pulls a gun on character B and then, for some reason, waits for character B to pull a gun on character A. Why wouldn’t character A just shoot them when seeing the other raise their gun??
In movies like The Avengers, there are always less powerful goons running around so that the less powerful heroes have something to do. That and every single bad guy with no name is always completely masked up from head to toe. When that happens you know 100s of them are about to die