DDL on 21/7/2009 at 17:38
Or just grabbing him, pinning him, and pulling bits off him. Arms first, obviously.
Though to be honest, John Connor absorbed a truly herculean amount of punishment even without being punched repeatedly in the face.
BEAR on 21/7/2009 at 18:01
I think we're missing the point of the 80's/90's vs 00's action flicks.
The fun of old school action movies wasn't in their realism, but in the fact that they could be unreal and ridiculous while still remaining sane. They felt very consistent, both in story and character development.
I can go back and watch, say, die hard or any of the jack ryan movies (quite fond of clear and present danger) and never feel like things are just randomly happening for no reason.
Fast forward to today, where an "action" movie attempts to please at least 20 demographics, and the characters seem to change moment to moment, totally breaking the immersion. Trying to watch die hard 4 or the new Indiana jones is just painful, there is no flow.
Thats what bugs me the worst. Commando is perfectly fine to me, because it knows just what it is, and it doesn't try to do any more than that. I dont care if what the characters can do is realistic, just that what they do from moment to moment is consistent with the viewers perception of said character.
A good example is AVP. I liked alien, aliens, and predator (even predator 2 was ok by todays standards, but compared to others of the time it was lackluster at best). They were all fairly unreal, in that they are unlikely, but that doesn't matter. But, AVP just didn't fucking MAKE SENSE. Not people having inhuman powers, I don't give two shits about that. Its everything else, why characters do what they do, overlooking obvious things that a 2 year old would notice etc. Massive throbbing plot holes everywhere you look. That is what sucks. They insist on putting parts in but refuse to actually properly handle them assuming (rightly) that the audience is too stupid to notice or too drunk to care.
rachel on 21/7/2009 at 18:40
Quote Posted by DDL
Though to be honest, John Connor absorbed a truly herculean amount of punishment even without being punched repeatedly in the face.
He actually got punched straight in the face at least once in T4 if I recall correctly, and he didn't seem to mind much, all things considered. Then again, he's the godamn Batman right? :p
Adam Nuhfer on 21/7/2009 at 21:19
Quote Posted by Koki
Back in the day it was all lone commando/ex-commando infiltrating city/jail/ship/spaceship/forest/jungle/mountains with nothing but silenced MP5/knife/loincloth, and now what? Is dodging fucking rockets the new bullet time? Can't we have action movie without a landmark blowing the fuck up anymore? Or without teenagers?
At least back then this shit
pretended to make sense.
May I add on after the end of your quote of "Or without teenagers?"
To include: go go dancers that lose one leg only to be outfitted with a SMG and orchestrate fantastic stunts.
Sulphur on 21/7/2009 at 21:32
"It's go-go, not cry-cry."
Good choice, actually. If you want to see something ridiculous and campy as all get out yet fun to watch with friends while chugging back the brewskis, Planet Terror pretty much is that movie. Unless you haven't seen any of the Evil Deads yet.
june gloom on 21/7/2009 at 23:55
Note to self: get Planet Terror on DVD
AxTng1 on 22/7/2009 at 01:24
Quote Posted by nicked
I've never watched an action sequence where I couldn't tell who was punching who for example.
Underworld?
Tocky on 22/7/2009 at 03:23
Anyone seen "Taken" with Liam Neeson? No shaky cam and aside from not breaking his legs in a leap to a boat all the action was fairly ruthless and straightforward. It was very understandably badass.
TJKeranen on 22/7/2009 at 04:51
Most of the time I feel that shaky cam, extreme zooms and split-second cuts are like the dust clouds in the brawl scenes in old cartoons: they are there to cover up the action because it's difficult and expensive to animate/choreograph/direct violence so that it looks cool.
The first Bourne movie did it really well and it became an important element adding to the feel of the story, but almost every single action movie since, fuck them. I can dig the "Batman should be like a ghost" angle, but I still felt a bit let down by the new movies on the action front. Good thing I liked their stories and atmosphere, too.
frozenman on 30/7/2009 at 03:13
I feel like action movies of the 80s and early 90s were highly informed by the emerging video game culture at the time. It could be the other way around, I'm not entirely positive. But for example, Commando is basically a video game, what with the whole level where identical enemy guards are pouring out and being mowed down, even the 15 hit combo he puts on the boss at the end of the movie. And some of JCVD's movies like Lionheart and Bloodsport are basically identical and always remind me of Streetfighter and Mortal Kombat. They're also awesome in that I can keep watching them over and over and still pluck some amusement out of them.
And I guess nowadays our video-games are hella more complex and twitchy, not that games ever weren't twitchy.
