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Will action flicks continue to have mainstream american presence?

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By action flicks i primarily mean the likes of Taken, The Last Stand so on... The ones that don't have massive ambitions or scale.

Is the time when an action film can go into theaters have a ton of fans and gain large pop culture recognition over? 

I think action fans will still exist but i don't see an action flick making as much money as they did in the nineties unless it has superheroes or some historical epic level of action with thousands of people going at each other.

Is Direct to VOD/DVD the future of the franchise? Do you see the VOD/DVD market churning out more polished and bigger budget movies in the long term.

 

Interesting article on the subject:  

http://www.rogerebert.com/balder-and-dash/the-real-vulgar-auteurs-three-great-directors-of-direct-to-video-films

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I think the real problem is that so many of today's action flicks dumb themselves down and don't show any blood to get a PG13 rating.  I am sorry but it just looks silly to me when someone is supposed to have been shot but we don't see any blood, it just looks like a bunch of guys acting silly and then throwing themselves to the ground.  I think that is why escapist fantasy fair is doing well, because at least there is usually a story reason in those films that we don't see blood.  Oh and don't get me started on the movies that cut away every time someone is shot.  Violence makes people bleed, to pretend overwise makes your movie look silly.  It seems like action movies used to understand this but lately they have forgotten this very basic fact.

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I'm not sure exactly what mainstream american presence means, but the "Taken" phone speech has some massive recognition.

I agree 100% that toning down action films (and horror films) that plainly SHOULD be "R" films to be PG-13 has seriously damaged lots of films. I also think there's something vaguely immoral about it.

I watched "Dredd." There's a dude who's shot and dies crying in a puddle of his own blood. I watched "Man of Steel" where tens of thousands of people die off camera and no one seems to mind, or "Expendables 3" where people die and it's funny.

Which film is REALLY inappropriate for children? The one where violence is awful, or the one where violence is fun?

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Yeah, that is what bugs me about some people.  It's okay to show a city block being destroyed but not to show the amount of pain caused by a single person dying?

At least old R rated action films and movies like Dredd show the impact and horror of taking a life.  They also show that the person who takes the life, even if he is a hero pays a price for doing it.  I think the title song for Casino Royal perfect sums up what an action movie's perspective on violence should be.

It's like when in movies now they try to have Nazis without calling them Nazis or showing the full horror of what they did, you are white washing the facts and making the Nazis not look so bad.  I mean in the Captain American movie the argument seemed to be that the Nazis were the lesser of two evils.  When Red Skull breaks away from the Nazis it is played as if a really bad thing is happening and the Nazis were in fact holding him back from some of his evil plans.  Now maybe that was not the intent of the film makers but that is how it played because the evil of the Nazis was never shown and they were opposed to redskull the villain of the film, so I am afraid some kids will walk away with the impression that the Nazis were not so bad.  it's the same thing with violence.

I know alot of people will dispute me on this but it's why I think Man of Steel has the moral high ground over the Avengers.  In both films a city is destroyed in the climax but in Man of Steel the impact is shown while in the Avengers it is just shown as a fun little adventure and the heroes are laughing and making jokes at the end.  In the Avengers any people who are in danger are saved and we don't see anything thing from their perspective. Also killing hundreds of aliens who don't even have names leaves no impact on the heroes and they just make jokes at the end of it.

In Man of steel there are three characters on the ground and we see things from their perspective.  Yes, they live in the end but it is by pure chance and in their faces we see that that know they are the lucky ones.  It also goes to great lengths to show that when a city becomes ground zero for a war even if it is being fought by someone as good as Superman there is no way to avoid the deaths of civilians and some times there is no way to avoid the fight so in that way it brings the full horror of war out in the open to be seen and it shows that even when you are the good guy you still can not save everyone and your actions can still have bad outcomes.  Then at the end Superman falls apart as the full impact of what has happened hits him, including the killing of Zod and his followers.  Yes it was the right thing to do and there was no other option but it still leaves Superman with a scare and the impact the battle had on the people on the ground is shown.

To me MOS approach to violence and urban warfare is much better then The Avengers'.  I think that is the approach most action movies should take.  Show the impact since it draws us into the story and it sends a better message, if that means getting an R rating then so be it.  I don't think the R rating will always happen since as I said I think Man of Steel got the point across with a PG13, still why it gets a PG13 and something like Death Wish where the hero vomits after the first time he attacks a guy gets an r rating is beyond me.

The MPAA is mess up and this is why I don't really pay attention to film ratings any more.

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They made what, three of those Expendables movies?  And now seven Furious movies?  The action movie ain't going away.

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MPAA is garbage.

Action films have been more or less replaced with comic book films, which I'm fine with. Not much a difference between them, really. Straightforward action films are still out there, but they're rarely hits.

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TV's Frink said:

They made what, three of those Expendables movies?  And now seven Furious movies?  The action movie ain't going away.

 It's funny. The first "The Fast and the Furious" was a mid-level cops and robbers movie about drag racing.

Now they're the most insanely over the top action films out there. Makes me long for the subtlety of the Brosnan Bond films.

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TV's Frink said:

They made what, three of those Expendables movies?  And now seven Furious movies?  The action movie ain't going away.

 One is a nostalgia ride and the other might be an action franchise...