Can you name an action movie from before the 21st century that wasn't also about revenge?
I think every 70's kung fu flick I watched had that plot.
this post was submitted on 26 Dec 2024
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Alien isn't about revenge. It's about survival.
Alien is also a survival horror movie, not an action movie. Aliens is an action movie.
Aliens is about revenge. Mostly
No. Alien is about worms.
Ohhh, so it's like a Dune reboot. Got it. So Dune, Alien, and Starship Troopers?
Die Hard, Indiana Jones, Cliffhanger, Speed, Runaway Train, Taking of Pelham One Two Three.
The more I think about it the trend setting movie might have been Taken (2008) and it's been a lot of revenge movies since then. And obviously there are old revenge movies too, but seems like that one plot line has taken over the entire Action genre.
Diehard McClain's wife and co workers were held hostage. As response/revenge he did a die hard. Speed,, Denis Hopper's character was specifically trying to get revenge against the state and society for perceived wrongs. Lots of them do if you look deep enough. If an action movie isn't a basic survival flick. It wanders into revenge/retribution at some point.
I'm not saying any revenge of any kind is bad. Die Hard is not about revenge, John McClain is the one cop in the building when disaster strikes. Die Hard 3 is technically about revenge, sorta. But it's not revenge as the whole plot, like what I was trying to describe. Where the hero is killing people as revenge for something that happened earlier. In a premeditated planned way. Revenge as a plot movies are all sorta the same.
I don’t see Taken as a revenge movie. He was rescuing his daughter from human trafficking.
I can’t think of many people in the film who were killed in revenge (I can only think of the auction manager and the guy in the chair).
Although a quick google suggests that many people do think of it as a revenge movie.
I'm not really sure what's up with the perspective that Taken is a revenge movie. It isn't. There's nothing about revenge in that movie. It's a rescue mission.
Pretty much all the James Bond movies.
I'm with you. Revenge is an incredibly common motivator in stories. Often literal killing, but just as often character assassination. Star Wars, Lion King, Oedipus are all about getting revenge on the "uncle" for killing the father. Every literary work spends the first 1/3 or the story telling you what wronged the character and why they're going to be justified in reversing the act. I can agree there's a shift in the amount of killing (which gets softened by making the horde of enemies masked and unidentifiable) but it's still a massively pervasive motivator.
Or about finally getting laid.
This sounds like the same people mad that there's no original movies anymore without realizing it's simply the case that sequals have more funding for advertising.
For both the revenge and the originality points, the latest movie I've seen is The Order. It's an original movie (adapted from a book) and I'd call it mild action. It's a detective thriller, I guess. There's a gunfight. But it's a hunt, not revenge.
Kung Fu Hustle
Man I loved that movie. Wonder if Stephen has made anything since.
Gross Pointe Blank
This is the only plot line that will get any oxygen from a fascist society that is losing its ability to tell stories about realistic villains because to make them realistic is to make them dangerously indistinguishable from real life CEOs, politicians and the ultrawealthy in general.
What you are observing is the symptoms of a society on the verge of plunging into nihilism because the political center has agreed to take everything with substance off the table so as not to offend conservative snowflakes who mass murderers like the late Brian Thomson of United Healthcare hide behind while they condemn countless of us to death or lives of extreme suffering.
A descent into authoritarianism only can happen after people have had their imaginations filled with villains who are even worse, which in practice always means reducing villains in storytelling to one dimensional agents of evil who desire to do evil because they are evil and ugly and that is just how it is.
And then there's glass onion.
You couldn't make Glass Onion in today's society. On account of the Woke.
Is this a joke
No?
Sad.
Yep it's gotten real obvious lately with the copy and paste formula of angry middle-aged ex-secret-agent/assassin being forced to revenge upon the evildoers that just won't let him live in peace. That or the hot lady who used to be a secret spy assassin who wants to live peacefully but is forced to unleash karate revenge. Just a bunch of pointless rehashing with rotating cast.
Panos Cosmatos broke that mold with his revenge movie though, that's a good exception. (Mandy)
I mean there's only a tiny handful of motivations that are ever used for action movies
- revenge against an evil act
- prevention of an evil act
- saving a hostage
Are there any others?
Survival is another popular one. Rambo, Predator.
I was loosely thinking about that as saving a hostage (yourself), but i think you're right that it's probably distinct enough to be its own separate motivation
Money. Ie robbing a bank
Though I'd almost say a heist film falls into its own genre separate from action. There's often some big shootout action scene and a lot of cool car chases with cool cars, but they tend to follow a separate formula from standard action movie fare. Struggling to think of a movie that can classify as both but my film knowledge is not great.
Highlander is just about being the Last Guy Standing.
Action/Adventure films like Indian Jones, the Lara Croft series, The Mummy, and National Treasure are about chasing some kind of mystery or lost fortune.
Fast and Furious and Top Gun largely revolve around guys with big egos rivaling one another.
The environment sets the tone. And lashing out against unjust and unreasonable oppression is pretty fucking on point considering everything, everywhere, all at once.
Baby Driver. Definitely an action movie with very little killing, let alone revenge killing.
- Twilight of the Warriors
- Road House
- Bullet Train
- The Raid
It's definitely a trend right now, and I'd mostly attribute it entirely to John Wick. Wick was somewhat ground breaking because they handed director duties to a former stuntman / action coordinator and the entire plot only existed to flex the stunts and gun work. Now every studio wants to put a stunt guy calling the shots and we keep ending up with thin stories and directors trying to one up each other in concentrated action.
I don't think the "endless henchmen" movies are going away, they're almost becoming a subgenre themselves. But I agree I'd like to see more creativity on the story side.
Taken was the almost the exact opposite though, an action movie starring someone who couldn't execute stunts and director with little action experience.
I actually feel like Die Hard is less of revenge kills and more a cop doing their job, if you get me right
🤣 Who cops think they are 
Who they actually are
You need to expand your horizons. Here's a list of action movies released this year that are not about revenge killing: Deadpool & Wolverine, The Fall Guy, Civil War, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, Twisters, The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, Bad Boys: Ride or Die, Wolfs, Rebel Ridge, The Three Musketeers Part II, Jackpot!, Canary Black, Land of Bad, Sixty Minutes, One More Shot, Chief of Station, Damsel, Weekend in Taipei, Bad Hombres, The Killer's Game
Disclaimer: I haven't watched most of these so I can't vouch for the quality of the films in this list
Wolfs was fantastic. A classic dad-action movie with some aging, charismatic dudes having fun making a silly little film with low stakes and just enough heart.
Some of these are remakes because this genre goes back to the early days of movies. Thinking of movies like that one from Bruce Willis called Death Wish which is one of those Charles Bronson movies which is practically all that guy was known for in the 20th century.
How else would you do a story like this and get the audience to applaud for the main character?
I don't think it's fair to call Taken a revenge film. It's pretty clearly a rescue film. There's a ton of violence all the way through, sure, but the premise is getting his daughter home.
You may enjoy this rant on the subject.;-)
if you are going to link to an out of touch loser old man in an expensive suit who spends most of the time using his massive platform to complain people like him are the real victims please prepare people with at least a warning instead of blindly linking, I don't mean to come off like a jerk but that dude is straight up mind poison.
Haha go watch a Charles Bronson film first.
Btw marvel movies don't always have revenges.