The early2000ssaw the dawn of a new age of action filmmaking where the emphasis was on making the fight scenes as grounded and realistic as possible.The Bourne Identity,Casino Royale, andCollateralwhere the vanguards of this movement, proving that you don’t need fancy kungfu choreography or high-flying acrobatics to create a compelling depiction of battle.
But a decade later, the pendulum had swung the other way again. Audiences were getting tired of “realistic” fight scenes replete with shaky cam, dramatic close-ups, off-center framing, and quick cut editing. A number of new movies came out that reminded audiences just how fun an over-the-top action movie can be when executed properly. Let us take a look at a few such movies that are all about maximalist action entertainment.
The word “restraint” doesn’t really exist in filmmaker Zack Snyder’s movie making dictionary. If he makes a superhero team epic, It’s going to be four hours long. If he shows a fight between alien super powered beings, it’s going to completelyobliterate a city and kill thousands of civilians. And if Snyder makes a medieval war epic, you better believe it’s going to be the most testosterone-riddled war epic ever made.
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Such is the case with300, a heavily fictionalized account of a real Greco-Persian war. We get a hint early on that this is not a story about men resolving their issues through civil debate. In the film’s most famous scene, King Xerxes sends a herald to Leonidas, King of Sparta, demanding his surrender under threat of war. Leonidas responds by screaming “This is Sparta!” and kicking the emissary down a bottomless pit in dramatic slow motion. Interestingly, this entertainingly over-the-top reaction was somethinglead actor Gerald Butler came up withrather than it being Snyder’s suggestion.
19Pacific Rim
The evolution of CGI has done many things for Hollywood. But the most lucrative thing it has done is allow for live-action depiction of the fever dreams of eleven-year-olds as they smash their action figures together in epic imaginary battles. This is the best way to describePacific Rim, a movie whose story exists purely as an excuse to show giant monsters fighting giant robots with giant weapons.
Thanks to the skillful direction of filmmaker Guillermo del Toro, this set up gets imbued with actual stakes and a certain amount of emotional depth through the human characters. Still, the best scenes in the movie are obviously the parts where the human-operated giant Jaeger robots take on the invading giant Kaiju monsters. It might seem childish, but you can’t help but feel a tremendous thrill watching a Jaeger fighting a Kaiju in space, before drawing a giant-ass sword from literally up its sleeve to slice the Kaiju in half and then plummeting back to Earth. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, MCU.
18Kingsman: The Secret Service
Daniel Craig ushered in a new era ofJames Bondmovies as gritty and realistic action dramas. This turn towards realism proved very popular with general audiences, and people wondered if the old era of campyJames Bondmovies had been permanently put to rest. The answer turned out to be no, withKingsman: The Secret Serviceproving there is still a big audience for a theatrical, larger-than-life British spy movie experience.
The film follows a secret group of spies working to keep the world safe from villains with outlandish schemes.Kingsmanrevels in the kind of over-the-top action that Craig’s Bond had almost entirely abandoned. The most memorable sequence occurs near the end of the second act, when secret agent Harry Hart is forced to kill a church full of deranged lunatics, which Harry proceeds to do with brutal and extremely gory efficiency.
When Indian Telugu-language filmRRRstarted gaining popularity in the West, the one phrase critics kept using to describe the action-adventure historical musical epic was “over the top.” And with good reason. The movie includes, among other things, an extended action sequence where one man battles against a thousand protestors, another man fights off an attack from a tiger single-handed, and a rescue scene involving an exploding train.
All of this happens withinthe first half ofRRR, and the action only ramps up from there. But the most exciting sequence occurs during the middle of the film. The lead hero Bheem plans an attack on a British consulate using an army of wild animals. Standing in Bheem’s path is the British army, and the lead antagonist Ram. Thus, the stage is set for a glorious battle filled with the kind of dazzling visual imagery, pyrotechnics, and maximalist action choreography that Hollywood can only dream of.
When George Miller announced that he would be making a newMad Maxmovie thirty years after the last one, fans did not know what to expect. Repeated reports ofthe production ofMad Max: Fury Roadbeing plagued with difficultiesmade it seem like Miller had bitten off more than he could chew this time. But then the movie finally released, and almost immediately made its place among the greatest action films of all time.
Mad Max: Fury Roadoperates as an extended chase sequence, which allows Miller to incorporate all manners of impossible stunt work into the narrative for a breathtaking visual spectacle. Few sequences more brilliantly capture the euphoric madness of Miller’s vision than watching the main villain Immortan Joe riding out in pursuit of the heroes with his army of War Boys in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, the whole scene being underlined by a red-clad member of the army standing atop one of the war rigs, blasting out metal music via a flame-belching electric guitar.
15Fast & Furious 9
TheFast & Furioussaga has had the strangest evolution among Hollywood franchises. What started out as a pretty grounded exploration of the world of street racing pretty soon turned into a tale of Dominic Toretto and his crew of gearheads pulling off elaborate heists, fighting the American government, international terrorists, and generally behaving like the Avengers in sleeveless shirts and corduroys.
EachFast & Furiousmovie seemed to be competing to be more over-the-top than the last, something that was very mucha strategy of the producersrather than an accident. All of this culminates inFast & Furious 9, where, after years of the internet joking that the only way for the franchise to outdo itself is to go to space, that does end up happening when the characters Roman and Tej fly their rocket car through space in a moment that just might be the crowning achievement in over-the-top Hollywood blockbuster entertainment.
Remember whenpeople used to look forward to DCEU movies? That was the time around whichAquamangot released. Despite the water-based superhero having long been the butt of jokes in superhero fandom circles, filmmaker James Wan saw the potential in the character leading a really fun and bombastic underwater adventure story, anchored by the hunky, charismatic presence of Jason Momoa as Arthur Curry aka Aquaman.
Sure enough, the movie keeps audiences entertained by jumping from one gloriously colorful action set piece to another involving underwater armies, drum playing octopuses, and water-based kung-fu. But the best is reserved for last, as the final battle between Atlantis and the other underwater kingdoms plays out like a mixture ofStar Wars,The Matrix,Pacific Rim, and the world’s biggest rave party. Topping off the entire exercise in cinematic excess is Aquaman himself entering into battle riding atop the literal Kraken.
You might think movies likeFast & FuriousandKingsmanare as over-the-top as action films can get, but at least they attempt to follow some semblance of real-world physics.Wantedwas a 2008 action movie that treated physics like an extra packet of sauce on an order of fries that remains unheeded throughout the meal. And the results are spectacular.
Wesley Gibson is a regular office worker frustrated with his mediocre life. Wesley life’s changes when he discovers his legacy as the son of the world’s greatest assassin, and is inducted into a secret society of killers who can bend the rules of reality to carry out their missions. Over a brutal training session, Wesley learns to bend bullets through the air, keep moving after multiple deadly injuries, and how to use rats as live explosives. All these skills Wesley then uses during the climactic battle sequence where he faces off solo against his former allies.
12Kill Bill Vol. 1
Quentin Tarantino is rightfully applauded for his ability to write memorable dialogs for his movies. But the director is also one of the most distinctive action directors in the history of Hollywood. No movie better showcases Tarantino’s demented, over-the-top,Giallo-inspired action sensibilitiesthenKill Bill Vol. 1, which pays homage to Chinese action movies as well as ’70s Hollywood action flicks.
A lone woman known as The Bride is on a mission to kill her former lover. Standing in the Bride’s path is an army of assassins whom she must take down using her katana sword. In one of cinema’s most famous action scenes, the Bride faces off against multiple sword-wielding opponents. She slices off limbs and organs with abandon, letting forth operatic jets of blood that are as entertaining to watch as they are medically impossible to recreate in the real world.
11John Wick: Chapter 4
Few action movies have proved to be as immediately acclaimed and influential as theJohn Wickseries. The franchise is often credited with revolutionizing the way action movies are made in Hollywood, and each entry in the series has gone from strength to strength in terms of expanding upon what is possible to show in an action set piece.
Despite technically being set in the real world, theJohn Wickmovies never pretend to be anything more than highly-stylized power fantasies where one man can mow down an army of assassins using nothing but his wits and some trusty gun-fu. Each new movie in the series tries to be even more over the top than the last, finally leading us toJohn Wick: Chapter 4, which is as preposterous as it is spectacular. A particular highlight is an action scene near the start of the film where a group of mercenaries led by a blind assassin hunt down John Wick at a hotel where he had been lying low.
