Evolution in Action Movies - Essay Example

4 December Evolution in Action Movies Action movies have undergone a lot of changes over the decades, but have still maintained the core values that make audiences care for their heroes and their trials. An action movie, in many ways, has always been nothing other than a spirited, visual portrayal of a hero. By definition a hero is “one who shows great courage” (Merriam-Webster Dictionary). A timeline of action movie history conveniently followed fairly obvious trends by decade from the 1950s to the 21st century. Current events and technology have played their parts, clearly evidenced by the abundance of war movies circa World War II, and the influence of Computer-generated Imagery (CGI) in recent years. From war movies to westerns to police procedurals to fantasy and science fiction, action has taken many twists and turns, but through it all the heroes have always been people that we wanted to look up to, even when we might not have invited them to dinner. The Second World War started and audiences began to demand tangible heroes who fought for justice and helped solve the world’s real problems. It was a time when global events reminded everyone that evil exists, and audiences needed the action genre to ground them in some realism. Enter John Wayne, westerns, and war movies that all promoted a chivalrous, hero archetype and a hope that maybe the world really was a decent place. In the 1950s the memories of Nazis, Hitler, and Imperial Japan dominated action movies, and a hero like John Wayne came along and punished villains face to face. Action movies of this era implied: we were right, and you were wrong; you would have stabbed us in the back, but we stood for decency and beat you. Audiences needed righteous action during that time, and John Wayne delivered, but chivalry would not last. Social unrest boiled beneath the surface, and the feel good fifties gave way to the rebellious sixties. Action movies and their heroes responded in kind. A new actor emerged who fit the mood of a changing nation—Steve McQueen. The Vietnam war had started, counterculture revolutions thrived, and drug use increased. Action movies had to respond, and the antihero emerged. One description of an antihero is a person who “becomes paradoxically ennobled by his peculiar rejection of virtue” (qtd. in Wheeler, “Literary Terms and Definitions”). Steve McQueen was cool, his characters always knew the answers but did not really seem to care. The movie’s resolution and the downfall of the antagonist relied, in part, on a kind of non-heroic hero who restored order when it was convenient for his private, little rebellion: he would get to it when he was good and ready. Action movies of the sixties pushed the idea of a knight in shining armor aside and made no plans to bring it back. This marked a major turning point in action movie history because, as always, the audience needed to identify with its hero, but with sixties era films that identity required a rebel. This idea, that a hero might not be all good, was fully embraced by the likes of Steve McQueen, but also in the late sixties, and building steam throughout the seventies, another archetype emerged—the dislikable hero. The early sixties established that heroes have bad days too and are not always nice people, and along came Clint Eastwood. Ironically he made a huge splash by redefining the cowboy role. While cowboys had continually been visited in film by different actors, no one had dominated it like John Wayne. Clint Eastwood’s and John Wayne’s popular portrayals of cowboys overlapped, but for very different reasons. John Wayne’s characters were noble and always won a faceoff against the protagonist. Clint Eastwood’s cowboy, on the other hand, lied, cheated, stole, and won by any means necessary. In many cases the only factor that made his antihero the film’s only hero was that everyone else was usually even meaner and nastier than he was but, of course, not better. As if his cowboy persona had not stated a sense of fading honor clearly enough, Clint Eastwood appeared in the first Dirty Harry movie in the 1970’s. The name alone described how times had changed, but there was more to come. The 1970s were the decade when action movies stepped outside the box and created enduring heroes with sequels, and, thanks to action movies, the movie franchise was born. Sequels were a relatively new innovation in the at the time, Clint Eastwood had a few, but they were about to shift dramatically. Star Wars changed action movies immensely. It took an action formula and applied it to a hybrid work of science fiction and fantasy. It was groundbreaking enough just for having Luke Skywalker, a well natured hero, and Han Solo, a self serving antihero and smuggler, but then there were the special effects. Special effects took an astounding leap forward in the late 1970s with Star Wars, and this added to the potential for action by leaps and bounds. For the first time an action sequence could contain no actors, involve a riveting musical score, and it looked good. Star Wars changed everything and ignited Harrison Ford’s career, leading to Raiders of the Lost Ark. One author states of these films’ moods, “…at some level they seemed to be aware of the outlandishness going on around them, be it in outer space or the jungles of 1920s South America” (Ewing, “Steve McQueen and the Evolution of the Action Hero). This movie continued with the already established theme of the antihero and kept it going strong, but as the 1980s pressed on something very different happened. Bodybuilders came to the fore, inflated by steroids, and the action movie was reborn once again. To put it bluntly, the 1980s action movies and their stars became more muscular and less intelligent. The idea of a one-man-army communicating in grunts and groans, including the occasional primal scream, was born, and action movies got a lot bloodier and a lot grittier. Two action stars emerged whose names will forever be inseparable from 1980s action—Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone. Tasker states, “…the box-office appeal of the male bodybuilder provided a resonant image for the mid-1980s” (1). Their movies did not contain cinema’s first use of blood and violence by any stretch, but they elevated it to a new level. Suddenly, the occasional beheading became acceptable, or a huge pool of blood gushing from a bullet wound ceased to shock audiences. Along with the muscles explosions got bigger, car chases louder, fight scenes more destructive, and sometimes bullets did not kill people, all in a celebration of violence. The Cold War and the nuclear threat loomed large in everyone’s mind, and it was officially time for one dimensional heroes who simply stood for brutal, bone crushing justice, never mind the brains. Monologues devolved into one-liners, and dialogue became a scarce commodity. It was a time when villains were bad, and heroes were good, end of story. Mere mortals like Steve McQueen almost disappeared. But, audiences’ appetites for these bigger than life characters only extended so far, and the next decade saw a major shift once again. As the 1980s drew to a close the modern action movie formula arose, along with the hero archetype that endures to this day. Die Hard came out in the late 1980s, and the action movie playing field shifted further. Here was Bruce Willis playing a regular guy, a cop, trapped in a building with terrorists. He seemed a lot more like us than somebody who just stepped out of a gym flaunting a flawless physique that overshadowed everything, including words. Many audiences took it in like a breath of fresh air. Real dialogue returned, special effects improved action, and the characters felt more human. By the late 1990s this peaked in The Bourne Identity when audiences met a type of hero they had not known before portrayed by Matt Damon. A level of intimacy with the character’s plight almost seemed more like a drama, but the influence of martial arts over the decades culminated in gritty, realistic fights scenes. Of this modern shift one author states, “…we also expect them to arrive on screen with a modicum of intelligence and a morsel of grace” (Wagner, “The Evolution of the Action Hero”). A confluence of special effects, intense action, believable characters grounded in reality, respectable dialogue, and a hero an audience could both identify with and respect seemed to tie the action genre together wholly. Six decades of action movies have provided myriad, memorable moments and stars. The hero arc has encompassed the just, the rebellious, the angry and vengeful, the muscular stoic, and the everyman. The personas have very often matched the cultural and political climates the movies found themselves in, and their answers to society’s problems usually mirrored and dictated a generation’s ideals. In many ways they are us, maybe to the extreme but us nonetheless. Works Cited Merriam-Webster Dictionary. merriam-webster.com. Merriam-Webster, Incorporated, 2010. Web. 04 Dec. 2010. “Literary Terms and Definitions.” cn.edu. Carson-Newman College, 30 Sept. 2010. Web. 04 Dec. 2010. Ewing, Clarence. “Steve McQueen and the Evolution of the Action Hero.” G.L.I.Press. G.L.I. Press, 23 Mar. 2010. Web. 04 Dec. 2010. Tasker, Yvonne. Spectacular Bodies: Gender, Genre and the Action Cinema. New York: Routledge, 1993. Print. “The Evolution of the Action Hero.” filmshaft.com. filmshaft, 12 July 2010. Web. 04 Dec. 2010. Read More