The Year So Far: Action Movies Suck
I normally don’t tell anyone this— because I have a degree in Film Studies and I need to keep my street cred —but I love a good action movie. If you don’t know what a good action movie is, watch the 2014 Tom Cruise movie Edge of Tomorrow. It has everything you want in an action flick. A new (enough) storyline, humor, romantic interest, kickass fight scenes, and even a car chase or two! A lot of people think that it’s easy to shut off your brain and watch a movie. Action movies in particular have a tendency to take you out of the world you’re living in and into another one where you don't have to worry if the planet is blown up by aliens, or the Russians take over and kill us all. (They never say Russians but we all know they’re talking about the Russians…)
Needless to say, I go out of my way to watch action movies sometimes. I haven’t seen many in 2016, but I did see two of the worst. I would say three but I haven’t seen Suicide Squad yet. Trust me, I know that’s gonna be bad but when your #1 bae is Will Smith you’ll make all sorts of sacrifices. Plus he’s killing the late night circuit right now, for which I am eternally grateful.
Speaking of Will Smith…Independence Day: Resurgence! The single worst movie I’ve ever seen in my life. The only redeemable quality to the film was Will Smith’s son, played by Leap Day baby Jessie Usher. And quite honestly, the only reason he was redeemable was because he was so handsome- not because of his acting at all. I kept telling my friend Kevin how handsome I thought he was. (“Sorry, Kevin, but I need something to focus on!”) As Kevin reminded me, the first Independence Day is filled with many characters but it never feels crowded, unlike its sequel. In Independence Day: Resurgence, a new character is introduced to us almost every other scene. Some seem to serve no purpose, while others we might not even see again.
Action movies at their core are about a disastrous problem that occurs. If it isn’t solved, THE WORLD IS GOING TO END. Everyone will die! Especially our hero! You know that it’ll all get fixed somehow, yet you can’t imagine how the protagonist won't be shot by the sniper, or how the computer program is going to reboot in time before the bomb goes off. The suspense is the beauty of the genre. But throughout Independence Day: Resurgence, you never feel that. You know that something is wrong, aliens are good or bad, they’ve been quiet for a while and all of a sudden there’s like a tsunami, and a storm, and am I supposed to care? Someone please tell me exactly what is going on and which story I should put my energy into because none of them matter to me. I’m not really sure what’s happening. I felt no fear that they might not succeed, so instead I focused on drinking my cocktail, eating my loaded fries, and telling Kevin how handsome Will Smith’s fake son was. I felt no connection with a single character, I never once feared for the danger of this world. Now you could argue that the film was lesser without the greatest actor and person in the world as our favorite action hero. But I’m not even sure Will Smith could have saved this lazy storytelling and sad excuse of an action movie.
The second worst movie of the year also happens to fall under the action genre. Jason Bourne. Maybe clue number one that it was going to be inferior is the name they gave it. “Jason Bourne”? That’s it? The Bourne trilogy is not just action movie good, it’s “real movie” good. You’d expect a more original, eye-opening title at least.
I actually enjoyed the weird Jeremy Renner reboot of the franchise (which had nothing to do with my obsession with Jeremy Renner…nothing at all), but this was all kinds of wrong. First, on a superficial level, the close ups of the characters were too much. Matt Damon has such a weird nose and that’s all I could focus on. Whenever someone talked there was a close up, that was not needed. A tracking shot to a close up of a face made me feel like I was watching Snapstories for two hours. You know those stories your friends always post when they zoom in as fast and close as they can to their friend's face? Of course you do, everyone has Snapchat. But on Snapchat, the cinematography at least feels more effortless and more genuine. Second, action moves have the camera moving so quickly that sometimes it can be blurry or disorienting during a fight scene or a chase scene. Awesome! Love that! But this, this was not like that. EVERYTHING was blurry. Some scenes seemed even grainy to me. I noticed more than one scene that was less than a second. The choppiness of the car chases were not entertaining, but instead made you question, ‘What the heck am I watching? Are they still driving? Was someone shot? Who is in this scene? Where am I? Can I go home?’
My biggest problem with Jason Bourne, apart from the #DamonNose, was the irrelevant plot. It’s like they were just begging to make a few more billion dollars off the franchise so they desperately whipped something together. But, if the movie was never made we would be in the same exact place as we are now. Why did he have to resurface? Why was it so forced and rushed? Why did everyone happen to go to the Las Vegas convention to casually meet up? What was the point of leaking this information in the first place? Can’t Jason just live his life doing those weird underground fights for no reason? Was it his only source of income? Was he addicted to the pain? How is his mental health? Anyways, I’m getting totally sidetracked. I think I ultimately just want Jason Bourne to be okay and if he’s not okay I’ll just stick to the trilogy, action movies on whose quality we can all agree on.
Clearly, these two films failed in my eyes for similar reasons. Just because they are not Art House films, quirky Rom-Coms, or Academy Award contenders does not mean that action films don’t need tender love and care to make them great. Action films have been boiled down to a science. That’s why they are summer blockbusters. Sometimes we need an M. Night Shyamalan twist at the end of a car chase. Sometimes we want the tech talk to go over our heads. I beg all those movie producers out there reading this- don’t cheat the fans. Don’t cheat the critics. You can’t always get away with this! But apparently for Jason Bourne you can, re: Jason Bourne Makes $61 Million in a Weekend.
If you want a good action movie, may I recommend Ghostbusters, which I’ve now seen twice. I love women. I love action. I love smart. I love smart, action packed women.