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Aug. 14th, 2013 12:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsThis is a post about action movies.
So last week I saw Red 2, which was a perfectly enjoyable movie as action movies go; I mean, I'm never going to complain about watching Helen Mirren saunter around being THE MOST fabulous spy because that is basically candy for my brain and eyes.
But I did spend a lot of that movie thinking: "Gosh, there are a lot of random people killed in this movie. Like, a LOT of dead people that nobody cares about, and that we, the audience are not really expected to care about. Like, wow, A LOT A LOT."
I had a conversation about this with my friends afterwards, and their consensus was pretty much, "Well, yes, and not that it's not a problem, but that's the genre; that's what action movies DO, they generate a lot of bodies for the factor of cool."
And I feel like this isn't necessarily true, but I also haven't seen enough pure action movies to generate a ton of counter-examples. The best one I can think of is a bit from Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, which is not an action movie but a television show, and one that in many ways is subverting a lot of the tropes of the genre it grows out of. So in T:SCC there is an episode in which Catherine Weaver, Badass Terminator, basically just wanders through a building killing everyone in sight with her shiny metal Terminator arms. It's a very, very action-tastic sequence, and it is, let's be real, a pretty cool sequence. And then comes the next episode: as the director says, "if you enjoy watching Weaver slaughter thirty people in one episode you're obligated to go to their funeral in the next."
So that's stuck with me. And I sort of feel that's more how things should be; that the death even of a bunch of extras is something that one ought to care about, at least a little.
Anyway, I've been thinking about it and now I'm tossing the question back out to you guys: what do you think? Is a high body count and a low consequence factor just inherently part and parcel of the action movie experience? Is it something that bothers you, or depending on circumstance, or not at all?
So last week I saw Red 2, which was a perfectly enjoyable movie as action movies go; I mean, I'm never going to complain about watching Helen Mirren saunter around being THE MOST fabulous spy because that is basically candy for my brain and eyes.
But I did spend a lot of that movie thinking: "Gosh, there are a lot of random people killed in this movie. Like, a LOT of dead people that nobody cares about, and that we, the audience are not really expected to care about. Like, wow, A LOT A LOT."
I had a conversation about this with my friends afterwards, and their consensus was pretty much, "Well, yes, and not that it's not a problem, but that's the genre; that's what action movies DO, they generate a lot of bodies for the factor of cool."
And I feel like this isn't necessarily true, but I also haven't seen enough pure action movies to generate a ton of counter-examples. The best one I can think of is a bit from Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, which is not an action movie but a television show, and one that in many ways is subverting a lot of the tropes of the genre it grows out of. So in T:SCC there is an episode in which Catherine Weaver, Badass Terminator, basically just wanders through a building killing everyone in sight with her shiny metal Terminator arms. It's a very, very action-tastic sequence, and it is, let's be real, a pretty cool sequence. And then comes the next episode: as the director says, "if you enjoy watching Weaver slaughter thirty people in one episode you're obligated to go to their funeral in the next."
So that's stuck with me. And I sort of feel that's more how things should be; that the death even of a bunch of extras is something that one ought to care about, at least a little.
Anyway, I've been thinking about it and now I'm tossing the question back out to you guys: what do you think? Is a high body count and a low consequence factor just inherently part and parcel of the action movie experience? Is it something that bothers you, or depending on circumstance, or not at all?
no subject
Date: 2013-08-14 05:28 pm (UTC)I was reading The Mary Sue recent and a much of my other favorite industry blogs, and there is this big push because you can't make as many movies these days due to economic reasons to make the same fucking movie over and over again. Same formula, same idea, because you know that made money, so it will make it again.
So this evolution of "we don't have TIME to DEAL WITH THAT to get to XYZ plot point as required", and then you kill more people because that's what you do.
The whole conversation with Kick Ass 2 is that it is SO BLOODY and jarring how it goes from "you should feel bad this person died" to "this person's death is meaningless" from body to body. I was thinking of seeing the movie because I really like HitGirl, but after reading more about, nope. No money for that movie!