John Wick, Taken, The Equalizer. Too many to name. Saw a preview for The Amateur (2025) which is another one coming out soon. It seems like that’s the ONLY justification for killing they can come up with.
Like this is the logic here: “Okay we need an action movie with lots of henchmen to kill, what evil thing can that bad guy have done in the 1st act so our hero is justified in killing tons of henchmen?” So the bad guy does some overtly evil thing at the start of the movie (often unrealistically evil). Then killing people is the rest of the movie. Revenge happens. The end.
I enjoy action movies, but I keep seeing the same revenge-killing movies that feel like copies of each other.
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.
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 get what you are complaining about, but hear me out. John Wick (1) has the best plot premise of any action film ever made. It is a premise that transcends all barriers. Man loses the love of his life. Crew defiles his home, kill his wifes parting gift, which happens to be the most adorable puppy ever, and steal his pride and joy that also happens to be his last remaining healthy way to channel his anger and aggression. By the time he wakes up from the beat down, everyone in the movie theatre, regardless of gender, political beliefs, and to some extent religious beliefs, is on board with John murdering everyone. If they don’t agree, they at least understand and withhold their protests.
It is so perfect that it is likely the genesis of the explosion in popularity.
EDIT: I am expecting a rise in The Punisher style movies, thanks to the positive reception to the UHC CEO murder.
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.
The environment sets the tone. And lashing out against unjust and unreasonable oppression is pretty fucking on point considering everything, everywhere, all at once.
