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.
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)
Some of these are remakes because this genre goes back to the early days of movies. Thinking of movies like that one from Bruce Willis called Death Wish which is one of those Charles Bronson movies which is practically all that guy was known for in the 20th century.
How else would you do a story like this and get the audience to applaud for the main character?
Can you name an action movie from before the 21st century that wasn’t also about revenge?
I think every 70’s kung fu flick I watched had that plot.
natural born killers wasnt really a revenge flick
I’m with you. Revenge is an incredibly common motivator in stories. Often literal killing, but just as often character assassination. Star Wars, Lion King, Oedipus are all about getting revenge on the “uncle” for killing the father. Every literary work spends the first 1/3 or the story telling you what wronged the character and why they’re going to be justified in reversing the act. I can agree there’s a shift in the amount of killing (which gets softened by making the horde of enemies masked and unidentifiable) but it’s still a massively pervasive motivator.
Or about finally getting laid.
This sounds like the same people mad that there’s no original movies anymore without realizing it’s simply the case that sequals have more funding for advertising.
For both the revenge and the originality points, the latest movie I’ve seen is The Order. It’s an original movie (adapted from a book) and I’d call it mild action. It’s a detective thriller, I guess. There’s a gunfight. But it’s a hunt, not revenge.
Die Hard, Indiana Jones, Cliffhanger, Speed, Runaway Train, Taking of Pelham One Two Three.
The more I think about it the trend setting movie might have been Taken (2008) and it’s been a lot of revenge movies since then. And obviously there are old revenge movies too, but seems like that one plot line has taken over the entire Action genre.
Diehard McClain’s wife and co workers were held hostage. As response/revenge he did a die hard. Speed, Denis Hopper’s character was specifically trying to get revenge against the state and society for perceived wrongs. Lots of them do if you look deep enough. If an action movie isn’t a basic survival flick. It wanders into revenge/retribution at some point.
I’m not saying any revenge of any kind is bad. Die Hard is not about revenge, John McClain is the one cop in the building when disaster strikes. Die Hard 3 is technically about revenge, sorta. But it’s not revenge as the whole plot, like what I was trying to describe. Where the hero is killing people as revenge for something that happened earlier. In a premeditated planned way. Revenge as a plot movies are all sorta the same.
I don’t see Taken as a revenge movie. He was rescuing his daughter from human trafficking.
I can’t think of many people in the film who were killed in revenge (I can only think of the auction manager and the guy in the chair).
Although a quick google suggests that many people do think of it as a revenge movie.
The environment sets the tone. And lashing out against unjust and unreasonable oppression is pretty fucking on point considering everything, everywhere, all at once.
It’s definitely a trend right now, and I’d mostly attribute it entirely to John Wick. Wick was somewhat ground breaking because they handed director duties to a former stuntman / action coordinator and the entire plot only existed to flex the stunts and gun work. Now every studio wants to put a stunt guy calling the shots and we keep ending up with thin stories and directors trying to one up each other in concentrated action.
I don’t think the “endless henchmen” movies are going away, they’re almost becoming a subgenre themselves. But I agree I’d like to see more creativity on the story side.
Taken was the almost the exact opposite though, an action movie starring someone who couldn’t execute stunts and director with little action experience.
