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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
natural born killers wasnt really a revenge flick
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)
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.
I mean there’s only a tiny handful of motivations that are ever used for action movies
- revenge against an evil act
- prevention of an evil act
- saving a hostage
Are there any others?
Though I’d almost say a heist film falls into its own genre separate from action. There’s often some big shootout action scene and a lot of cool car chases with cool cars, but they tend to follow a separate formula from standard action movie fare. Struggling to think of a movie that can classify as both but my film knowledge is not great.
