action movie, some thought

a good action movie needs to have a decent story in my opinion. the easiest way to have a decent story is to create a cast of memorable characters. the most easiest characters are mostly stereotype ones. but the stereotype characters are hardly memorable. and that's where the problem is. how to create one or multiple stereotype characters, who are memorable. How? one of the successful way to do this, is to have a cause for the heroes in the movie that audience can identify and to empathize with. take notice here, i said empathize, not sympathize. to me, action heroes are a bunch of people who rough other people up while the audience may not agree with them, but they could not help saying to themselves that they understand the reason behind it.

the problem with action movie character is that a real persona would not be as exciting as a big talker, a tough guy. and a women honey bar. a real persona would be a guy who's hesitant to fight, he considered a lot before he actually take on any action. so far, one of the few real action persona that i saw was the main character in unforgiven. so you gotta ask what's the problem with stereotype guy in action movie? how's that a problem? the problem lied in that people started to pursue special effect than making a good story. because, a good story is hard to come by. for action movie, it's so easy to create stereotype characters, so why bother focusing on that while we could make explosion 3D? the whole thing stunt the growth of the whole genre in a certain level.

the other problem is the suspense. i don't see many action movies with good suspense. it's a shame. because the ability of shooting, martial arts, should be a great tool to create suspense. it should always make audience wonder how the character is going to proceed. is he going for the violence? is he going for reason? from here on, we then can create a character with depth. this is the reason leon is a classic.

finally, i want to say that a good movie usually means a good drama. this goes the same for action movies, so a good action movie is a good drama with action elements in it.