311: Action Movies

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Action Movies

Title text: By my count, only 48 of the 158 minutes in Live Free or Die Hard have action. That's pathetic, guys. Crank is better, but needs a bigger budget and more Summer Glau.

Explanation

A common complaint about action films is that they are light on plot and heavy on pointless violence and special effects. Live Free or Die Hard and Crank (film) are both typical action films in this respect.

Cueball reverses this complaint, stating that proportional to the run-time of the movie, there could be much more action and much less plot. Megan adds that a pre-existing character could further eliminate the need for exposition and provide more time for action. The two come up with "River Tam Beats Up Everyone" as such a movie, whose title could double as a complete plot summary.

River Tam (played by Summer Glau) is a character from the popular but short-lived TV series Firefly. In the TV series, she is shown to have almost clairvoyant mental capabilities (including a limited ability to read minds and aim a gun without looking), and the series largely revolves around a conspiracy concerning her. In the follow-up movie Serenity, River also possesses superhuman fighting skills - early in the film, apparently triggered by a coded message, she unexpectedly begins fighting everyone in a bar. Later, in the film's climax, she successfully subdues an entire squadron of Reavers while hardly breaking a sweat.

The poster art for "River Tam Beats Up Everyone" is almost certainly inspired by these scenes from Serenity, and Megan and Cueball's decision to use this character is doubtless inspired by River's popularity among the Firefly fan base. The movie poster's typeface, Papyrus, is also used in many of the marketing materials for both Firefly and Serenity.

The title text suggests that Randall did not find too much action in the contemporary "Live Free or Die Hard" compared with the rest of the film.

Transcript

[Cueball and Megan are talking together as they walk away from a cinema.]

Cueball: Another summer gone without a mindless big-budget action movie.

Megan: Huh? Die Hard was nothing BUT action!

Cueball: No, it was too talky.

Megan: What? Too talky?

Cueball: I tallied it minute-by-minute. It's at least 60% people walking and talking. ALL those movies are.

Cueball: Just once, I want a real action movie. 30 seconds of exposition followed by a perfect 90-minute action scene. One with a huge budget, a good choreographer, and a great director.

Megan: And they should center it around some character we already know, someone we never get tired of watching.

Cueball: I think we've got something here...

[A movie poster is shown.]

Coming this summer

River Tam

Beats up EVERYONE

[The movie shows a line of houses, there are people beat up and lying in doorways, out of windows, and on the sidewalk. River Tam is doing a flying kick into someone's face.]

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Discussion

Dangit, I want to see this. 199.27.130.148 04:44, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

He used Papyrus. :| 108.162.225.57 11:19, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

At least it's not comic sans. Beanie (talk) 12:00, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

Says the person using Comic Sans. PoolloverNathan^{[stalk the blue seas]}U•T•S•c 13:29, 21 May 2021 (UTC)

Madness combat minus hank plus river tam? 08:03, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Could this comic be the inspiration for John Wick? 108.162.217.155 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

This movie actually exists and it's called Chocolate [1] 108.162.221.202 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

'Beats up everyone', to me it seems a reference to video game of type 'Beat them all' which match with the image of the movie. 108.162.229.112 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

There is an error in the explanation. Crank is listed as being in the Die Hard series. This is incorrect, Crank did have a sequel (High voltage) but neither had anything to do with Die Hard franchise. 173.245.50.100 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

And now, 8 years later, we have Mad Max: Fury Road. 162.158.38.212 07:47, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

And on top of that, John Wick and Hardcore Henry. Nonstop action movies are becoming a thing. --Zazathebot (talk) 19:41, 24 August 2017 (UTC)

Y'all're forgetting The Raid and The Raid 2. Perfect answers to this complaint. —P1h3r1e3d13 (talk) 21:24, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

But all of the above selections are still lacking in Summer Glau! 162.158.155.146 19:21, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

If you have a film that's a little exposition, and then endless action scenes, you end up with a Transformers movie. Or some other garbage by Michael Bay or J. J. Abrams. —Kazvorpal (talk) 06:33, 5 November 2019 (UTC) Or A Quiet Place

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5u6MnPSh37I