Duh (Gaming)

by CruelLEGACEY , Toronto, Monday, May 30, 2016, 17:25 (3099 days ago) @ Cody Miller

I feel like action movies have lost their way recently, and will soon see a return to form.

Could you elaborate on that? Most action films seem to all the be the same recently, but I guess I'm just not familiar enough with film to see that as any different than it's always been. I'm honestly not much of a movie buff and don't pay much attention to the trends.

A lot of Modern Action films fail on the following counts:

1. Forgetting action scenes have to be SCENES. Many have pointless action that has no weight.
2. Unstoppable badass hero. This is boring.
3. Fewer stunts and more computer graphics.
4. Actors who can't do physicality such as running, jumping, fighting etc, leading to things being shot and cut to hide the weaknesses rather than show the stunts and action.
5. The sound design is over the top and outrageous, with too many layers and too much volume assaulting your ears all the time.
6. Focusing on the action first and story second.

Compare the openings of Casino Royale and Quantum Solace. In the former you have a fucking sweet parkour chase with thrilling stunts done on camera, with lots of physicality and wide shots to show it. In the latter, you have shakey cam and cuts every 6 frames. Then in Spectre you just have a long take where the DP and director are jerking off rather than giving you a thrilling time.

Show the action and make it motivated meaningful. Make your technique invisible. Do stunts. Have a good story. Now you're back on track. Superheros punching each other for 90 minutes accomplishes none of those.

So I agree with most of that list, but some of the points come off more dogmatic to me than relevant to good filmmaking. The "Fewer stunts and more computer graphics" point, for example. When I'm sitting in the theatre watching a movie, I give absolutely ZERO fucks about how the particular scene was shot or produced, unless it looks bad. If it is filmed in a way that is convincing and believable within the context of the movie, I don't care if it is CG or real actors or puppets in dollhouses or a mix. For example, the airport battle in Captain America 3 is perhaps my favorite action scene from any movie in the past 10 years, and it is 99% computer generated. The airport itself and most of the characters on screen were fully CG animated. And it didn't "harm" the scene in any way. In fact, the scene as it plays out was only really possible because they decided to go full CG with it.

I run into the same sort of thing in music all of the time as well. You'll see people saying things like "Guitar players MUST record with an old tube amp", and I'll say "I don't give a damn what they play through as long as it sounds good".