action movie

Characteristics

O'Brien wrote further in his book Action Movies: The Cinema of Striking Back to suggest action films as being unique and not just a series of action sequences, stating that that was the difference between Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and Die Hard (1988); while both were mainstream Hollywood blockbusters with a hero asserting masculinity and overcoming obstacles to a personal and social solution, John McClane in Die Hard repeatedly firing his automatic pistol while swinging from a high rise was not congruent with the image of Indiana Jones in Raiders swinging his whip to fend off villains in the backstreets of Cairo. British author and academic Yvonne Tasker expanded on this topic, stating that action films have no clear and constant iconography or settings. In her book The Hollywood Action and Adventure Film (2015), she found that the most broadly consistent themes tend to be a characters quest from freedom from oppression such as a hero overcoming enemies or obstacles and physical conflicts or challenge, usually battling other humans or alien opponents.