And how the movie writes off the ostensible heroism by having the “heroes” slaughter/burn every last person in the camp—including the high ranking guy they were supposed to be saving. Carl Weathers grabs up some papers but that’s the only bone they toss towards the actual “mission.” They thought of themselves as…

But does Finn show any signs of wear? Same with Chris Pine. There’s a tidy little scab here or there, but you don’t get the sense that he really gets his ass beaten like you do when Bruce Willis is groaning and dripping blood everywhere.

Except when he’s tasered by the big blue guard in the prison.

Other than getting arrested he never really loses a fight tho. He’s definitely never beaten up.

You left out the ultimate example of being beat down to a pulp: RoboCop!

The only reason why Harry’s the hero is because everyone says he is. Hermione, Neville and Snape are the real heroes.

Because Star Wars is ground zero for the action blockbuster extravaganza, it is fair game to hold it at least partially responsible for the all the cinematic ills of its kind.

What I want to see is that when the heroes get the shit kicked out of them, they don’t magically heal. Shot in the shoulder? The hero is shown being back in action the next day with no real repercussions except maybe some minor bleeding that is supposed to be suspenseful but isn’t because you know the hero will pull…

it may be correlated to how many of those franchises started as critiques of the establishment and cultural flaws (pretty much every Sci-fi movie of that era, but also action movies like First Blood I & II) and those heroes were fighting the Man, in ways straightforward (think of Total Recall) or more subtle (the…

You mean, The Green Hornet, right? :)

I read an article a while back, around the time Die Hard 5 came out, I think, that compared the John McClane in that movie to the one in the original Die Hard and came to the conclusion that the original was more interesting because he was vulnerable and human. This made his journey and what he has to go through to…

There’s a cool moment in the 1989 BATMAN where, after crashing the Batwing, Batman pretty much staggers into the ruined cathedral for his final face-off with the Joker, even bumping into a pew at one point.

It was nice reminder that Batman was still flesh-and-blood beneath the Batsuit.

More recently, the human…

One of the (many) reasons why Predator is such a superior movie is how it plays with this concept. The first third or so shows Arnold and his team being invincible supermen, casually laying waste to a small army in the jungle with nary a scratch in return (and even when one of them is mildly cut, he ain’t got time to…

I remember when the only ladies of action who actually got as bad as they gave were Cynthia Rothrock and the actresses in Hong Kong martial arts films. Here’s to those trailblazers!

^two of my faves

I think that having your hero beaten up is useful in telling a story because it adds weight the the badness of the bad guy and because it helps with plausibility.

I’ll give props to Tarantino and Thurman for going back to this idea in the Kill Bill movies. The Bride gets the ever-loving shit kicked out of her in those films and just...won’t...stop.

I recently watched Sam Raimi’s first Spider Man film for the first time in years... and oh man, that last fight really struck me for this very reason. Peter Parker gets his ass handed to him on a silver platter for like 3 minutes straight, and Raimi doesn’t pull any punches. It’s still PG-13, but the threat of R-rated…

"I love seeing the wince, the hesitation, before plunging back into the fray. I get more goosebumps from a hero who can’t give up, because my friends need me”

I miss the hero whose sidekick is actually the bad ass.