Good action flicks were ruined by people running away from fireballs. That's the whole story.

Not just running away - In Raq's All Movie Drinking Game, anytime stunt people fling themselves off of springboards towards the camera during an explosion, everyone must drink.

Good action flicks were ruined by people running away from fireballs.

Well, there are only so many times you can run away from a big stone sphere in a tunnel, you know?

What ruins an action movie for me: sacrificing charisma and/or acting for any of the characteristics I listed above. I don't care how big Arnie's guns are. T1 succeeded for me (I know it's sci-fi--I also think it's action) because he was a bad guy. T2 worked because he was a good guy with limited range ON PURPOSE.

One liner puns. They are rarely good enough to make it worth it for me, and too much seems to be bent towards their creation.

Random love stories. He doesn't have to get laid. Seriously.

Bad fight choreography and weapons errors that I can detect. Maybe those should be two different points. In an straight up action movie without a martial arts bent, shit better look like it works. For MA movies, I can entertain stylistic shorthand and conventions. That goes out the window for most Western stuff. As for the weapons: I can buy (although it's shoddy) a set with no good fight guy there. But there has to be a weaponmaster in charge of the guns. So whyfor the fuckups? He knows what gun he gave that character in the first take...in an action movie, I'm digging the weapons. I'll let fashion continuity slide over this. Because fashion's not the point.

Stock characters. You know, you have to really work the cigar-chomping police supervisor who's trying to rein in his renegade hot shot cops. Especially when you cast a black guy. That's not the sort of shorthand that I can accept and move beyond.

There's other stuff, but it escapes me right now.

One liner puns.

Random love stories. He doesn't have to get laid. Seriously.

Bad fight choreography and weapons errors that I can detect.

Stock characters.

James Bond was doing all those things decades before other action movies were.

The diving-away-from-fireballs thing reminds me of seeing early Western serials from the 30s-50s. Fight scenes were a big part of their appeal, but they look so stodgy and boring now. Just a complete waste of film stock.

As I've noted many times, one of the things I loved in the Pruitt-era Buffy fight scenes is that they were not only dynamic and credible and physically interesting, but they had their own sort of narrative arc. The fight had its own dramatic up and down. That was lost entirely with the new fight coordinators and the gymkata stunt girl.

Tom Laughlin is nobody's idea of a martial arts great, but the scene in Billy Jack where he's standing nose to nose with the redneck baddie and says "I'm gonna take my foot and kick you in the head right there. And there's not a damn thing you can do about it" is very cool. But that has to do with the character, the story up to that point and the way they shoot that scene.

Michelle Yeoh has been in some of my favorite fight scenes. In the otherwise completely forgettable Project S she has a brutal fight with a huge guy. She gets the shit beat out of her but she wins. But it is by no means a given.

There's another historical HK movie she was in that involved a lot of fighting on bamboo scaffolding. Jet Li might've been in that.

James Bond was doing all those things decades before other action movies were.

Other action movies? I thought Die Hard was the first.

Oh chasquido.

You know, you have to really work the cigar-chomping police supervisor who's trying to rein in his renegade hot shot cops.

This was one of the reasons I was an early adopter of the Deckard-is-a-replicant interpretation of Blade Runner. The twist on this cliche of making the sarge fairly terrified of his hot-shot cop was awesome.

Tom lists a lot of the reasons I never got on board with the James Bond love. For all its dumbass storyline, the recent Casino Royale did pretty well with these.

Die Another Day had a huge disappointment for me when Bond did that obviously CGI'd surfing stunt. Bond doesn't do CGI--period! Casino Royale was a refreshing return to form. (Hearing my dad, disillusioned movie fan that he is, gasp at the construction-site chase showed me how effective that film was.)

Good characterizations are crucial in good action flicks, of course. You can have your cheesy one-note villains, but make sure they're performed by good actors who can make the scenery-chewing interesting (Alan Rickman in Die Hard, Dennis Hopper in Speed, even the ever-changing list of people playing the villain in The Hidden were distinguished by their love of fast cars and headbanging music). If your hero is going to be stoic (Keanu in Speed), pair him up with a well-defined sideman and give him an interesting love interest (Sandra Bullock's only really good work on film, IMO, was Annie--"Get your ass behind the yellow line!").

For all its dumbass storyline, the recent Casino Royale did pretty well with these.

I do disagree with Tom on more than one of those reasons. Bond? Random love stories? Not that often, because he wasn't the love type. The most random of his loves, to me, was DEFINITELY Vesper Lynd. Not only did it make no sense to me, it was jammed down my throat violently enough to trigger my gag reflex.