In which our heroes talk s*** about 80s Action Movies
The Podcast
In the third episode of our series looking at Sylvester Stallone we look into a genre of movies that he almost single handedly defined…The 80s Action Movie
We look at our favourite action movies of the era and the stars that made them while tracking the changes in the style of action films and their heroes from the 80s until now. We also discuss how real world change the type of movies that get made before asking who is the number one action star of today
This is episode 3 of 4 in our Stallone series, previous episodes have focused on the Netflix documentary “Sly” and Stallones iconic franchise “Rocky”
"You Picked The Wrong Man To Push" – Rambo and the 80s Action Movie – Last Exit on Mainstream
The Birth of the 80s Action Movie
So after our dive into the Rockyverse last time out today we wanted to look into one aspect of cinema that Stallone, if not created at least epitomised with his other massive franchise and the anti-hero John Rambo and that is of course the 80s Action Movie
if you go back to the 70’s the action heroes were normal looking actors playing maverick cops, so things like Dirty Harry or The French Connection, or you had tough guys like Charles Bronson, maybe James Caan, maybe Steve McQueen, Burt Reynolds
Again because of our ages, Jamie and I probably have quite different ideas of action movies.. So for me it was 90s stuff like maybe Demolition Man and True Lies but the majority of action stuff was cop based so Point Break, Lethal Weapon 2/3, Speed and they all feel very different to Commando, Kickboxer and First Blood and actually my first real experience of Rambo would have been the spoof Hot Shots Part Deux
And I guess nowadays really the “action blockbuster” is Marvel and superhero movies which I guess we’ll get into in a bit but if you go back to the 70’s the action heroes were normal looking actors playing maverick cops, so things like Dirty Harry or The French Connection, or you had tough guys like Charles Bronson, maybe James Caan, maybe Steve McQueen, Burt Reynolds but they’re not muscle bound guys, apart from maybe Bruce Lee. So the tough guy image very much comes from the story and the character rather than how they look and the stories are quite domestic…its drug dealers and murders
But once you get to the 80s things quickly change, there’s an element of Reagan’s America that want’s to change the narrative around Vietnam and that’s reflected in the mainstream movies, even First Blood is supposed to be about how the veterans were treated when they came home but it’s certainly no Deer Hunter, but even as the decade progresses you get lots of storylines around secret operations in central and latin America…almost as if Hollywood were preparing the public for what was actually happening with the CIA in Nicaragua and the Iran-Contra affair
So it was really First Blood that started the trend which I guess eventually rolls into Commando and then some Chuck Norris stuff but that idea of representing the veterans very quickly gets diluted by both the quality of the stories being told and the campness of the movies but also we start getting proper Vietnam films that feel more realistic so Oliver Stone does Platoon in 1986, Hamburger Hill is 87, Casualties of War in 89 so while these films are taking a serious look at events of the Vietnam War, Rambo is in Afghanistan single handedly taking on the Soviet Army on a horse
Also around this time you’ve a resurgence in “maverick cop” action movies and the mismatched buddy cop films like Lethal Weapon, Beverley Hills Cop and Die Hard and it’s these that dominate again going into the 90s and it feels that, maybe in part because of the first Gulf War or the fall out from Iran Contra, the Hollywood Action movie falls into a buddy cop or one man army dealing with drug dealers or murderers again or they go a Sci-fi or they go comedy so when I think of 90s action films for me its things like Bad Boys, Point Break, Last Boy Scout, Demolition Man, Face/Off
And as we head into the 2000s we get the first run of Superhero movies outside of Batman and Superman, and while they were hit and miss for the most part Spiderman is very successful and the stories that are getting told are very domestic, probably again because of 9/11 and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan there doesnt seem to be much call for military based action films so we get sci fi stuff like Minority Report or The Matrix sequels and lots CIA conspiracy stuff or Spy thrillers instead so Bourne, rebooted Bond that sort of thing….but towards the second half of the decade we get Christopher Nolans Batman triliogy and the birth of the MCU and thats really all we have nowadays for Action films.
I think the crown for just plain, silly, violent and fantastical action movies sits with the Fast and Furious movies for just non stop stuff going on, story doesn’t matter just set piece after set piece tomfoolery
So after that whistlestop tour along the evolution of action movies and Stallones place in that world, our next show will look at what happens when the world changes and your hero struggles to evolve with it, when the phone stops ringing and your name no longer sells tickets, do you get off the rollercoaster or go again
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