Movies That Were Probably Made By a Spasm of Six Year-Olds on Acid: The Top 75 Action Films Poll Results Thread

the entire last third is explosions and chase and destruction btw

grudging formalism such a tired look

Whatever. When I chose the movies in my ballot, with every sci-fi movie I considered whether the "sci-fi" quotient in them was higher than the "action" quotient. That's why I voted for Aliens, which I think is more action than sci-fi, but not for Akira, which is the other way around.

Let's put this way: probably more than 50% of all movies, at least ones made in Hollywood, have action scenes. It wouldn't make sense to call them all action movies. IMO an "action movie" has to be one that is clearly driven by the action itself. Akira is not like that, it's first and foremost driven by its sci-fi/fantasy concepts and by interpersonal drama.

what formula did you use to calculate the quotients? I used f(x) = ((y^2 + 3x + 6)/x^4 * z)^1/2

Mine was a bit shorter, but the same basic idea.

I think it's an outlier on this list but tagging things with a single genre is for video stores, not for polls.

Warhol's Empire is my favorite action movie. That bird flew by HARDCORE. DAMMMNNN.

eurgh tuomas. you know which movie should just be tagged as one single genre? a bad movie. aliens is totally BOTH. are you also dispelling war films or westerns or comedies or horrors even if they are totally fucking awesome action in them?

aliens is awesome

I think Akira was the first movie I watched which was downloaded from the internet. I should watch it again, it's probably better when you don't see all those huge pixels and compression artifacts.

if The Guns of Navarone doesn't place high on this list I will REALLY be kicking myself for not voting

Seven Samurai, too. That has some of the greatest sustained action of any film in any genre, ever.

eurgh tuomas. you know which movie should just be tagged as one single genre? a bad movie.

100% this ^

I'm not saying a movie should be tagged single genre, I said that if the other genre was clearly more prominent than "action", I didn't vote for it. You gotta draw the line somewhere, otherwise you could vote for any movie that has at least one action scene, which wouldn't make sense.

That said, there are plenty of excellent single-genre action movies, including the one that will probably win this poll.

are we allowed to start guessing what's going to win, or is that too tedious? i'm guessing BR.

I'm guessing DH. Which arguably is also a romcom!

When it gets down to 20 so I'll post up the stuff that should get in, hopefully more than 20 :)

guessing die hard, children of men outside chance

Can't see Die Hard coming in higher than The Matrix, in fairness!

tuomas have you considered the idea that perhaps you've made your point and you don't need to keep making it over and over?

"have you considered the idea that perhaps you've made your point and you don't need to keep making it over and over?"

the board descriptions just write themselves...

are we allowed to start guessing what's going to win, or is that too tedious? i'm guessing BR.

It'll definitely place pretty high, but I don't see BloodRayne taking the top spot.

tuomas have you considered the idea that perhaps you've made your point and you don't need to keep making it over and over?

Well, people keep arguing against my point instead of just accepting that this is how I defined a genre in a genre poll. But I won't repeat it again, no worries.

And yeah, my guess for #1 was DH, which is more or less a single-genre action movie.

id say die hard is a friendship movie

What sort of a genre is "friendship"?

The BEST genre.

True dat.

max its clearly a movie about architecture and tank tops

its a western duh

(PS Tuomas people are trolling you)

fast bus movie except in a tower imo

like die hard in a skyscraper

By definition it's a watchmaking movie.

Isn't Die Hard a Christmas movie?

Die Hard definitely won't win, for a lot of reasons but mainly because i think a lot of movies will be victims of franchise/sequel vote splitting

die hard in a plane, die hard in new york, die hard in a computer, die hard i havent seen

My friend reviewed Minority Report as "a buddy movie." He also reviewed Aladdin as "a delightful sex romp," though. I keep trying to get him to start a movie review site with his one-line reviews.

@1000timesnah

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v212/etienne_saint/lafemme-2.png

#50

LA FEMME NIKITA

Luc Besson
1990
France
(226 points, 8 votes)

(honestly couldn't find much in the way of decent comments about this one.)

calling for fifth element as the winner now

never saw LFN. i did see Point of No Return tho

but 5th element is sciiifiiiiiii

also it's not resolved by action but by a universal gnostic love that pours forth from the universe

I've only seen LFN once but it was badass

Er, 99% of 5thE is Bruce Willis doing action movie type shit?

i was just joking plz dont

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v212/etienne_saint/district9-1.png

#49

DISTRICT 9

Neill Blomkamp
2009
South Africa
(230 points, 8 votes)

I thought this was an above-average episode of Outer Limits. Lead human was horribly grating though - OK I get the Steve Carell/Michael Scott/uber-nebbish but would someone just fucking shoot the guy already. Ditto with father-in-law. Apparently the Lethal Weapon 2 Law is still in force - any white-haired South African in a position of power is automatically evil and not to be trusted.

Would have liked it a lot more if the movie was filmed entirely from P.O.V. of lead alien and son.

― Elvis Telecom

i cannot believe this only cost 30 mil!! i liked it even though it turned into Halo at the end (complete with a fukkin warthog sequence) (with a literal nigerian scammer, who is a cannibal) (and a cute lil alien tyke, who shall henceforth be known as 'little alien pepe'), the dumb action half of it was so well done that I didn't care too much that it decided not to develop all those interesting ideas it throws at u in the beginning. basically the first half is complex and mysterious and interesting and part 2 is 'the kingdom'

― a narwhal done gored my sister nell (cankles)

i kept wondering if chris johnson was supposed to be unusually intelligent for an alien, or if the implication was that all the aliens had the capability to be as smart but had degraded through living on earth in camps. i know they said they were mostly workers not used to thinking for themselves but does this mean chris was one of the leaders who was stranded on earth somehow or that he was just an unusually smart worker or what? basically why was he so different from the other prawns, or was he actually different?

― congratulations (n/a)

I LOVED this movie. The best part is how it shows the aliens as disgusting and annoying and we're never quite sure if they are actually some kind of drone-class and if "Christopher Johnson" (obviously a great detail) is one of the "smarter" ones or if we, like the general populace in the movie, are simply racist. This implication, especially as the movie eventually makes us really care about these extra-terrestrial CGI bugs, is what makes the movie for me.

Also, I suppose this movie could have been made with Rio or Mumbai or The West Bank as a backdrop but South Africa seems like the perfect place to tell this tale because the story is obviously a mirror of apartheid and townships etc etc.

Finally, I love Octavia Butler's work and I think she would have enjoyed this movie a great deal. I don't think this movie is trying to be the sci-fi embodiment of the works of Homi K. Bhabha just as I don't think 'The Matrix' thinks it is Baudrillard. However, as an entertaining lay intro to post-colonialism, I think it's quite effective and actually leaves a positive message for the viewer to internalize.

I suppose my biggest complaint is that the bad guy organization is called "Multi-National United." They might as well have called it Evil Corporation, Inc. It really should have just been the UN.

― Spencer Chow

Anticipate Neill Blomkamp's District 9

i thought LFN was dumb when i saw it, but that was a long time ago, imna give it another shot