The Overly Serious Action Movie Thread

[Bustronaut]

By request of Niners Fan in CT, action movies that take themselves far too seriously, including possibly the upcoming GODZILLA movie.  (Movies in list not judged for quality, just tone)

 

2002 - Collateral Damage, Equilibrium, Reign of Fire, 28 Days Later

2003 - The Hunted, Matrix Reloaded/Revolutions, Paycheck, Tears of the Sun

2004 - Bourne Supremacy, Man on Fire, the Day After Tomorrow, The Final Cut, Night Watch, Primer

2005 - Assault on Precinct 13, Four Brothers, War of the Worlds, A Sound of Thunder

2006 - Apocalypto, Children of Men, City of Violence, End Game, Ultraviolet, Superman Returns, A Scanner Darkly, Southland Tales,

2007 - I Am Legend, Resident Evil: Extinction, Sunshine

2008 - Babylon AD, Eagle Eye, The Dark Knight, City of Ember, Cloverfield, The Day the Earth Stood Still

2009 - District 9, District 13: Ultimatum, Surrogates, Terminator: Salvation, 2012, 9, Knowing, The Road

2010 - Book of Eli, Repo Men, Daybreakers, Skyline, Tron: Legacy

2011 - Columbiana, Conan the Barbarian, Contagion, the Darkest Hour, Sector 7, Source Code, Sucker Punch, the Adjustment Bureau, Battle: Los Angeles

2012 - The Amazing Spider-Man, The Dark Knight Rises, Cloud Atlas, Looper, Prometheus, Total Recall

2013 - Gangster Squad, Man of Steel, Olympus Has Fallen, White House Down, After Earth, Elysium, Oblivion, Pacific Rim, Snow Piercer, World War Z, The World's End, This is the End

 

78 post-apocalyptic or joyless movies since 2002, and that's just in the "fun" categories of Action/Sci-Fi

[Gonzalez]

You forgot Dredd 3D.

[EVA]

PRIMER and THE ROAD are action movies?

[Gonzalez]

I don't think he really watched any of these movies. 

[J.T.]

PRIMER and THE ROAD are action movies?

 

I was about to say the same thing about A Scanner Darkly. 

[Gonzalez]

And a lot of these don't even take themselves all that seriously(The Day After Tomorrow, 2012, Resident Evil, etc).

[Control]

Yeah, several of those either aren't action movies or don't take themselves very seriously.

 

And wait, have you seen SNOW PIERCER? Is that even available?

[Bustronaut]

Action/Sci-Fi, it's in one of only two actual sentences in the first post.

 

I *did* forget Dredd, and the other RE movies, also the 28DL sequels.

 

Of the movies listed, I've seen everything but Conan & the Resident Evil movie I did list.

 

I got a screener of SNOWPIERCER, because I'm awesome*.

 

*and I know some people in "the biz"

[Gonzalez]

Collateral Damage!? Sure it had terrorist themes, but it was still at the end of the day an Ahnold movie.

 

This is a complete failure of you trying to start a thread so you can criticize Nolan's Batman movies, but has instead backfired, and shown that you don't know jack shit about movies.

[Bustronaut]

You're right, I've wasted my life watching movies and haven't gotten anything from them.

 

I shall sit in a corner and swing a cat around my head for enjoyment from now on.

[Gonzalez]

You do that now.

[Niners Fan in CT]

The Batman trilogy may have been 'serious' but my first question would be.. what's a better alternative? The Batman comics have always had serious tones some more so than others depending on who the writer is.  For the most part (that means not everyone!) people disliked Batman Forever and Batman & Robin so this was a change of pace and they were better films.

 

I won't bog down this thread with more Godzilla discussion so we'll move to others.

 

The Matrix movies. I don't remember too much about the sequels except for some of the action sequences. There is plenty of 'serious' dialogue but maybe investigate what they were talking about...  were the writers in too deep or was the script too intelligently written for the average viewer to understand it?

[Control]

I demand comparisons. Which action/SF movies took themselves exactly seriously enough?

[Niners Fan in CT]

What's worse an action movie that is supposedly 'too serious' or an obvious Oscar bait drama? I hate that shit.

[Bustronaut]

Both are equally terrible, but you know to skip the dramas because they're released in November/December

[MarcosLoura]

I don't get this thread. At all.

[Bustronaut]

It's a Gonzales trap, *shhhh!*

[J.T.]

The remake of Assault on Precinct 13?  Yeah, I can see that being overly serious.

[Niners Fan in CT]

Correct me if I'm wrong...  Mike does not like the idea of an action movie taking itself seriously and to me what he means is a dark tone or a script that is either "intelligent" or trying to be intelligent.

 

This discussion began with the new Godzilla trailer. Some say they like the tone of the trailer and others do not. It's the same argument we had about Batman and Spider-Man. Some feel the movies should be "fun" which I guess means contain jokes and humor? Others like the idea of a director/writer trying to make a legit drama/thriller/crime film with comic book characters.

 

See...  I think a serious tone works with Batman and Godzilla very well. It does not work AS well with Spider-Man but that's not to say he doesn't have serious arcs. There is a middle ground for Spidey.

[EVA]

Dudes. I finally really looked at this list, and its such an obvious troll. At the very end, he has two COMEDIES (The World's End and This Is The End) on his list of joyless movies that take themselves too seriously.

And that's before even debating whether a movie that features neon aliens fighting giant robots while characters preposterously named "Stacker Pentecost" and "Hannibal Chau" spout dialogue ripped straight from Saturday morning cartoons could every qualify as "overly serious."

[Niners Fan in CT]

Are we sure it's a troll thread? Please confirm it's a troll thread..

 

http://deathvalleydriver.com/forum/index.php?/topic/1083-trolling/

[Raziel]

Shit, have you seen the Smackdown thread?

[EVA]

If it's not an elaborate troll, then it's one of the worst examples of incoherent list-making I've ever read.

There is a movie where the President of the United States fires a rocket launcher on this list of "movies that take themselves too seriously."

[Bustronaut]

*swings cat around head in the corner*

[Jrag]

How exactly should The Road take itself?  Lightly?

 

I could play darts on a random list of movies and probably put together a more relevant list. I suck at darts.  It's not that there aren't overly serious movies, but a good chunk of these A. Aren't serious or B. Shouldn't be any other way.

 

I LOL'd the most at the inclusion of Children of Men, which is probably one of the best movies of the last 15 years and is directed by an absolute master.  A story that is able to contrast a world falling to pieces with a beacon of hope; the final tracking shot makes you feel good about humanity.  That's not something that can be accomplished with a lighter tone.  It's a masterpiece.