The Greatest Action Films Part 8: The Flawed

Part 8 – The Flawed

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The recurring failure in this tier is a sequel that undoes its predecessor. Ragnarok is funny moment to moment and dismantles a character three films had built. The Matrix sequels answer the question the original was stronger for leaving open. Iron Man 2 is the first clear case of franchise machinery displacing a story.

The other group here are films servicing a schedule instead of an idea, a different problem and produces the same result: competent work with nothing underneath it.

Every rating is the one carried by the review it links to. Ties are broken by year, and this is the eighth of eleven parts.

The Matrix sequels answer the question the original was stronger for leaving open, and Ragnarok spends three films of characterization on tone. Sequel decisions in the Plot Handbook.

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1. Parker (2013) [full review]

► Read the full review of Parker (2013)

2013
RLR: 6 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 6.2/10

"Westlake’s thief, softened into somebody with a code."

Taylor Hackford adapted Richard Stark’s Flashfire and the film is the only screen version permitted to use the character’s name. Donald Westlake had refused for decades on the grounds that nobody would keep the character unsentimental, and the estate relented after his death. John J. McLaughlin wrote the screenplay from Stark’s 2000 novel.

Jason Statham is well cast and the film gives him almost nothing Stark wrote. Parker is a professional who does not care about anybody, and this version supplies a girlfriend, a code about not stealing from people who cannot afford it, and a wounded-animal recovery sequence.

The first act is the best part and it is straight Stark. A crew, a county fair robbery, a disagreement about what to do with the take, and a man left for dead on a roadside because he would not go along with a second job.

Jennifer Lopez plays a Palm Beach estate agent in financial trouble and the film spends considerable time on her circumstances. It is well observed, the performance is good, and it belongs in a different picture entirely. Michael Chiklis and Nick Nolte appear in supporting parts.

For WritersWestlake spent decades refusing adaptations because he knew the character would be softened, and the one film permitted to use the name softens him inside twenty minutes. Parker acquires a code, a romance and a moral line. When you adapt a character defined by an absence, the absence is the property. Filling it produces somebody the reader has met in every other book, and the reason for adapting this one has been removed before the first act ends. Why characters feel flat covers the softening. Decide what the absence is before you write a single scene, since everything a reader finds interesting about the character is downstream of it.

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2. Ant-Man (2015) [full review]

► Read the full review of Ant-Man (2015)

2015
RLR: 6 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 7.3/10

"A heist film in a franchise that does not usually permit one."

Edgar Wright developed it for eight years and left weeks before production over creative differences, and Peyton Reed took over with Adam McKay and Paul Rudd rewriting. The finished film contains recognizable Wright construction inside a house-style picture. Evangeline Lilly plays Hope van Dyne and Michael Pena plays Luis.

The premise is the most interesting thing Marvel had attempted. A heist film at two scales at once, where shrinking is a tactical problem with stated rules about mass and momentum, and the film is disciplined about its own physics for most of its length. Christophe Beck scored it and Reed had made Bring It On and Yes Man.

The Thomas the Tank Engine finale is the best joke in the sequence. An apocalyptic battle is intercut with the same events viewed at normal scale, where a man is fighting on a child’s toy on a bedroom floor. The cut to the exterior is the whole method.

Michael Douglas anchors the film and the de-aging in the opening sequence was the most convincing anybody had achieved to that point. The Hank Pym material carries a real grievance about being sidelined by an institution he built. It cost around one hundred and thirty million dollars and took over five hundred.

Corey Stoll’s Darren Cross is the weak element and the failure is familiar. A protege with the same technology, a corporate setting, and a final fight between two men in similar suits. The film’s own inventiveness stops at the antagonist. Wright and Joe Cornish retain a story credit on the finished film.

For WritersReed cuts from an apocalyptic battle to the same events at human scale, where it is a man on a toy train on a bedroom carpet. The joke and the premise are identical, and the film never has to explain either. When your concept involves a shift in perspective, stage the same event from both positions and cut between them. The reader understands the mechanic instantly and the comedy or horror arrives from the contrast instead of commentary. Stage the same event from both positions and cut between them, because the contrast teaches the mechanic faster than any explanation. What show do not tell actually means is exactly this.

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3. Thor: Ragnarok (2017) [full review]

► Read the full review of Thor: Ragnarok (2017)

2017
RLR: 6 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 7.9/10

"Funny in its individual moments and a structural betrayal of the character."

Taika Waititi took over the least successful Marvel sub-series and made the funniest film in the sequence, largely by improvising substantial portions and letting Chris Hemsworth play comedy for the first time. It took over eight hundred and fifty million dollars. Eric Pearson, Craig Kyle and Christopher Yost share the screenplay credit.

The comedy genuinely works moment to moment. The Doctor Strange sequence, the Grandmaster, Korg, the play performed in Asgard about Loki’s death. Waititi’s timing is excellent and a great deal of the dialogue was invented on the day. Jeff Goldblum plays the Grandmaster and Waititi voices Korg himself.

The cost is a character three films had built. Thor loses the hammer, the hair, the father, the home and the gravity, and the film treats each loss as a setup for a joke. Two pictures of Shakespearean register are retired in about twenty minutes.

Cate Blanchett’s Hela is given a genuine argument about Asgardian history and the film declines to develop it. Odin’s conquests are revealed as the foundation of everything, a real idea, and the picture moves past it to a gladiator subplot. Mark Mothersbaugh scored it in a deliberately synthesized eighties register.

The Led Zeppelin needle drop and the bridge sequence are the best action Marvel had staged, and the film’s ending destroys Asgard entirely. That is a genuinely bold decision and the next film treats the consequences as material for further comedy. Tessa Thompson joins as Valkyrie and Karl Urban plays Skurge.

For WritersWaititi retires three films of accumulated characterization to make room for a register the series had never used, and the jokes land while the arc is being dismantled behind them. Spending it on tone instead of story leaves the next writer with a character who has nothing left to lose and no established version to return to. Arcs versus wounds covers the cost. Ask what the next writer inherits, because a character stripped down for one book’s tone arrives at the following volume with no floor underneath them and no earlier version anybody can return to.

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4. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017) [full review]

► Read the full review of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017)

2017
RLR: 6 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 7.6/10

"The same tonal commitment with diminishing returns."

Gunn wrote a sequel about fathers and it is structurally a chamber piece disguised as a space opera. Most of the film happens in two locations, the plot is thin on purpose, and the picture is considerably more interested in resentment than in stakes. Gunn wrote it alone and it cost around two hundred million dollars.

The Yondu material is the film’s real subject and Michael Rooker is extraordinary in it. A man who trafficked children, kept one, treated him badly, and understood what he was doing the whole time. The funeral is earned in a way almost nothing in the genre is.

Kurt Russell’s Ego is a strong antagonist with a conventional plan. The reveal about what he did to Quill’s mother is genuinely ugly and the film delivers it in one line, and then the last act becomes a fight against a planet. Sylvester Stallone appears as a Ravager elder in two short scenes.

The color and the soundtrack are turned up past the first film and the picture is occasionally exhausting for it. Gunn is aware of the problem and the Mary Poppins joke is the film acknowledging that it knows exactly how much it is doing. It took over eight hundred and sixty million dollars worldwide.

For WritersGunn spends the film on a man who did everything wrong and knew it. Yondu trafficked children and kept one out of something he never names, and the film refuses to convert that into a redemption he argues for. When you write a late reconciliation, deny the character a speech defending themselves. An apology explained is a plea, and one delivered through an action the character does not survive is a fact the reader has to accept. Writing deaths that matter covers the mechanics. Deny the character the speech entirely, since the moment they argue for forgiveness the reader starts evaluating the argument.

Killmonger is right about the isolation and the film settles it with a duel. Build an argument the ending has to answer, using the Antagonist Handbook.

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5. Kingsman: The Golden Circle (2017) [full review]

► Read the full review of Kingsman: The Golden Circle (2017)

2017
RLR: 6 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 6.7/10

"Removes the class argument and keeps the violence."

Vaughn returned with a bigger budget and the film demonstrates what the first one was actually doing. The sincerity that made the original’s subversion land has been replaced by escalation, and the escalation has no floor to push against. Jane Goldman co-wrote it with Vaughn as she had the first film.

Colin Firth’s return is the central problem. Harry died in a way that gave the first film its shape, and reviving him through a memory-restoring gel undoes the one irreversible thing the series had done. The character spends most of the film not knowing who he is.

Julianne Moore’s Poppy is a genuinely good idea. A drug cartel head running a fifties American diner in a jungle, with a robot dog and a captive Elton John, and the film gives her a plan that is both absurd and internally coherent. Halle Berry, Jeff Bridges and Pedro Pascal make up the American organization.

The Statesman material never justifies itself. An American counterpart organization with lassos and bourbon, introduced fully formed, given four characters and almost nothing to do. Channing Tatum is written out of the film after twenty minutes. It cost around one hundred and four million dollars and took over four hundred.

The action is more digital than the first film and worse for it. The cable car sequence is weightless, the ski chase is largely composited, and the church fight from the original has no equivalent anywhere in two hours and twenty-one minutes. Elton John has more screen time than several credited cast members.

For WritersThe sequel revives a character whose death gave the first film its structure, and the revival costs the original retroactively. A death undone in book two teaches the reader that book one was provisional, and every subsequent risk in the series reads as temporary. Every reversal you perform in a sequel reaches backward into the book before it. Decide in advance which deaths are permanent and write them down, because a series that keeps the option open has no stakes left by the third book. Plot devices that work covers the reversal. Write the permanent list down before the second book, since a series that leaves every death negotiable has no way to threaten anybody by the third.

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6. Death Wish (2018) [full review]

► Read the full review of Death Wish (2018)

2018
RLR: 6 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 6.4/10

"Removes the ambivalence and keeps the shooting."

Eli Roth remade the 1974 film with Bruce Willis and the result arrived in a year when almost nobody wanted it. The original was an uncomfortable examination of a man becoming something, and this version is a competence fantasy about a surgeon who is good at shooting.

Kersey is a trauma surgeon here instead of an architect, the film’s one genuine structural idea. He repairs gunshot wounds professionally, he learns anatomy from the work, and the picture could have done something with that and does not. Joe Carnahan wrote the screenplay and had been attached to direct at one point.

Willis plays the whole thing at a low idle. There is no transformation, no visible reluctance and no cost, and the sequence where he is sick after the first killing, the entire point of the original, has no equivalent here. Vincent D’Onofrio plays the brother and Dean Norris the detective.

The film’s politics are not ambiguous and the marketing made it worse. Radio hosts debate the Grim Reaper of Chicago as entertainment, the police are ineffective by design, and the picture arrives at its conclusion with no argument on the other side. MGM released it in March 2018 after two delays.

For WritersThe 1974 film makes its protagonist physically sick after the first killing and this version removes the cost entirely. What remains is competence, and competence without consequence is not a story about anything. When you write a character crossing a line, the crossing has to register on them. A protagonist who does something terrible and feels nothing is not complicated, they are simply an instrument, and readers have no reason to follow an instrument. The passive protagonist problem is adjacent. Register the crossing on the character in some physical way, or the reader has watched an event instead of a decision.

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7. Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019) [full review]

► Read the full review of Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019)

2019
RLR: 6 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 7.4/10

"A competent closing film and the franchise’s first multiverse entry."

Jon Watts made the film that had to follow the end of the Infinity Saga and the assignment is close to impossible. Half the population returned five years later, the world is processing that, and the film opens with a high school memorial video. Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers wrote it, as they had Homecoming.

Jake Gyllenhaal’s Mysterio is well used and the reveal is properly constructed. A man with drone projection technology and a team of disgruntled Stark employees, performing heroism for an audience that wants one, and every earlier scene holds up on a rewatch. Samuel L. Jackson and Cobie Smulders return in a capacity the film reveals late.

The illusion sequence in Berlin is the best thing in the picture and the closest any Marvel film came to genuine visual invention. Peter moves through nested realities, the geometry keeps failing, and the editing never explains what is happening. Michael Giacchino scored it and it took over one and one tenth billion dollars.

The Europe travelogue structure is where it thins. Venice, Prague, London, each with a set piece and a school subplot running underneath, and the film is doing tourism between sequences instead of building anything. J. K. Simmons returns as J. Jonah Jameson in the closing scene.

For WritersMysterio manufactures a hero and a threat at once, so the audience watching inside the film wants exactly what he is selling. The deception works because the demand was already there. When you write a con, establish what the mark needs before the con arrives. A deception that has to create its own demand is doing two jobs, and one that fills an existing hunger only has to arrive. Establish what the mark needs before the con arrives, since a deception that has to create its own demand is doing two jobs. Build the demand into the world before the con artist appears, and the deception becomes a supply problem instead of a persuasion problem.

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8. Tenet (2020) [full review]

► Read the full review of Tenet (2020)

2020
RLR: 6 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 7.3/10

"Tells you not to understand it and then requires you to."

Nolan spent around two hundred million dollars on a film built around entropy inversion, shot in seven countries, with practical sequences including a real Boeing 747 driven into a hangar because acquiring the aircraft cost less than the effects work. It was one of the few major releases to attempt a theatrical run in 2020.

The sound mix is the defining complaint and it is deliberate. Nolan has defended burying dialogue under Ludwig Goransson’s score as an artistic choice, and the result is a film with complex exposition the audience frequently cannot hear. Elizabeth Debicki, Kenneth Branagh and Michael Caine fill out the cast.

John David Washington’s character has no name and almost no interior life. The Protagonist is a function moving through a plot, and Nolan has said that is the point, a defensible position and a cold one. Hoyte van Hoytema shot it on film across seven countries.

Robert Pattinson’s Neil is the only warmth in it and the film’s best idea lives in him. Their friendship has already happened from his side and is beginning from the Protagonist’s, and the last conversation carries weight the rest of the film does not. Nolan bought a retired 747 outright because it cost less than the effects work.

For WritersNolan builds a mechanism so demanding that the characters have no room left to be people. The audience spends the film solving instead of caring, and the one relationship that lands is the only one given emotional content. Complexity eats attention, and readers working hard to follow a mechanism have nothing left over to feel anything with. Give the character work more space when the premise needs explaining, because complexity and feeling draw from the same account. Budget the reader’s attention like a resource, since the mechanism always spends first and whatever is left is what they feel with. Pacing problems nobody talks about covers attention budget.

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9. Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) [full review]

► Read the full review of Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)

2021
RLR: 6 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 8.2/10

"The most commercially successful entry in the character’s history, built on recognition."

Watts closed the trilogy with a film built entirely on the audience’s memory of two previous franchises, and the commercial result was enormous. It took over one and nine tenths billion dollars during a pandemic. McKenna and Sommers wrote it and Watts directed all three.

The Alfred Molina material is the best in the picture. Doctor Octopus returns with the arms, the performance is exactly where it was in 2004, and the film gives him an actual resolution instead of a cameo. Benedict Cumberbatch appears as Strange and the spell drives the entire plot.

The premise requires Peter to make a catastrophic decision for a trivial reason. He asks Strange to erase his identity from the world because his friends did not get into university, and the film has to keep insisting this is proportionate. Jamie Foxx, Rhys Ifans and Thomas Haden Church return alongside Molina and Dafoe.

Willem Dafoe is the one who takes it seriously. The Green Goblin returns with genuine menace, the apartment sequence is the only scene in the film with real consequence, and he plays it as though the previous twenty years happened. Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield appear in the last hour.

The nostalgia is the entire mechanism and the film knows it. Three actors on a rooftop comparing notes is the sequence audiences came for, and the picture is structurally a delivery system for a reunion instead of a story with a shape. Michael Giacchino scored it and the film was shot largely in Atlanta.

For WritersThe plot requires a catastrophic decision for a trivial reason, and the film spends two hours insisting the stakes were proportionate. A spell that could unmake reality is cast over a university application. When you need a character to make a mistake, the reason has to be large enough that the reader would have considered it. A trivial cause makes the character stupid instead of desperate, and stupidity is not a motive readers can occupy. Size the cause to the consequence, since a reader who would not have made that trade cannot follow the character who did.

The Day After Tomorrow works in a library where the cold is measurable and fails on a walk nothing can gauge. Find the quantity in the Conflict and Tension Handbook.

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10. Hawkeye (2021) [full review]

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2021
RLR: 6 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 7.5/10

"A Christmas series about somebody trying to get home, and the deaf character is the best thing in it."

Rhys Thomas and Bert and Bertie made a six-episode Christmas series around the least interesting Avenger and largely succeeded by giving him a successor who wants the job. Hailee Steinfeld’s Kate Bishop carries most of it. Jonathan Igla created the series and Disney released six episodes in late 2021.

The Clint material is about consequence. He is deaf from the work, he has a family waiting, and the Ronin period is treated as something he did instead of something that happened to him. Jeremy Renner is better here than in any film appearance. He is better here than in any film appearance.

The larping episode is the best idea in it. Amateur roleplayers as a resource, a firefighter with a foam sword, and the series treats their commitment as admirable instead of a joke at their expense. Florence Pugh appears as Yelena Belova across the second half.

Vincent D’Onofrio’s return as Kingpin is the element that divides people. The characterization is louder than the Netflix version, the purple suit is comic accurate, and the fight with Kate is staged without the physical threat the earlier series built. Alaqua Cox plays Maya Lopez and later carried her own series.

The six-episode format is the structural problem the whole run of these series shares. The middle two hours have nowhere to go, the plot arrives fully formed in episode one, and the finale has to resolve three antagonists in forty minutes. Christophe Beck and Michael Paraskevas scored it.

For WritersThe series gives Clint permanent damage from work the films treated as consequence-free. He cannot hear, and the show builds scenes around it instead of mentioning it once. A condition that never affects a scene is set dressing, and one that changes how a room has to be blocked is characterization. Make the limitation operational, since a condition referenced once and never staged is set dressing the reader forgets. Pick a limitation that forces staging decisions, because those are the ones a reader cannot skim past or forget between chapters. Sensory detail covers staging a limitation.

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11. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (2023) [full review]

► Read the full review of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (2023)

2023
RLR: 6 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 7.9/10

"The Rocket material is the reason it exists."

Gunn closed the trilogy with a film about animal experimentation that is considerably harder to watch than anything else in the franchise. The Rocket flashbacks are genuinely distressing and the picture does not soften any of them. Gunn wrote and directed it and left Marvel for DC immediately afterward.

Chukwudi Iwuji’s High Evolutionary is the best antagonist in the sequence and the performance has no charm at all. He is a scientist who considers his subjects failed drafts, he is bored by their suffering, and the film gives him no redeeming quality. Will Poulter plays Adam Warlock and Maria Bakalova voices Cosmo.

The Lylla, Teefs and Floor material is the emotional center and it works. Three animals in cages planning a life they will not have, and the film spends enough time on the plan that the outcome costs something real. It took over eight hundred and forty million dollars.

The corridor fight near the end is the best action Gunn staged, a single continuous sequence through a ship with the whole team visible and the choreography legible throughout. It is the payoff for three films of establishing who can do what. Henry Braham shot it and much of it was filmed in Atlanta.

The film’s problem is length and tone management. It runs two and a half hours, the comedy and the animal cruelty sit uneasily beside each other, and several subplots including Adam Warlock arrive and resolve without much consequence. Gunn has said the Rocket material is the reason he made the trilogy.

For WritersGunn spends real time on what three caged animals plan to do when they get out, and the specificity of the plan is what makes the outcome land. They discuss a sky and a name for a boat. When you need a loss to register, give the reader the future that is being destroyed in concrete terms. A vague hope produces sympathy and a specific plan produces grief, and the difference costs you one scene. Give the reader the future being destroyed in concrete terms, because a vague hope produces sympathy and a specific plan produces grief.

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12. Renfield (2023) [full review]

► Read the full review of Renfield (2023)

2023
RLR: 6 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 6.2/10

"One gloriously unhinged Nicolas Cage performance and a film that does not know what to do with it."

Chris McKay made a comedy about codependency with Nicolas Cage as Dracula and Nicholas Hoult as a familiar attending a support group. The premise is a genuine idea and the film is built around a joke that works for about forty minutes. Robert Kirkman wrote the original story and Ryan Ridley the screenplay.

Cage is the reason to watch it. He has wanted to play Dracula for decades, the makeup progression across the film is excellent, and the performance is theatrical in a way that treats the character as genuinely ancient instead of camp. Awkwafina plays the traffic officer and Ben Schwartz the cartel son.

The support group framing is the strongest material. Renfield describes an abusive relationship in therapeutic language, everybody present takes it as metaphor, and the film is funniest when it stays inside that register. It cost around sixty-five million dollars and lost money. Brandon Scott Jones plays the group leader.

The New Orleans crime subplot is the problem. A cartel family, a corrupt police force and a shootout structure arrive to give the film an action shape it did not need, and the codependency material stops developing once they appear. Universal released it as part of a loose revival of its monster properties.

For WritersThe film’s best joke is that an ancient supernatural arrangement maps exactly onto the language of a support group. Renfield describes literal servitude and the room hears metaphor. The plot that arrives to give a comedy structure is usually the thing that kills the comparison, because it requires scenes the joke cannot reach. Stay inside the comparison the whole way and refuse the plot that wants to leave it. Protect the comparison from the plot, because whatever structure a comedy acquires in its second hour is usually the exact thing that kills the joke it was built on.

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13. The Time Machine (2002) [full review]

► Read the full review of The Time Machine (2002)

2002
RLR: 5 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 5.9/10

"Adds a motive Wells did not need and loses the argument."

Simon Wells directed an adaptation of his own great-grandfather’s novel and the film has a genuinely good first act attached to a completely different second one. Gore Verbinski took over the last eighteen days when Wells became exhausted. H. G. Wells published the novel in 1895 and Simon Wells is his great-grandson.

The added premise is the interesting part. Alexander builds the machine to prevent his fiancee’s death and discovers he cannot, because the machine only exists because she died. It is a tight causal loop and the film states it clearly. Guy Pearce plays Alexander and Samantha Mumba plays Mara.

The middle section is the best sequence. The machine traveling forward through a collapsing city, a lunar catastrophe rendered as a slow disaster visible from earth, and a photonic library played by Orlando Jones that survives eight hundred thousand years. Klaus Badelt scored it and Stan Winston built the Morlock creatures.

The Morlock material abandons Wells entirely. Jeremy Irons arrives as an Uber-Morlock with an explanation nobody needed, the class argument that drove the novel is removed, and the film resolves in a fistfight and an explosion. It cost around eighty million dollars and took roughly one hundred and twenty-three.

For WritersThe film invents a causal loop the novel never had and it is the best thing in the adaptation. The machine exists because she died, so it cannot prevent her death. That is a complete idea stated in one scene. An invention that generates the protagonist’s central impossibility justifies itself, and one that adds an antagonist with a speech does not. Anything you add to source material has to be load-bearing or it is decoration. Anything you add has to be load-bearing, because an invention that generates the central impossibility justifies itself and decoration does not.

Parker acquires a moral code and Reacher acquires a daughter, and both lose the absence that defined them. Hold the constraint, using the Protagonist Handbook.

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14. The Matrix Reloaded (2003) and Revolutions (2003) [full review]

► Read the full review of The Matrix Reloaded (2003) and Revolutions (2003)

2003
RLR: 5 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 7.2/10

"They answer the question the original was stronger for leaving open."

The Wachowskis shot Reloaded and Revolutions together across roughly eighteen months and released them six months apart in 2003. Together they cost around three hundred million dollars and took over a billion. Bill Pope shot both films and Don Davis scored them. Warner Bros. financed both at once as a single production.

The freeway chase in Reloaded is the technical high point. A mile and a half of road was built on a decommissioned airbase, the sequence took forty-five days to shoot, and almost nothing in it is digital except the removal of safety equipment. Hugo Weaving, Laurence Fishburne and Carrie-Anne Moss all return.

The Architect scene is where the sequence loses most of its audience. A five-minute monologue in dense abstraction explaining that Neo is the sixth iteration of a designed anomaly, answering the question the first film was stronger for leaving open. The Animatrix and a video game were released alongside them as connected material.

The Burly Brawl is the clearest failure and the technology is why. A hundred Agent Smiths rendered digitally in 2003, and the moment the audience can see that Neo has been replaced by a model the entire sequence stops carrying weight. Gloria Foster died during production and Mary Alice replaced her as the Oracle.

Revolutions is the weaker of the two and the Zion siege is the reason. Ninety minutes of mechanized infantry against machines, with almost no Neo, in a film sold on him. The ending is a negotiated peace nobody in the audience had been prepared for.

For WritersThe Architect answers the question the first film built its power on. Neo being the One was a matter of belief, and the sequel converts it into a system specification with a version number. When you have a mystery that generated the interest, resolving it transfers the story to whatever replaces it. Make sure the replacement is stronger, because it is usually an explanation and explanations are worth less than the questions they close. Science Fiction Handbook works the same ground. Weigh the answer against the question before you write it, since a mystery that generated the interest is rarely improved by a specification.

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15. The Day After Tomorrow (2004) [full review]

► Read the full review of The Day After Tomorrow (2004)

2004
RLR: 5 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 6.4/10

"A real warning delivered at a speed nobody could believe."

Roland Emmerich compressed a climate shift that would take centuries into about a week and the scientific community objected loudly. The film’s defense is that it is a disaster picture and the acceleration is the premise instead of a claim. Emmerich co-wrote it with Jeffrey Nachmanoff.

The destruction sequences are the reason it worked commercially. A tornado outbreak in Los Angeles, a storm surge through Manhattan, and a ship moving down a flooded avenue, all built with effects work that has held up better than most of the period. Jake Gyllenhaal plays the son and Ian Holm the Scottish climatologist.

The New York Public Library material is the film’s best structural section. A confined group, a decision about burning books for heat, and a rising cold front that gives the sequence an antagonist the characters can measure. It cost around one hundred and twenty-five million dollars and took over five hundred and fifty.

The walk from Philadelphia to Manhattan is where it stops working. Dennis Quaid crossing a frozen landscape on foot to reach a son who is in a building that is not going anywhere, with a storm that freezes instantly and selectively. Harald Kloser scored it and Emmerich had made Independence Day and Godzilla.

For WritersThe library section works because the threat is measurable. The cold is coming down a corridor, the fire needs fuel, and every decision has a visible consequence. The walk across a continent does not work because nothing in it can be measured. When you build a survival sequence, give the reader a quantity they can track. Peril without a gauge is atmosphere, and atmosphere cannot sustain an act on its own. Give the reader a quantity they can track, because peril without a gauge is atmosphere and atmosphere cannot sustain an act. Pick something the reader can count, since a threat measured in distance, temperature or time gives every scene a position.

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16. Iron Man 2 (2010) [full review]

► Read the full review of Iron Man 2 (2010)

2010
RLR: 5 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 6.9/10

"The first clear case of franchise machinery displacing a story."

Favreau returned under a release date instead of a finished script, and the film is the first clear case of franchise machinery displacing a story. A substantial portion of the running time exists to establish a shared universe three films away. Justin Theroux wrote the screenplay and Favreau directed both of the first two.

Mickey Rourke’s Ivan Vanko is a genuinely good antagonist the film cannot make room for. He is a physicist with a family grievance and a working understanding of the technology, the Monaco sequence is excellent, and he disappears for most of the second act. Scarlett Johansson makes her first appearance as Natasha Romanoff.

Sam Rockwell’s Justin Hammer is the film’s most successful element. A defense contractor who is bad at the job and knows it, performing confidence he does not have, and Rockwell plays the whole thing as a man auditioning for a room. Don Cheadle replaced Terrence Howard as Rhodes for this film.

The Stark arc is genuinely interesting and underserved. He is dying, he is behaving badly, and the film has a real subject in a man who cannot admit he is frightened. Two scenes develop it and the rest of the picture is elsewhere. John Debney scored it and AC/DC supplied the soundtrack album.

The Expo finale is the failure everybody names. Drones with no personality, a fight between two suits in a garden, and a resolution that takes about ninety seconds after two hours of setup. It took over six hundred and twenty million dollars. Favreau did not return for the third film.

For WritersThe film carries material for a story it is not telling. A dying protagonist behaving badly is a subject, and the picture gives it two scenes because the rest of the time is committed to establishing other films. When you write inside a larger structure, the installment still has to work alone. A book that spends its pages setting up the next one has asked a reader to pay for something they have not received. Every installment has to stand alone, because a reader who paid for this book and received groundwork for the next one notices immediately.

↑ All Entries

17. World War Z (2013) [full review]

► Read the full review of World War Z (2013)

2013
RLR: 5 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 7.0/10

"An oral history adapted by removing the oral history."

Paramount abandoned an entire third act set around a battle in Moscow and reshot roughly forty minutes at a cost in the tens of millions, with Damon Lindelof and Drew Goddard brought in to write the replacement. The production became a bigger story than the film.

Max Brooks’s novel is an oral history assembled from interviews across dozens of countries, with no protagonist and a structure built entirely on testimony. The film discards all of it for a single United Nations investigator flying between set pieces. Brooks published the novel in 2006 and had no involvement in the film.

The Jerusalem sequence is the one piece that works. A wall, a singing crowd, and a pile-up of bodies climbing itself, and the scale is impressive because it is the only sequence that retains the book’s sense of a global event. Marc Forster directed and had made Quantum of Solace in 2008.

The replacement third act is a quiet laboratory sequence in Cardiff and it is considerably better than the abandoned Moscow battle sounded. The film ends small, the one decision the reshoots got right. It took over five hundred and forty million dollars despite the production.

For WritersThe novel’s entire method is a global event told through dozens of individual accounts with no center, and the film replaces it with one man. The adaptation kept the title and discarded the form. When the structure is the work, changing it produces something with the same brand and none of the substance. Ask what the shape is doing before you decide it is negotiable, because form is frequently the argument instead of the packaging. Form is frequently the argument, so a faithful plot delivered in the wrong shape is a different book wearing the same title.

Vol. 3 spends a scene on what three caged animals plan to do afterward, and the outcome costs something because of it. Make the loss concrete in the Showing and Telling Handbook.

↑ All Entries

18. Rage (2014) [full review]

► Read the full review of Rage (2014)

2014
RLR: 5 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 5.2/10

"A genuinely good subversion arriving too late to carry the film."

Paco Cabezas directed Nicolas Cage as a former criminal whose daughter is abducted, and the film spends ninety minutes on a revenge campaign against the wrong people before revealing the truth. Jim Agnew and Sean Keller wrote the screenplay. Cage has made a large number of these and this is not among the better ones.

The twist is that the daughter’s death was an accident caused by her own friends attempting to conceal a stolen item, and everybody Cage killed across the film was unconnected to it. It is a genuinely bleak idea in a film with no capacity to carry it.

Cage is doing recognizable work and the film around him is flat. Danny Glover appears as a detective, the Russian material is perfunctory, and the direction has no interest in anything except reaching the next confrontation. Peter Stormare and Max Ryan appear in supporting parts.

The structure gives no reason to suspect the reveal. That is the failure. There is no misdirection to unpick and no clue placed for a second viewing, so the ending arrives as information instead of a conclusion. It went to video on demand almost immediately.

For WritersThe reveal that the entire campaign was aimed at innocent people arrives with no groundwork, so it reads as an ending instead of a conclusion. The idea is strong and the film never earned it. When you plan a devastating reversal, the preceding pages have to contain the evidence. A reveal the reader had no way to reach is a trick, and tricks do not survive the book being closed and considered. Plant the evidence before you write the reversal, not afterward. Plant the evidence before you write the reversal, since a reveal the reader had no way to reach is a trick.

↑ All Entries

19. Jack Reacher: Never Go Back (2016) [full review]

► Read the full review of Jack Reacher: Never Go Back (2016)

2016
RLR: 5 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 6.1/10

"Gives a man with no attachments somebody to protect."

Edward Zwick took over from Christopher McQuarrie and the difference is visible in the first ten minutes. The previous film was a procedural with patience. This one is a pursuit with a daughter subplot the novels do not contain. Child published the novel of the same name in 2013 as the eighteenth Reacher book.

Cobie Smulders is good and given very little. Major Turner is competent and capable, and she is written as somebody who mostly needs to be in the same location as Reacher for the plot to function. Danika Yarosh plays the teenager the film invents for the plot.

The invented daughter is the central error. Reacher has no attachments by design, the entire mechanism of the character, and giving him a possible child converts him into a conventional action lead with a family to protect. Zwick had directed Cruise once before in The Last Samurai.

The New Orleans finale is competently staged and generic. A rooftop, a parade below, and a hand-to-hand fight that has none of the specificity the first film’s investigation material had. Nothing in it requires Reacher to be Reacher. It took around one hundred and sixty million dollars against a sixty million budget.

For WritersThe sequel gives Reacher a possible daughter and the detachment that defined him disappears. He becomes a man with something to lose, the condition of every other action protagonist. When you continue a character, identify the constraint that made them distinctive and hold it. Writers add attachments because attachments generate stakes, and in doing so they remove the reason the reader chose this character over the others. Name the constraint in one line before the sequel outline exists. Name the constraint in one line before the sequel outline exists and treat anything that softens it as off the table.

↑ All Entries

20. Black Panther (2018) [full review]

► Read the full review of Black Panther (2018)

2018
RLR: 5 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 7.3/10

"Over-praised on release, and Killmonger is the reason to watch it."

Ryan Coogler made the most culturally significant Marvel film and the most structurally conventional one, an unusual combination. It took over one and a third billion dollars and was nominated for Best Picture. Coogler wrote it with Joe Robert Cole and had made Fruitvale Station and Creed.

Michael B. Jordan’s Killmonger is the best-written antagonist in the sequence and the argument is genuinely uncomfortable. A nation with the resources to intervene chose isolation for centuries, and the film has no good answer to the accusation. Chadwick Boseman had first appeared as the character in Civil War.

The Wakandan design work is the achievement. Ruth Carter and Hannah Beachler both won Academy Awards, and the world is built from specific African sources instead of a generic futurism, and the genre had never attempted that at this scale. Ludwig Goransson won an Academy Award for the score.

The casino sequence is the film’s best action, a single continuous take through three levels of a building. The final battle is the failure, with two digitally rendered men in identical suits fighting on a computer-generated train. Rachel Morrison shot it and was the first woman nominated for cinematography that year.

The structural problem is that a film about an argument resolves through a duel. Killmonger’s position is never answered, he is defeated physically, and the film’s concession is a community center in Oakland during the credits. Letitia Wright, Danai Gurira and Lupita Nyong’o fill out the Wakandan cast.

For WritersCoogler builds a film around an accusation the protagonist cannot refute and then settles it with a fight. Killmonger is right about the isolation and wrong about the response, and the film resolves the wrong half. When your story is built on an argument, the ending has to address the argument. Defeating the person who made the argument leaves the reader holding a question the book decided not to answer. An ending has to address the argument the book was built on, or the reader leaves holding a question that was never answered. Write the answer to the accusation before you write the ending, or the fight becomes a way of avoiding the question. Theme in fiction covers resolving an argument.

Honorable Mentions: Action Films Without a Review Here Yet

No review on the site for any of these so far. Each belongs in this tier or well above it and each is on the list.

Hana-bi (1997)

⭐ 7.7/10

Takeshi Kitano wrote, directed, edited and starred, and painted the artwork that appears throughout. The violence arrives in single flat bursts and the rest is a man taking his dying wife on a holiday.

Violent Cop (1989)

⭐ 7.2/10

Kitano’s directing debut, taken over when Kinji Fukasaku withdrew, and he rewrote a comedy into something with no jokes at all. The pacing is deliberately wrong and the effect is genuinely unsettling.

Brother (2000)

⭐ 7.1/10

Kitano moved a yakuza to Los Angeles and let the cultural mismatch do the work. The film is about a man who cannot stop operating by rules nobody around him has agreed to.

Outrage (2010)

⭐ 7.0/10

Kitano returned to the yakuza film with no protagonist to like and a structure that is purely mechanical. Everybody betrays everybody in sequence and the film treats the organization as an algorithm.

Ichi the Killer (2001)

⭐ 7.0/10

Takashi Miike adapted a manga into something that was cut or banned across several territories. Tadanobu Asano’s Kakihara is one of the most distinctive antagonists in Japanese cinema and the film is genuinely difficult.

Versus (2000)

⭐ 6.6/10

Ryuhei Kitamura made a zombie yakuza sword film in a forest for almost no money, and the energy carries it further than the budget should allow. It runs two hours and never stops moving.

Azumi (2003)

⭐ 6.7/10

Kitamura again, with Aya Ueto as an assassin raised for one purpose and a final sequence where she fights roughly two hundred opponents. The choreography is sustained far longer than the form usually attempts.

Blade of the Immortal (2017)

⭐ 6.8/10

Miike’s hundredth film, with Takuya Kimura as a swordsman who cannot die and is exhausted by it. The final battle involves around three hundred opponents and was shot over several weeks.

Rurouni Kenshin (2012)

⭐ 7.4/10

Keishi Otomo adapted a long-running manga and the choreography is the fastest in modern Japanese film. The reverse-blade premise means the protagonist has to win without killing, a constraint that shapes every fight usefully.

Tokyo Drifter (1966)

⭐ 7.2/10

Seijun Suzuki was given a standard yakuza assignment and returned something with coloured sets, a theme song sung by the lead and no interest in coherence. Nikkatsu fired him two films later.

Branded to Kill (1967)

⭐ 7.2/10

The film that got Suzuki fired, about a hitman ranked third in Japan who is aroused by the smell of boiling rice. It was unreleasable in 1967 and has been an acknowledged influence on Jarmusch and Tarantino since.

Youth of the Beast (1963)

⭐ 7.3/10

Suzuki’s first film with a real budget, with Jo Shishido playing both sides of a gang war for reasons the film withholds until late. The color work is twenty years ahead of anything around it.

Dishonorable Mentions: Action Films That Failed

Also unreviewed here. Each had the budget, the cast or the premise and lost it somewhere between the pitch and the edit.

Casshern (2004)

⭐ 6.3/10

Kazuaki Kiriya spent the entire budget on a visual scheme and none of it on a plot anybody can follow. The images are extraordinary and the film is close to incomprehensible for two and a quarter hours.

Shinobi (2005)

⭐ 6.6/10

A ninja clan romance adapted from a novel, with a premise about two villages ordered to destroy each other and almost no interest in how either of them works. The abilities arrive without rules.

Crows Zero (2007)

⭐ 7.1/10

Miike made a film about a school where students fight for control and never attend a class, a strong premise undermined by a cast of around thirty named characters the film cannot distinguish.

Dead or Alive (1999)

⭐ 6.9/10

Miike opens with a six-minute montage of astonishing energy and closes with an ending that abandons the entire film for something unrelated. The middle ninety minutes cannot connect the two.

Graveyard of Honor (2002)

⭐ 7.1/10

A remake of a Fukasaku film about a yakuza with no self-preservation instinct, and Miike removes the social context that made the original an argument. What remains is deterioration without a subject.

Tokyo Fist (1995)

⭐ 7.0/10

Shinya Tsukamoto made a boxing film about bodies and jealousy shot in extreme close-up throughout. The technique is committed and the film gives a viewer no position from which to watch any of it.

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What Do You Think?

The recurring failure here is a sequel that undoes what came before it. The Matrix sequels, Ragnarok, Golden Circle and Never Go Back all spend something their predecessor built. Tell me which one spent the most.

Continue the Series

Frequently Asked Questions

Why did Edgar Wright leave Ant-Man?

He developed it for around eight years and left weeks before production over creative differences. Peyton Reed took over with Adam McKay and Paul Rudd rewriting, and Wright retains a story credit on the finished film.

What does the Architect scene explain in The Matrix Reloaded?

That Neo is the sixth iteration of a designed anomaly and the prophecy is a control mechanism. It answers the question the first film was stronger for leaving open, the most common objection to the sequels.

Why was the Death Wish remake criticized?

The 1974 film makes its protagonist physically sick after the first killing and treats the transformation as a cost. The 2018 version removes that entirely, leaving competence with no consequence attached to it.

What happened to World War Z’s original third act?

Paramount abandoned a sequence set around a battle in Moscow and reshot roughly forty minutes, with Damon Lindelof and Drew Goddard writing the replacement. The quieter laboratory ending is the result.

Is Killmonger right in Black Panther?

The film never refutes his central point. Wakanda had the resources to intervene and chose isolation for centuries, and the picture settles the argument with a duel instead of an answer.

Why does Tenet have a difficult sound mix?

Nolan has defended placing dialogue under the score instead of above it as a deliberate artistic choice. The film also carries a heavy exposition load, making the mix a larger problem than it would otherwise be.

Was Parker faithful to the novels?

No. Donald Westlake refused adaptations using the name for decades because he expected the character to be softened, and this version supplies a code, a romance and a moral line that Richard Stark never wrote.

Why is Guardians Vol. 3 harder to watch?

The Rocket flashbacks concern animal experimentation and Gunn does not soften any of them. The High Evolutionary is written without a single redeeming quality, unusual for the franchise.

GenresAction Superheroes

Action Films Part 8 – The Flawed

1. Parker (2013) [full review]

2. Ant-Man (2015) [full review]

3. Thor: Ragnarok (2017) [full review]

4. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017) [full review]

5. Kingsman: The Golden Circle (2017) [full review]

6. Death Wish (2018) [full review]

7. Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019) [full review]

8. Tenet (2020) [full review]

9. Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) [full review]

10. Hawkeye (2021) [full review]

11. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (2023) [full review]

12. Renfield (2023) [full review]

13. The Time Machine (2002) [full review]

14. The Matrix Reloaded (2003) and Revolutions (2003) [full review]

15. The Day After Tomorrow (2004) [full review]

16. Iron Man 2 (2010) [full review]

17. World War Z (2013) [full review]

18. Rage (2014) [full review]

19. Jack Reacher: Never Go Back (2016) [full review]

20. Black Panther (2018) [full review]

Honorable Mentions: Action Films Without a Review Here Yet

Hana-bi (1997)

Violent Cop (1989)

Brother (2000)

Outrage (2010)

Ichi the Killer (2001)

Versus (2000)

Azumi (2003)

Blade of the Immortal (2017)

Rurouni Kenshin (2012)

Tokyo Drifter (1966)

Branded to Kill (1967)

Youth of the Beast (1963)

Dishonorable Mentions: Action Films That Failed

Casshern (2004)

Shinobi (2005)

Crows Zero (2007)

Dead or Alive (1999)

Graveyard of Honor (2002)

Tokyo Fist (1995)

What Do You Think?

Frequently Asked Questions

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