Top 25 Action Movies Ever Made

[trinityvixen]

Whenever you make a list like that, you're going to get into trouble. I would have though Entertainment Weekly would have learned its lesson after it printed the Top 25 Sci-Fi movies ever and then had to print a subsequent article about the ones that necessarily got left out a week later. Maybe it's a slow news month and they're looking to do a follow-up article. Anyway, here's the list:
1. Die Hard
2. Aliens
3. Raiders of the Lost Ark
4. The Road Warrior
5. The Matrix
6. Seven Samurai
7. Gladiator
8. Saving Private Ryan
9. Hard-Boiled
10. Terminator 2: Judgment Day
11. Speed
12. The Empire Strikes Back
13. The Wild Bunch
14. RoboCop
15. Enter the Dragon
16. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
17. The Bourne Supremacy
18. The Adventures of Robin Hood
19. Goldfinger
20. Kill Bill Vol.1
21. Spider-Man 2
22. Predator
23. Druken Master II
24. Lethal Weapon
25. The Incredibles

The preponderance of sci-fi in that list is pretty interesting. I won't argue with the #1 choice--it's a fair call, you ask me, that Die Hard is the best action movie of all time. I do take offense at Predator lurking so close to the bottom (behind Spider-Man 2!?!? The fuck?), though, upon further recollection, Predator isn't even that much of an action movie. It's more a thriller-horror movie--bunch of bad-asses being stalked through South American jungles by an alien hunting them for sport. There's suprisingly little action in that movie, save for the end. I think there's exactly one punch thrown. Still doesn't seem right some how.

Mostly, I take greater offense at the characterization of Sarah Connor in Terminator 2 as mannish (this was brough up to show how the buff and beautiful Ellen Ripley needed not to be bikini-clad heroine nor "mannish" in Aliens to be tough and awesome). Sarah is "mannish" in what sense, exactly? Because she has muscles? Because she acts to destroy evil instead of moralizing about it? I'm pissed that her ability to be a soldier is somehow determined to be her aping "manly" attributes. Would that John Connor (by T3) had half of her chutzpah.

I also don't recognize Saving Private Ryan as an action film. And, as an action film, it is NOT better than Speed. So, nyah!

Comments

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

Well, they had my top three action films (Die Hard, T2, Matrix) and a bunch more that if I'd stop to think about it I'd've put on the list (like Raiders and Gladiator). I am confused by the characterization of Empire Strikes Back as Action. There's a lot of sci fi on this list, but a film like T2 or Aliens really is an action film at heart. Empire is a space opera at heart.

I'm guessing the "mannish" characterization comes partly out of a contrast between that and the first Terminator movie where she wears pink and screams a lot.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

We talked about this today, but I second the call of WTF on Empire.

T2 and Aliens were definitely action films--Cameron does those very well, obviously. And still ::shakes fist:: over characterizing Linda Hamilton as "mannish." Grr. Argh.