site banner
PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   1931 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for March 6, 2026

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

1
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Last week @Lizzardspawn asked why none of the sequels to the first two Terminator or Predator movies have been any good. Having only seen the first Predator and Terminators 1 and 2, I wasn't really in a position to comment on the inferiority of the sequels, but offered my two cents anyway based on my secondhand knowledge of Terminators 3-6. This got me thinking about Terminator 2 and I ended up reading the entire Wikipedia article (and the sub-article dedicated specifically to its special effects). Last Friday we sat down to watch a torrented version of the rerelease for Blu-ray which includes all of the cut scenes. It still looks great, although annoyingly there were a few points in the first half of the movie in which the colour grading would change dramatically in consecutive shots (I don't mean consecutive scenes: I mean consecutive shots in the same location), which was distracting and a rather glaring oversight for a rerelease apparently overseen by Cameron himself. It also ends with the corny, sentimental ending I criticised last week, rather than the "open road" ending from the theatrical release. But all that aside, the film still holds up, many of the visual effects still look positively jaw-dropping thirty-five years later, and the film is a true landmark in action films.

This got me thinking about my favourite action films, in no particular order:

  • Terminator 2: As above.
  • The Matrix: Perhaps the only film that can rival Terminator 2 for innovation in visual effects, and a spellbinding sci-fi romp on top of that.
  • Die Hard: my brother and I have a tradition of watching this every Christmas, to the point that I daresay I could probably recite the entire film from memory with some prompting. Nothing beats bellowing "no more table!" in a thick Teutonic accent with a glass of Bailey's.
  • The Rock: probably my single favourite action film ever. Whatever one might think of Michael Bay's "chaos cinema" style more broadly, it works here. Nicolas Cage's goofiness had not yet veered into outright self-parody, Sean Connery remained as wryly charismatic in his sixties as peak Bond, and Ed Harris lends palpable gravitas to an anti-villain whose motivation is more sympathetic than any of the protagonists' (it's amazing to me that Harris never served: he's completely convincing as a military man). It's an action film in which violence is deployed both for cathartic escapism and for heart-rending pathos (the scene in which the SEAL team is gunned down in the shower room is a moving audio-visual statement on the pointlessness of war), without any consequent feeling of tonal dissonance. It's an unusually cerebral and literate action film which offers thought-provoking meditations on the morality of American military adventurism, while still finding the time to have fun and give us great lines like "Your besht? Loshers always whine about their besht. Winners go home and fuck the prom queen."
  • Speed: I was positively obsessed with this film as a small child, a testament to the power of raw sound and image to overpower one's critical thinking faculties. Even ignoring the film's brazen disregard for the laws of physics, one could fill a book with the plot points that don't make a lick of sense or are dependent on contrived coincidences – and yet, in the moment, one simply doesn't care. Probably Keanu Reeves's best performance ever (admittedly not a terribly high bar to clear), his chemistry with Sandra Bullock* is believable and irresistible, Dennis Hopper offers perhaps the most entertaining action-movie villain since Hans Gruber, and the soundtrack is memorable, exciting and emotive.
  • Saving Private Ryan: More of a war film than an action film proper, although its impact on the genre is impossible to dispute. Even people who don't like the film as a whole will concede that its depiction of the Omaha beach landing set the tone for how action movies would look, sound and feel for decades afterwards.
  • The Fugitive: I only watched this film quite recently, but it deserves its place in the canon of action-thriller films for grown-ups. On a second watch I was struck by how vacant and anonymous Harrison Ford's leading man turn is: Tommy Lee Jones is the film's real protagonist, and steals every scene he's in.
  • Total Recall: As discussed here. The film which best encapsulates Philip K. Dick's entire aesthetic, and the best Paul Verhoeven film I've seen (I'm curious about Starship Trooopers and Showgirls).
  • Heat: Like Saving Private Ryan a marginal example, and more of a crime thriller than an action film. In a runtime of nearly three hours, it only contains two or three real action setpieces, but one of those happens to be one of the most tense, nerve-wracking and explosive shootouts in cinematic history, so it would be remiss of me not to include it.
  • Predator: Right up there with Terminator 2 as far as action/sci-fi goes, and I like that it's not as self-serious in tone.

Are there any recurring patterns here? Nostalgia obviously plays a major role: several of these films (Speed, The Rock, Terminator 2) were films I watched repeatedly on VHS as a child. Relatedly, there are no entries from this century (excepting the marginal case of The Matrix Reloaded, which I'm counting under The Matrix). Every film is also American: I've heard great things about Asian action cinema, but both times I tried watching Hard-Boiled I turned it off about half an hour in.

What would you say your favourite action films are? Are there non-American action films that I really must see? Are there any from this century that I really ought to check out? (Before anyone mentions John Wick: I will concede that its action sequences are expertly choreographed and filmed, but when I watched it a few years ago I came away feeling distinctly underwhelmed, finding it stylistically confused and at odds with itself.)

*Rumour has it that no other than Ellen deGeneres was the frontrunner for the role. I feel quite confident that, had they gone with this, it would have derailed the entire film.

For non-American Memorable Examples.

Kung Fu Hustle : Stephen Chow's magnum opus, and there's reason it gets referenced as an inspiration everywhere from Exalted to Chuubo's. Incredible action sequences throughout the entire film, incredible clarity and color grading, a great set of character arcs, and defined its own aesthetic. While it wears its western influences on its sleeves (there's a Looney Tunes segment and a reference to The Shining), a very strongly Hong Kong work. It's not perfect -- the CGI is dated in places, the pacing around the denouement is a little too fast, and some of its parody elements are no longer parody enough -- but I don't know of anything better in its genre. If you really like it, Shaolin Soccer and God of Cookery motion around the same concepts and themes, but they don't really hold up.

Drunken Master II (aka Legend of the Drunken Master): the film that put Jackie Chan on the international map. I don't like it as much as Kung Fu Hustle, myself, since it's much stronger for its fight scenes than for its themes or plot, but it's significantly more grounded and less parody.

Princess Mononoke : it's long, it's (cartoonishly) gory, and some of its thematic commentary gets kinda confused, but one of the strongest Ghibli movies and I'd argue the strongest adult action Ghibli movie. Great characters and complex motivations, deep introspection on virtue, and better sense of things existing in a real space during fight scenes than some live-action works. Howl's Moving Castle is a close second in quality and a better introduction to Ghibli in general, and maybe Marnie and the Witch's Flower, but they're far less action-focused.

Ghost in the Shell : the philosophy is a little dated (and way too wordy) at this point, but when the worst you can say about a film like this is that it didn't predict LLMs perfectly, that's praising with faint damns. The more serious problem is just that it's slow-paced and all of the fights are very much curbstomps one direction or the other.

Akira: I'll have to give a disclaimer, here: it does have a famously bad ending, made worse that the original manga's somehow not any better. Like Jet Li's The One, I can't call it good so much as I can call it interesting. Still, there's reason it's inspired a literal generation of animators, and it's still something I like watching.

08th MS Team : technically an OVA instead of a movie, but basically just a movie. Forget all of the newtypes and super prototypes and hyperweapons and one-men armies. It's a war drama as much or more than an action film, and while it's not realistic, it's got an emphasis on realism. If you want a mecha action film that treats fights seriously, this is about as close as you can get, and it's backed up by fantastic animation and great pacing.

I adore Ghost in the Shell and Akira, and probably should have included the latter in the above list. I'm of two minds about including GitS in a list of action films, as I'm not sure that one chase scene and one fight against a tank really an action movie make.

I saw Princess Mononoke for the first time a few months ago and thoroughly enjoyed it. Far more violent than I was expecting from a Ghibli film.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats