In the context of action movies, history has proven that there is a very fine line between an epic blockbuster and a total disaster come release time for a movie. Why was Alexander so terrible, but Gladiator so awesome? There is alot more to good movie making than most people think, keeping the audience captivated and leaving the theater smiling is a difficult things to do.
One of the key components of any action adventure film is the action itself. Too much CG (computer graphics) and people feel detached from the possible reality of the show, it appears more like a video game to them than a movie. Action sequences have to be exciting but believable.
The timeline and the amount of content you place into that timeline can mean sink or swim for any movie. Some stories can be up to 3 hours long, and it is difficult to keep people watching for that long. Many films such as the Lord of the Rings trilogy need that amount of time to convey the huge amounts of plot and character development that producers are pulling out of the books. I recently watched GI Joe and was hugely disappointed, this was a classic example of a movie with a pace that was way too fast, so much storyline was being crammed into one movie that you might think your watching it in fast forward.
Character development is crucial, if you can’t make the audience become emotionally attached to your protagonaist, your doomed. People have to care for the main character, they have to want that figure to succeed, if not they’ll be joking about ways of failure through the whole movie.
If you cannot control these aspects of a film, the film might be walkout material, if you can then you could create a memorable film that people will talk about forever.
A couple action films are on the horizon to keep an eye on, first to come up is 2012, another disaster end of the world film, and another is Prince of Persia, adding to the video game turned movie genre that has been creeping into theaters. Check out the trailer here.
