The ’90s remains one of the golden ages for action movies. Serving up a legion of the best, most iconic heroes, settings, and straight-up awesome action set pieces that today’s movies could still learn from. There’s a good argument that its mix of weirdness and shameless blockbuster pomp makes it the greatest action decade of them all.
Director’s like Bay, Cameron, Spielberg, Woo, De Bont, Tarantino, McTiernan firing on all cylinders and making explosions and gunfights with just enough story and character wrapped around them, so that we cared. Among those films were a selection of great and not-so-great tropes that typify the era. Tropes that we love and miss, and others that, hopefully, remain on the other side of the century divide.
Don’t Miss: Dumbing Down Scenes
Are you sure the audience understood your tech jargon? Better have someone ask for it so it’s dumbed down for the masses. Not only are these usually terrible scenes, they often insult our intelligence by boiling down problems.
The best ones occur when the dumbing down is accompanied by humor, like Egon explaining the ‘cross the streams’ problem to Venkman in Ghostbusters. Otherwise, let’s just assume the big explosion or meltdown or velociraptor migration is bad in and of itself and move on.
Miss: The Ticking Clock Trope
It was already old by the ’90s but the ’ticking clock’ trope remains a staple of the decade and still has its place today. There’s something ingrained in audiences that no matter the stakes, a close shave save is better when there’s a clearly defined time left on the action clock.
Never underestimate the moment of held breath as a timer counts down, or a hero struggles to save someone in imminent peril by the skin of his teeth. They underemphasis it these days because a bright red display counting down to 00:01 was played out, but admit it. It’s a magic number when the hero makes the literal last-second save. Just ask Galaxy Quest.
Don’t Miss: The Invincible Action Hero
A henchman takes a shot to the leg; he’s out for the count. The hero takes a bullet to the shoulder, knife to the side, and is hungover? Walk it off while retaining perfect aim and barely disrupted hair.
We do enjoy our heroes being the epitome of toughness, but it got pretty ridiculous for a while to the point of being cartoony. Wounds of ever-increasing gruesomeness became little more than decorative until there needed to be a complete reset in the genre.
Miss: Reuniting Other Action Stars
One of the best parts of MacGruber was the callback to ’90s team-up flicks. The hero showing up at various jobs and re-recruiting ’the old crew’ for ‘one final job’ to get ’that bastard who got away.’
Whether it’s going through each of their ‘specialities’ (Demolitions. Infiltration. Back Rubs) or character archetypes so exact to the mold you know them before they open their mouths, it’s never not awesome. It’s like the ’80s ‘gear up’ trope, but for people! And what are people, but the weapons of life? Think about it.
Don’t Miss: Bulletproof Tables
Good thing that that table our hero dove behind happened to be reinforced, armored, and a little magic too. Yet somehow this thing is capable of stopping all manner of bullets and debris incoming at our hero.
The same goes for flimsy car doors, wooden doors in general, pillars, mannequins, laundry baskets, stuffed teddies, and every other impossibly tough thing that has suddenly become bulletproof when needed. This goes for anything being kept in an upper chest pocket as well that somehow absorbs killer projectiles.
Miss: Inspirational Speeches
The rousing speech. The defiant monologue. The kickass ‘holding of court.’ Call it whatever you will, but there aren’t enough of these anymore. It’s become fashionable for our heroes to be stoic in the face of evil, and while that may be badass, it isn’t quite the same.
You can’t really imagine John Wick or Mad Max delivering one of these nowadays, but in the ’90s lots of movie Presidents, Generals, or heroes could be counted on to stand up and command attention with a scintillating speech.
Don’t Miss: Being Able To Drive Anything Without Training
Good thing our hero cop had that week of pilot training on his Maui vacation, which translates to jet flying pretty seamlessly, and therefore he can drive a satellite, right? If there’s one thing 90’s action heroes could do, it’s drive. Drive what, you may ask? Anything.
From plausible things like trucks all the way to trains, planes, and choppers, as long as you can ‘get to it,’ you can fly it. After fumbling around for the keys only to flip down the visor, so they fall into your palm, of course.
Miss: Silly High-Speed Chases
Sorely missed these days is the fun of a high-speed chase destroying some fruit stand, or a pane of glass or something. It may be contrived that among the chaos someone randomly wanders out into the street or remains there to get obliterated, but it’s too fun for it to not make a comeback.
There was a time when action movies went out of their way to create these moments, like the San Fransisco trolley in The Rock, or the pram full of cans in Speed. Sometimes, you’ve just got to give the people what they want, even if what we want is kinda silly.
Don’t Miss: Not Immediately Killing The Bad Guy
Leaving the bad guy alone for any length of time without either finishing them off or tying them up is something that happened all the time in ’90s action movies. The only reason this ever happens is so the story can continue despite the lapse in logic.
Like yelling at a horror movie when the survivors decide to go investigate a noise, this is only frustrating and makes you kind of want the hero to lose a bit. Seriously, dumb stuff like this happened way too often.
Miss: Good Bruce Willis Movies
Bruce Willis burst into mega action stardom in the ’80s but the ’90s were all of us jamming on his output. So A+, prime, sarcastic, grumpy Bruce Willis is a trope all on his own that we miss dearly. The good Die Hard sequels, Pulp Fiction, 12 Monkeys, The Fifth Element, Armageddon, and even The Sixth Sense.
The man was a virtual guarantee for the decade of good action fare. He still had some gas left in the tank after the turn of the century. Stuff like Sin City, Looper, and Lucky Number Slevin, but it’s not ‘prime Bruce Willis.’
