10 of the Best and Worst Action Tropes in Movies

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The magic of cinema is all about the audience’s ability to suspend their disbelief. It’s amazing to see how people can collectively watch a film and ignore the many inconsistencies and impossibilities within the story.

And of all the film genres, action films benefit most from this suspension of disbelief. Throughout its long history, the genre has accumulated many tropes that audiences either find awesome or tiresome.

Best Action Tropes

While action movies are famous for their absurd tropes, it’s fair to say they’ve also come up with equally enjoyable ones to balance things out.

They’re not exactly fresh ideas, but they do make the movies more enjoyable to watch. Here are just a few of them:

1. The Speech

The good guys are mounting a counter-offensive and everything is in place. The only thing missing is a boost in morale, so the leaders gather everyone around for one final pep talk.

It’s rousing, patriotic, and defiant—the kind of speech that makes you feel good despite knowing you’ll be in a warzone in less than an hour. This is often the most dramatic part of the movie.

Everyone, including the audience, is reminded of the importance of the mission. In many cases, the heroes are faced with a do-or-die situation, and yet are still eager to proceed.

There’s not a lot of these nowadays. Recent action movies prefer their heroes to be stoic so they can feel more badass. Still, it’s one of the better tropes to come out of the ’80s and ’90s era of action films.

2. Race Against the Clock

The ticking clock is perhaps one of the oldest tropes in the entirety of cinema. It’s an exciting element that’s still widely used even today.

This is most obvious in films that include a bomb with a big red timer. It’s an excellent way to create suspense in a film. The characters become more desperate and the audience is pushed to the edge of their seats as the clock runs out.

A variant of this is instead of a time limit, the hero must prevent a villain from acquiring everything they need to carry out their plan. For both versions, only when the hero has managed to pull off a last-second save does everyone breathe a sigh of relief.

In Sherlock Holmes, Lord Blackwood announces that when the clock strikes twelve, those in parliament not allied with him will die. Meanwhile, Sherlock and Watson fight off a giant lackey while Irene Adler tries to disable Blackwood’s death machine.

3. Cheesy One-liners

When the hero has just done something cool, they can’t help but deliver a one-liner joke. It’s one of those “so bad it’s good” situations.

Typically, the one-liner is a bad pun pertaining to the situation the hero finds themselves in. While these quips are a bad attempt at comedy, they’re more about downplaying the violence that’s about to or has just occurred.

Pretty much any movie that Arnold Schwarzenegger stars in features this trope. One of his most notable one-liners is found in Commando, where he spears his opponent with a steam pipe that promptly expels steam. Of course, Arnie just has to have the last word with: “Let off some steam, Bennet.“

Cheesy one-liners still live on in modern action movies. The only difference is that they’re more restricted to smart-mouth characters nowadays.

4. One-on-one Showdowns

The hero has finally fought his way through a horde of goons. After a quick rest, they’re on to confronting the main villain.

Of course, they have to talk first and do a lot of posturing. Only when they’ve seen their irreconcilable differences do they start the fight. And compared to the other fights in the movie, this one is longer and more brutal.

Aside from the obvious importance of the fight, this final battle is often the most visually pleasing fight sequence in the entire film. There’s a higher level of choreography, and the constant back-and-forth makes things exciting.

Every John Wick film has these. The third movie, in particular, features the titular character going toe-to-toe with an assassin of the same caliber.

5. Avengers Assemble!

When a mission is so difficult, only the best of the best can handle it. In most cases, these experts are already retired or currently scattered. The hero must then go around convincing them to join what is usually described as “one last job.”

Each member of the dream team is an expert whose skills are critical to the mission. The most common ones are demolition, transportation, and infiltration. Typically, the absence of one prevents the mission from even starting.

In many action films, there’s a montage and voiceover where each member is introduced, along with their respective skills and aliases.

The entire Avengers franchise is one big example of this. Each hero is introduced through their respective movies, whose storylines converge into one big story. Nick Fury shows up in each, recruiting the heroes who will eventually become the Avengers.

Worst Action Tropes

An elderly woman once described action movies to me as “muscly men going bang bang on bad people.” Indeed, many of the action films I’ve seen were exactly as she described.

Over time, many of the elements featured in these movies have become so overused that they’ve formed a love-hate relationship with the audience. Below are just a few of these tropes.

6. Enemies Attack One by One

This is most noticeable in martial arts films, but can be seen in many other action movies. The protagonist faces multiple enemies, and miraculously they survive the fight, often escaping with only minor injuries.

What happens here is that instead of overwhelming the hero, the enemies attack them one by one. Even though there’s enough space for multiple attackers, they always seem to wait for the hero to cut one of them down before they step in.

Take a look at the above scene from Kill Bill, where the Bride is surrounded by the Crazy 88. Ignore her and the nameless minion she’s currently fighting. What you’ll find are numerous lackeys doing nothing. They could have at least attacked her blindspots.

To be fair, this kind of melee is more about showing off the hero’s skills rather than crippling or killing them. Still, it’s hilarious how you see the other combatants just flailing around and trying to look menacing.

7. One Man Army

Never mind the backup—just give the hero a bagful of weapons and he’ll take on an entire army. It’s as easy as that.

Rambo did this in pretty much every movie. To his credit, he put a ton of effort into all of them. He’s infiltrated enemy camps, blown them up, and tore everyone in them to pieces using his trademark machine guns. It’s hard to imagine how much stamina the guy has.

There are barely any tactics involved when the hero decides to become a one-man army. There’s just a ton of explosions, gunfire, and deaths. And when the smoke clears, the hero is revealed to be the last man standing.

This creates an admittedly powerful image. Unfortunately, it opens up the narrative to a lot of problems, which, ironically, are also some of the most overused tropes in the action genre.

8. Invincible Heroes

A henchman takes a bullet in the leg? He dies, of course. But when the hero gets shot, knifed, and beaten up? Not only are they able to walk away, but they kill every single bad guy too. Then, and only then, are they permitted to collapse.

Or perhaps they’re faced with a hail of bullets with little to no cover. They dodge and weave, barely escaping behind the wall. Miraculously, none of the bullets hit them. And when they shoot back, they always hit their marks.

It’s as if they feel no pain and are incapable of missing. It doesn’t matter what’s thrown at them because they’ll certainly survive it.

Any Steven Seagal film easily fits this trope. His characters always decimate their opponents, and the only times they’re able to injure him is when he lets down his guard or when the plot needs him to get injured so his love interest can patch him up.

While people do love characters with a level of toughness, this often gets pushed to ridiculous heights in action films.

9. Unlimited Ammo

Everyone knows a gun can only load a finite amount of bullets—everyone but movie directors, at least. Why do they never show the heroes reloading? And why do they make them shoot an obviously impossible amount of bullets before making them reload?

This is one of the most frequently abused tropes in action films. While it can sometimes be excused by clever editing, most often it’s just a blatant disregard of a gun’s capacity.

What makes it more frustrating is when the hero and villain finally come face to face. Suddenly, there’s a shortage of bullets, with both often having just one bullet left.

A recent example can be found in The Walking Dead. When a horde of zombies attack his farm, Hershel is seen using a shotgun and never reloading.

10. Bulletproof Furniture

It doesn’t matter how flimsy, thin, or impractical the furniture appears—as long as you can hide behind it, it’s evidently good enough to stop a barrage of bullets and other projectiles. But concealment isn’t exactly equal to cover, is it?

This isn’t limited to furniture. There are tons of movies that have used plywood walls, car doors, garbage can lids, and other random objects as cover. Without fail, almost no bullets make it through the barrier.

This trope is subverted in Dredd. When the titular character is in a shootout with corrupt judges, he takes cover behind a concrete wall. Unfortunately for him, his opponent switches to armor-piercing rounds and shoots him through the wall.

Action movies have become so popular because they’re easily the most stimulating of films for most moviegoers. Because of this overwhelming popularity, these films are almost guaranteed to sell well too, which further motivates moviemakers to create them.

People can live vicariously through action stars who do impossible things against overwhelming odds—all from the comforts of their home. To people who want to relax or break their daily patterns, these movies are a great way to escape.

The resulting adrenaline rush goes a long way too. I remember when kung-fu movies were all the rage and streaming wasn’t available yet. After watching Bruce Lee or Jackie Chan on screen, it’s pretty common to see moviegoers mimicking their moves just outside of the cinema.

Action movies simply make you feel awesome. When you’ve been doing pretty boring things for a while, that feeling is a powerful motivator to carry on again.

What action tropes do you love or hate? Share them in the comments below!

 

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