It’s pretty easy to recognise the leading genre of a movie but what are the finer details of a feature that decide the sub-genre? Here’s an in depth look at the writing of heroes and villains within the action genre that help further define the movie as an Action/Thriller.
The Protagonist
When discussing characterising a protagonist in the screenwriting book Into the Woods, John Yorke wrote that the lead character is “always the person the audience cares about most.” Yorke then explains that care is not equal to like and that even a bad person can be liked as long as we understand their motivations.
Robert McKee writes in his book Story that each character must bring “a combination of qualities that allows an audience to believe that the character could and would do what he does.” If an Action/Thriller lead acts unrealistically then audience will soon lose interest in the protagonist’s journey.
The Action/Thriller genre doesn’t often handle bad people as their leads but their protagonists are often morally grey. An Action/Thriller lead can be thought of as a vigilante type, someone that will take that little extra step beyond what a normal person would in the name of justice.
The character of Harry in the 1971 movie Dirty Harry is a great example of this. Harry is a renegade cop with a very well-defined set of personal rules that do not match up with what the movies justice system allows. In his first scene of the movie, Harry’s boss throws criticism at Harry over how he had dealt with a previous case.
He says: “I don’t want trouble, like you had last year in the Fillmore district”
Harry replies: “When an adult male is chasing a female with intent to commit rape, I shoot the bastard. That’s my policy.”
This gives us all the information we need to know about Harry’s values. Harry at his core does the right thing, he protects the innocent from the bad. We also now know that the way he handles these situations is beyond the expectations of a normal officer, his own personal morals push him to skirt the edge of justice. The film could also be interpreted to be in support of this type of vigilantism as the scene ends with Harry leaving the office as the mayor chimes in to say “I think he has a point.”
Harry is similar to a lot of typical hero character in the action genre but the core difference that the Action/Thriller genre brings is the journey these characters will take.
In the movie Deadpool from 2016 our hero of the story, Wade Wilson, is about to shoot the primary antagonist in the head before being interrupted by an ally, Colossus.
Colossus says: “Four or five moments, that’s all it takes to become a hero. Everyone thinks it’s a full time job. Wake up a hero. Brush your teeth a hero. Go to work a hero. Not true. Over a lifetime there are only four or five moments that really matter. Moments when you’re offered a choice to make a sacrifice, conquer a flaw, save a friend, spare an enemy. In these moments everything else falls away.”
Colossus is staring at Deadpool and telling him how an Action hero is written in cinema. A story where at the end, the hero must choose to spare the villain and give up the short-term gratification of revenge for the satisfaction of not giving in to the violent acts of the villain, thus transforming into the traditional hero.
Deadpool’s response to this speech is to shoot the villain in the head anyway, stating: “If wearing superhero tights means sparing psychopaths then maybe I wasn’t meant to wear them.”
Take it back to the final scene of Dirty Harry where Harry stands over the killer he has spent this whole movie chasing down and recites his famous line from earlier in the film: “I know what you’re thinking, punk. You’re thinking ‘Did he fire six shots or five?’ Well to tell you the truth I forgot myself in all this excitement. But being that this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world and would blow your head clean off, you gotta ask yourself a question: ‘Do I feel lucky?’ Well, do ya, punk?”
The killer reaches for his gun and Harry pulls the trigger before he even gets close to it.
The most important thing to note about Deadpool and Dirty Harry is that their villains are so violent in their actions that the lead is often portrayed as the person that movie universe needs, someone to finish a job that a kinder heart never could. Deadpool suffers through being tortured and burnt alive at the hands of his villain while Harry tries and fails to save the slaughtered victims of Scorpio.
Action villains may cause mass destruction and level cities but what we’re often looking at in those scenes is the material destruction it causes. In Dirty Harry we witness an active murderer bringing harm to individuals and the whole way through, he keeps slipping away from court justice. There is no other alternative to stop his spree, the law cannot handle someone like this and the longer they take to stop him, the more damage he can cause.
Harry is the person needed to stop this terror and after killing the mass murderer known as Scorpio, Harry removes his badge and throws it into the nearby water. You could almost play the Deadpool response to Colossus over this scene as Harry gives up the ‘superhero tights’ he wasn’t meant to wear.
Action Heroes
In discussing action heroes, John Yorke claims that “the multiplex hero doesn’t change.” Yorke uses Bond as an example of this “he has a dimension removed so we may repeatedly enjoy him. Bond just wants; he is an embodiment of pure desire.” Yorke’s claim is further backed up by audience response to the only George Lazenby lead Bond movie, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, arguably one of the weirdest Bond films in existence.
When talking about the movie, online writer Film Crit Hulk notes Lazenby’s performance.
LAZENBY’S BOND RAN THE ENTIRE GAMUT OF HUMAN EXPRESSION. SOMETIMES HIS BOND IS A HAPPIER BOND, EVEN DOWNRIGHT JOVIAL, WHICH ONLY HELPS MAKE THE OTHER TIMES REGISTER WHEN HE IS IMMENSELY SAD. IT’S ALMOST AS IF HE, LIKE, YOU KNOW, BRINGS GENUINE EMOTIONS TO EVERYTHING HAPPENING ON SCREEN.
Hulk VS. James Bond – Day 2, Film Crit Hulk
Hulk’s argument is that acting like a real person made Bond a worse vehicle for indulgence. In his series “HULK VS JAMES BOND” he studies every James Bond movie and what exactly makes a James Bond film a James Bond film, often citing overt sexism and ‘macho badassery’ as the core to Bond’s character, the only variable in his life being what Bond girl we will get this time.
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service dishes up a Bond that isn’t shy about poking fun at the core ideas for the character while allowing Bond to grow emotionally into a more fleshed out human being. The angle they attacked this at is via the Bond girl herself in the form of the wonderful Diana Rigg.
Diana Rigg plays her role as a smart, independent woman who wants almost nothing to do with Bond, she sees right through this guy and recognizes him as the two-dimensional character he is. The other men in the pairs introductory scene play this out as you may expect. After their first introduction, Diana Riggs is unimpressed with Bond and walks away from the conversation.
Her father says: “she like you, I know it” but here’s our new Bond responding with “You must give me the name of your oculist.”
Bond recognizes her distaste for him and isn’t quick to paint it as anything else, she’s not playing hard to get, she doesn’t care for him and he doesn’t really care for her either.
Bond’s relationship with women over the years has been quite racy (or in the case of Pussy Galore, rapey) and even in this film Bond has questionable moments. There’s a good half hour segment of this movie where Bond is in disguise at a facility filled with beautiful women and all he does is sneak around at night going from room to room to have sex with them all. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service does still maintain a lot of the classic Bond ideas and I do not want you to move from this article to the movie and think you’re about to see a Bond you’ve never seen before who doesn’t take part in this sort of misogyny.
What the movie does though is tries to move him from this, carve a new path for Bond that’s lead by emotional attachment. They do the hen house sex fest, they give you the staples of Bond and then try to move him forward. Bond carries keepsakes of the women from previous movies, he has a small connection to his past and respect for the romances formed there. He falls in love with a woman (but who wouldn’t fall for Diana Rigg?) who continually challenges him and he does not try to change her to match his personality, he changes and grows to match hers. While the other men in the movie belittle her opinion, James actually kind of listens to the truth she’s speaking and takes it on board.
By the end of this movie, Bond is driving into the sunset with his now wife and looking to be a better man who settles down. Sadly, they need more movies out of this franchise and instead of letting him be happy at least until the next movie, they reset it before it ends. Bond and his partner are shot at before they reach their sunset and in the final moments of the movie, Lazenby cradles a dying Rigg in his arms.
THE MOST IMPORTANT THING TO UNDERSTAND IS THAT ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE WAS RELEASED (AND STILL EXISTS) IN A PERFECT STORM OF CONFLATING NEEDS. IT WAS COMING OFF CONNERY, CHANGING THE FORMULA, ENDING ON A DOWNER, FUNDAMENTALLY ALTERING ‘WHAT IT GIVES YOU,” HAS CRAZY LOGIC HOLES, HAS WEIRD STRUCTURE – AND YET DID SO MANY OF THE CRITICAL “INTANGIBLE THINGS” WELL THAT MAKE FOR GOOD STORIES, BUT BAD INDULGENCE.
Hulk VS. James Bond – Day 2, Film Crit Hulk
There are many problems with this movie but it tries so hard to do more with this character and tell a story that matters to the Bond mythos. Sadly, negative audience reception would make sure that Lazenby didn’t get to move on to a sequel and Connery was brought back to fill the role of Bond for Diamonds are Forever, locking down the Bond we knew before and cutting short the growth that could have been.
Maybe it was too much at once but what the release of this film and audience reactions did was back up Yorke’s claim that “The multiplex hero doesn’t change” as this film’s response pushed studios to believe that they shouldn’t. Funnily as the series went on they would release a film that came with a lot of these same aspects, a hero that shows emotion and is free to fall in love; Casino Royale would be received with critical praise, perhaps a sign of the evolution of what people want from movies or a good indicator of what happens when you take an action movie and transfer it to an Action/Thriller genre instead.
The heroes in Action movies should not change is the discussion that Yorke brought to the table and if we look at typical action movies this rings true. The hero in these movies will always do the right thing for the right reasons (Star Wars, Avengers, X-Men, Fast and Furious), often sparing the villain or alternatively if they end up killing the villain in the end it’s likely a comical, over the top villain to make us not care or feel any weight to the kill (Kingsman, Avatar, most James Bond films). Compare it to the thriller genre where the lead characters and audience are often robbed of a real happy ending for themselves (Seven, No Country for Old Men, Black Swan, The Departed).
When we take the two genres and put them together, we have a victory that both rewards the audience and lets down the characters potential growth or ability to get out of their situation. Dirty Harry kills the villain for audience satisfaction but Harry does not change, he’s the guy they needed for this job because his ideals are right for this case. Colter Stevens in Source Code discovers the identity of the bomber and saves many lives but he has no chance of returning to the living world, he can only remain in the firing synapses of his dying brain after the simulation is shut off (I’m planting my flag on this ending and there’s nothing you can do about it). Batman defeats the Joker and Two Face in The Dark Knight but now has to go on the run himself. Cobb completes the job in Inception and goes home but it may all still be a dream.
The heroes in action thrillers are often the smartest person in the room, they’re right from the word go and so they’re not ones to follow through to a huge personal change by end, they return to where they once were. This is similar to action movies but the stakes are higher and more grounded in reality, making it a little more bittersweet as the world is corrected but the hero is not. Personal satisfaction is not often available to these characters.
Villains
One of the largest influences of the sub-genre of an action movie is the villain. Action/Thrillers will use a villain that’s closer to reality than your basic action movie.
In Story, McKee states: “In the Thriller the criminal must “make It personal.” Although the story may start with a cop who works for a paycheck, to deepen the drama, at some point, the criminal goes over the line.”
In Into the Woods, Yorke brings attention to this quote from the movie Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy: “We’re not so very different, you and I, we both spend our lives looking for the weaknesses in one another’s systems.”
Lets look more in to that, what about the relationship between Hero and Villain in an Action/Thriller is different than any other genre? This is best discussed through the simplicity of an action scene comparison.
The 2002 Action/Horror movie Dog Soldiers follows a squad of soldiers on a training mission in the Scottish Highlands encountering werewolves. The team retreat to the nearest home and barricade themselves in with the intention of surviving the night, waiting out the full moon.
The 2011 Indonesian Action/Thriller movie The Raid focuses on a 20-man squad of officers who are set to raid an apartment building to arrest a crime lord. Very soon after entering the building filled with criminals, the squad are spotted and the action begins as they have to fight their way to the top of this block to arrest their man.
You might already get where this is going, active agency is the key. While Dog Soldiers focuses on securing their position to survive the night, barricading doors and windows and just making sure the monsters don’t get in before sunrise, the goal of The Raid is to keep moving forward, to not get stuck in one spot for too long and allow the enemy to bulk up their numbers.
Dog Soldiers is a hilarious film with a key standout moment being a full on attack on the home, bullets firing everywhere, werewolves jumping through windows and one guy hammering the front door closed just as a werewolf hand reaches through the mailbox, our guy responds by hammering the hand in rapid succession to get it to piss off. Dog Soldiers is one of the ultimate survival against all odds movies with a lot of laughs and tense moments to be had. The body count is high, the action is fun and while the story is bare bones, it does have some nice surprises.
The Raid is already considered to be one of the best action movies ever made, paving the way for movies like John Wick and Atomic Blonde to exist; light on plot, high on action and some of the best fight sequences you’ll ever see put to film. The highlight of this movie for me and the scene I want to discuss is one where the squad is overwhelmed in the stairwell of the building and retreat into one of the flats to regroup.
In here they quickly barricade the door and do the opposite of the Dog Soldiers move, they know they cannot stay here and need to move forward for both their continued survival and the overall mission. They start banging on walls looking for weak spots, yelling for the axe so they can cut through the floor into the flat below, they need to get out. Within moments this team are actively trying to regain control of the situation they’re in, dropping to the flat below and fighting the smaller number of men awaiting them. Soon after getting to the flat below, the hoard above get through the barricade they left behind and it’s through listening to the running footsteps of the enemy above that one of our heroes manages to time the exact moment someone will drop down the hole they cut and tackles the enemy out of a window mid fall.
But the problem is this is a thriller and the “We’re not so different, you and I” comes in to play. Before cutting further down to the apartment below they get shot at from down there, killing one of their men. The enemy are smart too, they know the plan and it needs to change quickly. The enemy hoard is now above, below and just outside the door but the fight for control has to be ongoing, they refuse to stay put. They build a makeshift bomb out of a fridge and gas cannister to create a directed explosion into the hall, clearing their way back out into the stairwell to continue their climb to the big boss.
When people send clips of this movie around, this isn’t even the scene they choose. There are constant action sequences that bring insurmountable odds to our smart lead characters who have to move forward and overcome. If the Action/Horror movie Dog Soldiers is about outlasting impossible odds then Action/Thriller movie The Raid is about overcoming them, the goal is to get the villains just as much as the villains goal is to get them.
“We’re not so very different, you and I, we both spend our lives looking for the weaknesses in one another’s systems.”
Tinker Taylor Soldier Spy
Push back is what makes the Action/Thriller genre unique. By making a situation personal the villain helps create a protagonist that refuses to take things lying down, the push on each other is equal. In a horror movie, the protagonist may run or hide. In an Action film, they might one man army against an often-retreating villain. In an Action/Thriller, both protagonist and antagonist are at each other’s throats. The hero maybe witnessed all the men around him die due to the villain’s order (The Raid) or their family is in trouble (Die Hard), it’s personal to them. For the villain it’s personal because the hero is a new element risking their entire operation, they’re an unasked-for complication or they just might hate the idea of someone getting the leg up on them.
One of the best examples of this concept put to screen is the 1997 movie Face/Off where the hero and villain literally swap faces, the tension is placed on the damage that each could cause within the life of the other by now carrying their image. This is entirely personal between these two characters as they try and protect the family and friends they can’t even approach without appearing to be the person they all fear most. The antagonist in an Action/Thriller needs just as much of a personal vendetta against the protagonist as the protagonist has against them.
An active hero is dependent on an active villain, they’re not reactive, they don’t weasel out of a corner at the last minute and run away, they’re both trying to get control of the lead and throughout the film this lead will change hands constantly.
They're the same person
This is it, we’re at the end of this overlong piece about writing Action/Thriller movies and the final point I want to reiterate to make sure you’ve taken away the most important first step to writing an Action/Thriller movie is that the hero and villain are the same person, they are a mirror here more than in any other genre.
The ending of the 2011 feature Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows has Sherlock and Moriarty having a battle of the mind. Throughout both movies, Sherlock has been seen to be able to visualise a fight before it even happens, he knows his exact path through to the quickest victory and we are treated to a wonderfully narrated, slow motion piece of action as he predicts what will happen before a real time version plays out just after, exactly as he saw it. Sherlocks intellect is what sets him apart from everyone else in these movies and his ultimate villain, Moriarty, can be just as smart.
As the movie is coming to a close, our hero and villain stand on a balcony together, talking it out. Moriarty approaches Sherlock to light pipe for him and it happens, we enter the predicted fight, the narrated slow-motion sequence as Sherlock figures out how to win this battle. It’s wonderful as always and for a moment, he’s winning, this can work. But then we jump back to the lighting of the pipe, a close up of Moriarty as he looks at Sherlock and steals the narration from him.
Moriarty narrates: “Come now, you really think you’re the only one who can play this game?”
We jump forward to the fight Sherlock was winning in his mind and suddenly Moriarty is our narrator and the imagined fight is his to win. He’s destroying our hero. They are equally matched. Sherlock joins the narration, they’re having an active battle of intelligence, both fighting to be the narrator and winner of the potential future, moments from now.
Sherlock loses. His injuries sustained throughout the movie give Moriarty the edge he needs, he defeats Sherlock and throws him off the balcony into the pit below. Cutting back to the present, the two men smile at each other, both aware Moriarty will win this dual if it plays out.
Sherlock narrates: “Conclusion, Inevitable.”
Sherlock and Moriarty are the exact same person and in this moment it’s seen through a storytelling technique we’ve spent two films watching Sherlock have full control over. Sherlock knows this is over and so, he changes his plan. He surprises Moriarty, wrapping his arms around him instead of fighting, he pushes off against the wall and just as they both begin to tumble off the balcony together, Sherlock is faced with his own fatal flaw, his belief that he is alone in the world.
Watson comes out onto the balcony just in time to watch Sherlock and Moriarty stumble back over the balcony edge and fall to their death. Had Sherlock finally understood and believed that Watson was always going to be there to protect him, maybe it would have played out differently, had he taken the original fight.
But this isn’t an article about the fatal flaw of Robert Downey Jr’s Sherlock. This is an article about the matching of Hero and Villain within Action/Thriller. This is the thrilling conclusion of a two-part film series where equals meet and know that they are not so different from one another, always looking for the weakness in one another’s systems. Sherlock takes down the villain, but he doesn’t get to go on living in doing so.
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