As a die-hard action junkie, I constantly find myself pondering how this genre fights creative staleness. After decades of pulverized bodies and eviscerated landscapes, youd assume filmmakers would be spinning the same bloody chainsaw blades by now. Can Hollywood forever recycle an Expendables formula by plugging in different renegades, a new villain, and loads more henchman deaths? At what point do franchises like Fast and Furious push too far and become ridiculous farces? How do you sustain a genre founded on punches, kicks, guns and explosions, without sleepwalking through the same motions?

These are all valid questions that can be answered with a single word: adaptation.

In the 80s, when effects were minimal, but pyrotechnics could outshine the sun, studios turned to the Arnolds and Sylvesters who would become camo-clad icons. These hulking he-beasts drank from Olympus fountains and could flex their way out of any trouble. Look at Predator a movie made famous by biceps, chewin tobacco and quite possibly the most blatant homosexual undertones in any action movieuh, I mean masculinity. There were nowarehouses of CGI monkeys working tirelessly to redefine the bounds of visual cinema. Just grit, brawn, and beads of sweat dripping down clasped handshakes.

Years later, animation and post-production magic ushered in this digital takeover. A little movie called The Matrix came along and introduced an overnight bullet time craze. Action heartthrobs became all about agility and acrobatics overnight. You no longer needed weight-lifting ogres when characters were now backflipping at the slowest rotation possible. Ammo streams spiraled like smokey little trajectory paths with artistic appeal, like a 3D Jackson Pollock painting that floated in zero gravity. Pretty effin cool, right?

It goes without saying that these are two far-plotted trends in action cinema, but I wanted to use themas a primer for a bigger discussion. One that delves into todays genre nuances and those that dare defy established norms. Adaptation is the name of the game so what are new-age filmmakers dreaming up to keep audiences excited?

Let me start with this articles inspiration Edgar Wrights Baby Driver. As you may know, this is a heist thriller where every single movement is scored to a non-stop soundtrack oftenonly heard by the films main character Baby (Ansel Elgort) and gleeful audiences.

Action movies have long utilized musical composition to tap a beat of symphonic destruction (get excited for Atomic Blonde), but not on Wrights level. Every single shift in gear, pulled trigger and prepared meal syncs with background rhythms. As Elgort passes time in a getaway car, he goes all OK GO and performs his own little music video and thats just the beginning. As Focus Hocus Pocus blares during an endorphin-spiked chase scene, Wright brings melodic mayhem to a psychedelic rock track with absolutely no balance in tempo. A challenge no doubt, but to execute almost two hours of similar feats with car-crunching choreography? Destruction doesnt have to be primitive. It can be a sophisticated ballet (with evil Jon Hamms and Drive undertones).

Speaking of brutal ballets, lets highlight a mag-freaking-nificent trend across the globe highlychoreographed fight sequences featuring new (on-screen) forms of martial arts. Sure, this is something that Bruce Lees and Jackie Chans have been doing for decades. But like in Gareth Evans The Raid franchise? Or the Timo Bros Headshot?

The Indonesian fighting style of Pencak Silat has catapulted masters like Iko Uwais into mainstream fame thanks to a majestic combat style thats both fluid and bone-crunching. American audiences have their Frank Grillo and Scott Adkins clones, but theyre chumps compared to the final three-way battle in Evans The Raid: Redemption (jk, please dont bash me in ,Mr. Grillo). Two brothers double-team a man known as Mad Dog for a performance thats best described as recklessly poetic. They land every punch. Audible thwaps and concrete thudsresonate through your body with shattering impact. These new Pencak-first franchises are a tornado of snapped limbs, thrown chops and long-takes thatd make Chan-wook Park blush.

While Indonesia focuses on hand-to-hand, America has turned to mastery by weapon. Guns, specifically. John Wick and John Wick 2 have coined their action style as Gun Fu like Kung Fu, except firearms are alwaysinvolved. Whether Keanu Reeves is beating someone with a blunt pistol butt or blasting twenty headshots in a row, its Deadshot-level aim paired with onslaughts of deceased henchmen. Stamina is required and motion continues forward, rarely opting for duck-and-pop shootouts from cover. Finesse is stressed in a way that accentuates marksmanship like never before seen now the question is, can anyone replicate such pin-punching calibration?

Or you can look at society and echo popular trends. Say, video games? And what popular title comes to mind when you think multiplayer franchises? If you were a college gamer like myself, Call of Duty probably rings a bell.

The success of First Person Shooter (FPS) titles has long been chronicled (is Counter-Strike considered old school at this point?), and technology has finally granted filmmakers a way to handily replicate such points of view. Were not talking about found footage or POV, either. Peeping Tom rewrote thatgame a while ago, or if you want a specific action example, you need only look toAliens. Im talking gun-in-hand, balls-to-the-wall warfare that puts you inside the characters body for long periods of time. Kickin ass and chewin bubble gum.

Doom, for example, constructed a pretty damn perfect homage to id Softwares pixelated hellscape. Karl Urban has enough demon hatred for one day, and with cinematographer Tony Pierce-Roberts flip of the camera, we become a pissed-off John Grimm (you know, the name of Urbans character). Its onlyfor a single scene, but its a tonal kick in the behind. This is the first moment that really asserted first-person as a viable cinematic technique, even if itd been done/attempted before.

Other recent films have crafted the same kind of eye-to-eye thrills, such as Mark Strongs introductory shootout in The Brothers Grimsby or a jungle spider takedown in Kong: Skull Island. With the development of GoPro units and advancements to similar digital camera technologies, were given an amusement-park-ride glimpse into a heros mindset through some pretty crisp perspective swaps. Yet, no one believed entire action movies could benefit from such a jarring-at-times POV.

Well, almostno one.

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'Baby Driver' and the Ongoing Evolution of Cinematic Action - /FILM