![]() For the purposes of this list, we decided that an action movie not only had to have a lot of action scenes in it (duh), but that it had to be a film that wouldn’t make any sense if you took all the action scenes out of it - that is to say, the action had to be a key way of moving the plot forward. Believe it or not, it is sometimes very hard to determine just what constitutes an action movie. Not every movie with action in it is an action movie.The bad news? Not all of your favorites will be on this list. The good news is that a lot of awesome action movies have been made over the past 25 years. ![]() So what has the action landscape looked like since that fateful day in 1988 when we first met John McClane en route to Nakatomi Plaza? For the past few months, I’ve been watching and/or rewatching almost every major action movie made since then in an attempt to come up with the best ones. It is, in fact, partly thanks to these imitators (as well as the Willis franchise’s lesser sequels) that we often forget how expertly made the original Die Hard is: It’s as much a perfectly calibrated character piece as it is a kick-ass action flick. Olympus Has Fallen and White House Down), not to mention Die Hard Beating a Dead Horse (a.k.a. Sudden Death), and so on, all the way up to this year’s double dose of Die Hard at the White House movies (a.k.a. Cliffhanger), Die Hard at the Stanley Cup Finals (a.k.a. Under Siege), Die Hard on a Mountain (a.k.a. It also unleashed armies of imitators : There was Die Hard on a Ship (a.k.a. The film turned one Bruce Willis - until then thought of primarily as a comic actor and harmonica player - into a Hollywood action star, a position he’s still convincingly holding down 25 years later. * Ann Macbeth is a futurist and principal of Annimac Consultants.A quarter of a century ago this week, John McTiernan’s action masterpiece Die Hard was released into theaters, and it’s not an understatement to say that we’re still reeling from the impact. Old habits may die hard now they must die quickly. ![]() You might have been saddened by the bullyboy practices, the schoolyard tradeoffs, and the very, very low moral level of the whole process.Īnd the mainstream media apparently blocked attempts by its journalists to present an honest and open debate on the PCEC – their stories were not printed. Had you heard those discussions, you may have been embarrassed for the participants by their inept ability to look at the big picture and make the wisest decisions for the good of all. Their jurassic habits say we do not need to know what is going on even though it is our $100m they are spending.Īmazingly, the so-called privileged information leaks out the attitude shift obviously includes workers for those old habit government and media heavies. We grew more aware, more sophisticated in our seeing and thinking, and more demanding that our delegated authorities – government and media – be more responsible in reflecting our evolving awareness, our growing sophistication, our changing values.īut the old habits of being the boss and telling us what is best for us – those jurassic habits – continue.Ī current example of a jurassic habit is the Perth Convention and Entertainment Centre.īehind closed doors, our government officers and the big developers are fighting like kids in the sandbox over the proposed PCEC. Us good little Vegemite citizens travelled more, stayed in education longer, consumed more foreign TV, films, music and science. Until the late 70s and early 80s when the pace of life stepped up, technology expanded our operating arena, and all those foreign nations became mere neighbours in our global village. This system worked rather well for the 200 years of settled history. ![]() We, in turn, would be good little Vegemite citizens working diligently Monday to Friday, nine to five, to pay our taxes, buy a home in the ’burbs, raise our kids to love football and cricket, and vote in all elections – content to let the big guys get on with the bigger stuff. The deal was that these institutions would make the wisest decisions about the big stuff of life, like education, health, justice, and business development, and what we needed to hear about them, for the good of us all. Our State Government and our mainstream media gained the habit of unbridled power through the traditional social contract whereby the citizens of WA happily delegated the authority and responsibilities for governance and for the dissemination of information to these large and powerful institutions. Our mainstream government and our mainstream media are living proof of John Dryden’s words, written in the late 1600s. WE first make our habits, then our habits make us.
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