What does it
say about the state of American action films that most of them still
need to attend a few lectures from The Adventures of Robin Hood 101?
So back in 1938, Warner
Bros. released what was at the time the most expensive movie they'd
ever produced, a lavish production of the Robin Hood legends shot in
full-color photography and staring the up-and-coming Errol Flynn. . . and
in doing so cemented the blueprint for a perfect action movie. One
followed by the likes of Raiders of the Lost Ark, Die Hard, and The
Matrix, but not nearly enough others.
As
was sometimes the case under the old studio system, two directors ended
up headlining the project: William Keighley and Michael Curtiz (of
Casablanca fame) shared credit on the film, the latter responsible for
the now-legendary action sequences. And while plenty of other directors have aped some of the movie's trademarks (such as the Chatty Swordsmen or the iconic Dueling Shadows), most seem to have forgotten the care that went into the rest of the film to make a truly perfect action film.
So here are some Cliff's Notes:
1. Make me root for the hero
This should really
be a no-brainer, as it's a cardinal rule in pretty much all of fiction.
If a main character isn't likeable as a person, they should at the very
least be compelling enough as a protagonist that the audience is
invested in their success. In your average action movie, you really need
both - the hero needs to be a good guy (or gal) and this must be
established as early as possible. Ideally, they're also compelling
because of a perspective they must gain, a goal they must accomplish, or
a redemption they must earn.
Stakes
should be clear, established early, and reinforced often, and the
easiest way to do this is to create a hero that audiences can get
behind. Luke Skywalker manages this in about 5 minutes of screen time,
even though we've already met Vader, Leia, and the droids before we meet
him.
And
Lucas studied the master class for this. In Flynn's film, the very
first thing that the audience sees Robin of Locksley do is to save the
life of an innocent miller from the hands of clearly-established
unscrupulous villains. He is both bold and sure in his convictions, but
also cavalier about the consequences to himself. This tells the audience
that he places more stock in the life of someone he just met than the
possible reprisal he could suffer for it.
He's also funny.
2. Make me root against the villain
Now we can all
name plenty of worthy heroes in all genres of film, right? The modern
action genre certainly has its fair share - but it seems like you have to go through several John McClane's to get a genuine Hans Gruber. There
are always two sides to every conflict, and when a single character
personifies the audience and their hunger for good to triumph against
evil, the neatest way to balance this is to create a villain who's
defeat will feel both necessary and earned, a worthy endeavor for the
hero.
A
good antagonist needs to be the hero's equal, even the better in some
key ways (more experienced, more powerful, more wealthy, etc.). They
should be as well-established as the hero (ideally introduced to the
audience around the same time), and while they can be despicable and
evil, they should also be as compelling as the protagonist. Something
about them needs to keep the viewer interested beyond just "They do bad
things, they must die." Darth Vader was a masked wizard shrouded in
mystery. Agent Smith was an enforcer of the Matrix struggling against
his own programming. The well-received (but historically
under-appreciated) Mask of Zorro stacked
its deck with TWO entrancing antagonists - one a superstitious
psychopath and the other an obsessed father certain he's the real hero
of the piece.
Basil
Rathbone and Claude Rains are the first characters the audience meets
in The Adventures of Robin Hood, their gleeful scheming setting the
board for the entire rest of the film, and their continued
conspiratorial collusion is what Robin must constantly contend with.
They are the driving force of the film, a force to which Robin must
react or perish. In many cases, introducing the villain first (as seen
here,The Matrix, The Mask of Zorro, Star Wars, Captain America: The
First Avenger) is a perfect way to immediately set the stakes. If the
bad guy is this bad, the audience is going to want a hell of a protagonist to take them down.
3. Build to the final confrontation
Film Crit Hulk (of the site Bad-Ass Digest)
has already touched on the importance of escalation of action, so I
don't want to go over familiar ground too much, but building a great
action movie is all about successively more complex and impressive set
pieces that also have successively higher stakes. The first conflict in
The Adventures of Robin Hood is barely a conflict at all, but is the
first step along to a pitched battle in a besieged castle. Along the
way, every action sequence built to this, upped the stakes. At first,
Robin is either helping himself or a member of his supporting cast. At
the end of the second act, things escalate to the point where Robin is
rescued from certain hanging at the last minute by his men, and things
culminate at Guy of Gisborne's keep in a bid to stop a coronation, save
Maid Marian, and restore King Richard to his throne.
Everything
becomes more complex and more personal as the film goes on, and the
truly great action films of the late 20th century do the same. The
original Die Hard goes nearly 20 minutes without a single gunshot fired
and ends with the roof blowing off a 40-story building, a crashing
helicopter, and a man jumping off the top of a skyscraper with a fire
hose wrapped around his waist.
And
it's not just about making bigger and better fights to watch - by the
end of the movie, the audience should be frothing at the bit for the
hero and villain to clash. This dance around and toward the conflict for
both characters happens in Robin Hood, it happens in Die Hard, in The
Matrix, and even in all three original Star Wars films. Have you ever
seen an action film's final confrontation and thought "That's it?"
That's because someone didn't follow this rule.
4. Keep the action fresh
In
some ways, this is even more important than escalating action. At no
earlier time in film history can audiences experience such a wide
variety or amazing scope of visually thrilling sights as they can now at
the multiplex, but that doesn't mean a damn thing if they get bored by
it. And they will.
I
hate to tar and feather Michael Bay over this (partly because everyone
does it and it's really tired at this point, but mostly because the guy
genuinely knows his shit when it comes to staging and shooting action),
but he's an easy example of this, particularly in his most recent films.
The Transformers movies feature epic clashes of literally
larger-than-life warriors laying waste to cities and millenia-old
landmarks of civilization, but by the end of the third act it's in real
danger of just being so much noise. Ditto the final duel in
Revenge of the Sith - while it SHOULD have deep character and narrative
significance, it just goes on so long with so much of the same thing
that it's a chore to watch.
The more of something you
show an audience, the less they want to see of it. Joss Whedon's
Serenity (made for less than half of what even a "cheap" tentpole costs
these days) never delivers the same sort of action scene twice. Neither
does The Adventures of Robin Hood: there's a castle brawl, a chase, a
staff fight on a log, a sword duel in a river, a forest ambush, a
harrowing escape, the taking of a fortress, and a final hero/villain
showdown. Every action scene offers something genuinely new, in terms
setting, in terms of execution, and most importantly in terms of
narrative and character.
Which leads to easily the most important rule of action film-making:
5. There should be no pointless action beats
Cardinal rule, and most action films (especially American ones) break this all the time.
Yes, explosions and slow-mo shootouts and kung fu fights are cool, but
they need to be about more than just the fireworks. Action in a film
should always serve at least one of three things:
- Tell us something about the characters
- Move the narrative forward/ raise the stakes of the story
- Provide catharsis to the audience by resolving a building conflict (Hero/Villain showdown)
The
very best action films manage to do more than one of these (or even all
of them) at the same time. Robin Hood does this continually, but as
I've mentioned when and how already, I'm going to use what may be the
best modern American example of this rule in action (bad puns, love
'em) to date.
1999's The Matrix.
There is not a single superfluous action scene in this movie.
From the beginning to the end, every time there's wire-fu or
effects-enhanced gunfighting going on, the movie is telling us
something. We're learning about the world, first about its different
rules and different factions, then about seemingly-superhuman powers and the personalities of the people who use them,
and finally there's a culmination of everything: of a character
accepting a destined mantle, the narrative coming to a head with the
highest stakes in the film, and a masterfully constructed confrontation that brings everything together for a perfect crescendo to the film. Smith vs. Neo in the subway is literally everything a final action scene should strive to be.
Say what you will about the sequels (goodness knows I have), but
the Wachowski's original follows every last one of these rules to a "t"
and it's for that reason - not for the cool-but-tiresomely-copied
slow-mo effects or the gorgeous martial arts choreography or nifty
philosophical/spiritual bent - that the film was so captivating and
game-changing. It simply did everything right.
Obviously someone was taking notes from the Class of '38.
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