Every decade has its own action hero style. The 1960s was cool and sophisticated with jet-setting spies. The 1970s was gritty and urban with grizzled cops and private dicks. The 1980s was over-the-top action with beefcake commandos and ninja masters.
The ‘90s has always been a problem for me, even while I was living through it. What was the style, the ethos? After the fall of the Soviet Union everything felt a bit unmoored. Not bad per se, but there wasn't a central ethos or even a counter-culture. The best you could come up with was a vague paranoia exemplified by Delta Green and the X-Files.
Then the towers fell and like it or not we had an ethos again. Cowboy presidents and high-speed, low-drag, tier-one operators with names like Jack Bauer, Jason Bourne and George Bush. Last names starting with a b were very popular in the double oughts. But the '90s have always felt like a nagging gap, like a missing tooth.
Enter Max Read, who characterizes '90s action movies as “Dad Thrillers”
"If you're anywhere near me in age, you know the kind of movies I'm talking about: Movies set on submarines; movies set on aircraft carriers; movies where lawyers are good guys; movies where guys secure the perimeter and/or the package; movies where a guy has to yell to make himself heard over a helicopter; movies where guys with guns break the door into a room decorated with cut-out newspaper headlines. Movies starring guys like Harrison Ford, Alec Baldwin, Kevin Costner, and Wesley Snipes and directed by guys like Martin Campbell, Wolfgang Petersen, Philip Noyce, and John McTiernan. Movies where men are men, Bravo Teams are Bravo Teams, and women are sexy but humorless ball-busters who are nonetheless ultimately susceptible to the roguish charm of state security-apparatus functionaries. Movies that dads like."
The movie equivalent of the techno-thriller. Some competency porn, an inside look at the military, a bunch of mavericks working to uphold authority... and people say the Marvel Movies are formulaic. More importantly, they tend to focus on men of a certain age. Baldwin was born in 1958 putting him in his mid-30s. Ford was born in 1942 making him a solid 50-something when he was doing his action roles. The older and presumably settled nature of the actors is a key part of the genre according to Read:
"They are generally stories of men, often with families, professional degrees, and successful careers, who find themselves unexpectedly battling bureaucracy, conspiracy, irrational violence, imminent natural disaster, or some combination of the above as they confront an existential threat to their, their family, their country, or their planet's safety."
It's also interesting how often the Dad Thriller tries to dramatize the daily life of their audience. Phone calls are very important. Satellite uplinks need to be established and decisions need to be made and sometimes there's just no damn time to go through the proper procedures! Aka an ordinary day at the office. The Star Trek movies had Kirk fighting bureaucracy before he could fight the villains, but then that was a trope from the original series and he never went out of his way to actually contact anyone before he went and did his thing.
It also still doesn't lead to an easily identifiable action hero archetype for the '90s, but it is an interesting lens on how the genre developed.
Random Thoughts:
- The Dad Thriller catered to aging Boomers. The Marvel Movies probably do the same for Gen-X. While clearly they are marketed and tailored to all four quadrants the heroes are constantly quipping which reflects the cynicism and detachment of Generation X. After all, if you've lived through Reagan how bad is Thanos? Authorities are absent or useless but don't actually provide an obstacle to worry about. The heroes do their own thing without checking in with anyone like the latchkey kids they are. Also, while they recognize the importance of branding the heroes don't actually take the names seriously. Even Captain American thinks he has a dumb name and he ironically comments on his own costume and catchphrases, and he's the sincere dude from the 1940s.
