From Swashbucklers to Supermen: A Brief History of Action-Movie Heroes - RollingStone.com
here’s a moment in Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation — Tom Cruise career-saver, franchise MVP and the summer's best non-Imperator Furiosa action blockbuster — where the CIA director refers to the film's relentless hero as "the living... Sidebar When the superstar first stepped into the role of superspy Ethan Hunt 19 years ago, it was unclear what kind of action hero the spritely and hyper-intense Rain Man star was going to be. Now, five movies later, the answer is clear: All of... As the franchise has progressed, Cruise has done nothing less than take 100 years of action movies and collapse them into one (very compact) person. If we take a closer look at the archetype at the end of the Summer of Rogue, would it confirm that we've reached the logical conclusion of the Hollywood action hero as we know it. Or might we be on the precipice of something new — hanging on to... As the tentpole-über-alles season slouches toward Bethlehem (a. k. a. awards season), we're taking one last look back and tracing how this staple of Hollywood movies has morphed over the decades. It's the evolution of the action hero — from the 1920s to the present day — in just 10 easy steps. Action has been a staple of the movies since Edwin S. Porter sent a locomotive barreling straight at the audience, but the first proper action heroes were actually comedians. Source: www.rollingstone.com
