To discover the possibility that the work one has devoted one’s entire life to is unnecessary or even detrimental to the existence of human society may come as a dreadful shock, but it is an issue that every action filmmaker must face at some point in his or her life. Having been fascinated with action sequences in film and aspiring to replicate them throughout the entire latter portion of my teenage years, the idea that pursuing this craft is bad and perfecting it even worse in the grand scheme of the universe causes me to agonize at long stretches over the significance of the work that I aim to achieve. With the entire collective genre of the action film shouldering the burden of countless accusations – the promotion and influencing of violence throughout the world and the desensitizing of the world’s youth to violent subject material notwithstanding – one would wonder if it would be better that action movies or movies containing violence in any shape or form were completely erased from the face of the planet. But certainly, I tell myself, a genre that has generated such overwhelming appeal throughout the history of cinema must be good for something; a convincing argument in our defense seems constantly to be at the tip of my tongue, but it invariably dissolves as I struggle to put it to words. In my pursuit to find a justification for the existence of the action film, I have realized that trying to logically refute many of the common points of concern in regards to the genre is an exercise in futility; the negatives are there, and to ignore or falsely disprove them would be nothing more than to live in a disillusioned fantasy of self-deceit. However, I believe that the first step towards redemption for the art of the action filmmaker is the acceptance of such commonly associated shortcomings and the understanding that they are not as universally negative as they seem. (cont.)
--Jon Truei (Honorary Super Dude!)
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