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How come they don’t make movies like Delta Force or Predator any more?

Fondren & Main

By Fondren & Main
in Movies and TV

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Rimbo

Rimbo 26109

Posted
Posted
32 minutes ago, Fondren & Main said:

Can someone explain this to me?

Think about the peculiar circumstances culturally that caused movies like this to start getting made in the first place. Once those reasons went and the world changed, they stopped getting made.

You might as well ask why MGM stopped making all those musicals.

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atomheartbevo

atomheartbevo 89799

Posted
Posted
  • Delta Force, Rambo, etc. were playing on the notion (and caricatures) of soldiers who served in a bad war (Vietnam, unlike Afghanistan) redeeming themselves, and they were playing to audiences made up of both that generation and their teenage kids.  Vietnam vets are now all in their 60s and 70s (which is depressing as fuck, as I don't remember when that happened).  Predator could probably fall into this grouping, given the age of several of its cast-members - Jesse Ventura was a Vietnam vet, the guy who played Poncho was a Vietnam vet, Sonny Landham was in the Army during Vietnam, etc..
  • Shitload of company mergers (production companies, etc.), winding up with studio executives who like to play things safe (hence all of the remakes and licensed properties), combined with keeping a PG-13 rating to boost the box office audience.
  • Their genres have had mixed success after the 80s, both at the box office, and with critics.  For every military movie like American Sniper or whatever, there's a shitload of similar movies that nobody has ever heard of because they flopped.  Netflix has more than a few "soldiers encountering aliens or paranormal mysteries" and "soldiers trying to save/redeem their buddies".  Afghanistan has provided a lot of fodder for military movies.
  • Game of Thrones, Walking Dead, etc. really got studios and their owners looking at longer-form action that pulls people in week-after-week, and that takes resources away from other projects.  You get series like "Generation Kill", Amazon's "Jack Ryan" and the like.  Instead of aliens like Predators, it's cheaper and more captivating to make the baddies human zombies.
  • Big Answer: Full-blown sci-fi and comic book movies and TV series have sucked all of the air out of the room (or dollars out of the production bank vault) when it comes to big-budget action movies.  

That's what studios want to make.  Predator?  Military and aliens?  Fuck that, let's make a military and Transformers movie, or a Pacific Rim, or a comic book movie, or we'll make Predator, only it'll be human zombies stalking our protagonists.  

Semi-realistic military action? (Delta Force, LOL) Zero Dark Thirty or Lone Survivor or American Sniper, with the added bonus of potentially bringing in some little statues at some awards banquet.

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oSuJeff97

oSuJeff97 3435

Posted
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They actually do make movies like that.... if by those movies you mean clever, crowd-pleasing action films.  I'd say the John Wick franchise is pretty much a direct descendant of those 80s action films.

And yeah, the various Marvel/Comic Book movies certainly fill the void of big, expensive "action" films... they just aren't (for the most part) Rated R like the 80s versions were.

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Helobious

Helobious 9464

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6 hours ago, Onboard 2.0 said:

Cause movies about guys who carry guns, and kill things upset the millennials, and we can't have that, no sir.  Your results may vary.

Have you not heard of John Wick? Those movies are nothing but mindless gun violence & they’re insanely popular. 

And they made a Predator movie literally last year, wtf is OP talking about?

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Onboard 2.0

Onboard 2.0 9083

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21 minutes ago, Helobious said:

Have you not heard of John Wick? Those movies are nothing but mindless gun violence & they’re insanely popular. 

And they made a Predator movie literally last year, wtf is OP talking about?

I'm being overly sarcastic w/ a stereotype.

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Gene Parmesan

Gene Parmesan 4014

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Posted (edited)
3 hours ago, ajax said:

We've evolved and moved on to more intellectual fare. Like Hobbs and Shaw.

Hobbs and Shaw is the intellectual equivalent of both the movies listed by the OP.  If you find yourself nostalgic over Predator, Rambo, or Delta Force, that's fine.  If your adult self still enjoys those movies, then you haven't graduated beyond lowest common denominator yet and Hobbs and Shaw will probably be right up your alley.

Edited by Gene Parmesan
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ajax

ajax 2620

Posted
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35 minutes ago, TexArcher said:

Don't give Hollywood any ideas or we'll get Delta Force with Emma Stone and Jennifer Lawrence instead of Chuck Norris and Lee Marvin.

Invasion USA, but with Ellen Page instead of Chuck Norris.

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Nivek

Nivek 16986

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It was bullshit.  I watched it.

It wasn’t that horrible.

Starship Troopers was fun. But there have not been many movies that have the rewatch factor that you get with Roadhouse, starship, die hard. Need more charisma out of the actors.
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Onboard 2.0

Onboard 2.0 9083

Posted
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11 minutes ago, Nivek said:


It wasn’t that horrible.

Starship Troopers was fun. But there have not been many movies that have the rewatch factor that you get with Roadhouse, starship, die hard. Need more charisma out of the actors.

Charisma only goes so far. Ya gotta have a decent story line even if it's outlandish.

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Deej

Deej 76920

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4 hours ago, TexArcher said:

Don't give Hollywood any ideas or we'll get Delta Force with Emma Stone and Jennifer Lawrence instead of Chuck Norris and Lee Marvin.

Wrong. Melissa McCarthy and Leslie Jones.

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Elvis

Elvis 3374

Posted
Posted

Commando was my favorite when I was a kid.  Look at all that fucking gear! 

 

So, on a tangent here....when I was growing up in Abilene at a super religious non-denominational church, we had "childeren's church" of course.  We were an "Army for God" and we could earn tickets for dressing up like John down there (or knowing your Bible verses by memory).  I would bring a fucking Rambo knife laced into my tactical vest and as many fake but real-as-shit looking guns as I could reasonably holster.  We had a canteen store for buying more cool army shit.  The Christian/Army puppet shows were fucked up.  Good times.  Good times.

 

John-Matrix-Commando-Schwarzenegger-f.jp

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ajax

ajax 2620

Posted
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14 hours ago, Deej said:

Wrong. Melissa McCarthy and Leslie Jones.

I got it. Remake Lethal Weapon with Charlize Theron and Leslie Jones. I can just imagine Leslie looking straight into the camera going "I'm too old for this shit".

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