5 Golden Rules Every Action Movie Should Follow

3. Build Toward The Final Showdown

Have you ever seen an action film's final confrontation and thought "That's it?" That's because someone didn't follow this rule. Building a great action movie is more than just a good grasp of Storytelling 101 - it's also 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. 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 the two aforementioned movies, in The Matrix, and even in all three original Star Wars films. Done right, you get that rare elation of fist-pumping release that we got to these movies for in the first place. Done wrong, you get crap like the Resident Evil movies.