Against the Grain

As long as there have been genres there have been genre tropes. An enduring set of elements  passively expected to be there. To the point that if they are absent the core audience is not satisfied. As much as others might point out how very cliché a particular genre has gotten. Horror is an example of this, particularly in the case of "Slasher Flicks". As is Science Fiction, despite demonstrable variance over the years, particularly in literature. Even in the case of film, who would easily think that something like Plan 9 and Serenity are in the same genre? And yet they are. Another genre that tends to be loved by fans and mocked by others is the Action film. Even if they have not watched many, most people recognize at least some of the most common Action tropes, like larger than life villains, at least one scene in which the hero suits up with more weapons than a paramilitary group and, of course, those cheesy, cheesy one-liners. As with any rule there are also exceptions and there have been at least some Action films that manage to walk the like be fan acceptance and general popularity by recognizing the tropes while also subverting them.

One of the first to do this was the 1993 Sylvester Stallone vehicle Demolition Man. Named after a song by The Police and taking a page from both John Stuart Mill and Emmanuel Kant when it comes to philosophy, Demolition Man does things that few have even attempted. Things like being genuinely clever with its plot and not really having a ‘bad guy’ per se. There is a villain, more than 
one in fact but neither of the philosophies presented, one advocating peace and security at the cost of personal freedom for the good of the whole, the other supporting the idea of personal freedom of choice, are assumed to be ‘wrong’. They both have their pros and cons and the trick is to try and balance them. There is also a healthy bit of fairly spot-on social satire such as having the peace and order part of society having banned everything considered ‘bad for you’ from murder to sex and spicy food. Basically the world according to BuzzFeed. This even extends to the character names, the two mains played by Stallone and Wesley Snipes carrying the monikers of John Spartan and Simon Phoenix. On the surface these might seem like typical, clichéd character names common on in the genre but there is both an element of foreshadowing and criticism. Such as the fact that both characters are cryogenically frozen, only to be resurrected in the future where one of them, three guesses who, is seen as a barbaric throwback to a militaristic culture. Then, of course, there is the "Mystery of the Three Sea Shells". An unexplained, seemingly throwaway joke still generating memes to this day.

Following this line and going even further down the path is 2002’s XXX. The first and best in a series of three films from different directors, XXX, or "Triple X", breaks almost every Action trope.  The plot is basic James Bond. A group of international terrorists get a dangerous weapon that they are planning to use to destabilize world politics, you know the drill. The first stroke of genius on the part of the filmmakers is to have a very unlikely hero in the personage of an extreme sports star named Xander Cage. Recruited as part of a new government initiative to train and send convicted criminals into the field. Weird as this sounds there is some basis for it in reality. As the organizer of the program, N.S.A. agent Augustus Gibbons, played by Samuel L. Jackson, points out they are ‘expendable, programmable and they work’. All items in the Positive column of any government check-list. This allows for some of the most interesting and innovative changes to the usual Action movie pattern. For starters much of the action is actually reality-based. It is a long-standing joke that there is no way many of the stunts in Action films would actually work and anyone who tried them in real life would be dead. The film has no shortage of stunts but nothing that would be too outlandish or terribly fatal given Cage’s background in extreme sports including B.A.S.E. jumping. He is introduced with a scene in which he parachutes out of a car he has driven off a bridge. Dangerous to be sure but by no means impossible. Cage is also outfitted with typically Bond-like gadgets, though with 21st century twists, which he is quite clever in using, combining satisfying action scenes with amusing comments on typical action tropes. He also does not know how to shoot, which is a theme that comes up off and on throughout the film, often used as the basis for humor.

Humor plays a large role in the film but unlike other efforts such as Johnny English and Kingsman it is far less overt. The filmmakers give the audience enough credit to be able to recognize the tropes they are using that they do not need to make the references obvious and instead play with nuance. One of the best pokes fun at the cliché of hundreds of henchmen all shooting at the hero, none of them managing to him. There is a brilliant scene in which this is revered and Cage, along with half of the Prauge police force are facing of against one of the terrorists. One who happens to be a trained sniper. While it is true Cage is not killed, this is mostly because he is hiding behind a concrete wall, as any rational person would. The S.W.A.T. team members who are running out ahead of him, meanwhile, are getting pinged left and right. As would likely happen with a trained sniper behind elevated cover. The stand-off only ends when Cage notices that the cops have a heat-seeking missile launcher and remembers that the sniper is a chain-smoker. Not that villains are one-note, two-dimensional caricatures. Far from the cackling mad scientists, ruthless mob bosses and egocentric dictators of the past, the group, creatively named Anarchy 99, are the disillusioned surviving members of a military unit. Sort of like the A-Team if they went the other way and were Central European. The 99 refers to 1999, the year of the final battle the group served in. An experience which set them against their government and politics in general. Yep, the villains of the piece are actually half-way sympathetic and have a believable motive for their villainy. Fancy that.