Action Film
Action film is a film genre in which the protagonist is thrust into a series of events that typically involve violence and physical feats. The genre tends to feature a mostly resourceful hero struggling against incredible odds, which include life-threatening situations, a dangerous villain, or a pursuit which usually concludes in victory for the hero.

Advancements in computer-generated imagery (CGI) have made it cheaper and easier to create action sequences and other visual effects that required the efforts of professional stunt crews in the past.
However, reactions to action films containing significant amounts of CGI have been mixed, as some films use CGI to create unrealistic, highly unbelievable events. While action has long been a recurring component in films, the "action film" genre began to develop in the 1970s along with the increase of stunts and special effects.

This genre is closely associated with the thriller and adventure genres and may also contain elements of drama and spy fiction. Screenwriter and scholar Eric R. Williams identifies action film as one of eleven super-genres in his screenwriters' taxonomy, claiming that all feature-length narrative films can be classified by these super-genres. The other eleven super-genres are crime, fantasy, horror, romance, science fiction, slice of life, sports, thriller, war, western and vigilante.

History

Early action films

Some historians consider The Great Train Robbery (1903) to be the first action film. During the 1920s and 1930s, action-based films were often swashbuckling adventure films, in which actors such as Douglas Fairbanks wielded swords in period pieces or Westerns. Indian action films in this era were known as stunt films.The 1940s and 1950s saw "action" in a new form, through war and cowboy movies. Alfred Hitchcock ushered in the spy-adventure genre while also establishing the use of action-oriented "set pieces" like the famous crop-duster scene and the Mount Rushmore finale in North by Northwest (1959). The film, along with the war-adventure The Guns of Navarone (1961), inspired producers Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman to invest in their own spy-adventure in the James Bond series, based on the novels of Ian Fleming.

In Japanese cinema, the 1950s saw the emergence of jidaigeki action films, particularly samurai cinema, popularized by filmmaker Akira Kurosawa. His 1954 film Seven Samurai is considered one of the greatest action films of all time, and was highly influential, often seen as one of the most "remade, reworked, referenced" films in cinema. It popularized the "assembling the team" trope, which has since become a common trope in many action movies and heist films. Its visuals, plot and dialogue inspired a wide range of filmmakers, ranging from George Lucas and John Landis to Quentin Tarantino and George Miller. Kurosawa's Yojimbo (1961) was also remade as Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars (1964), which in turn established the "Spaghetti Western" action genre of Italian cinema, while Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress (1958) later inspired Star Wars (1977).

The long-running success of the James Bond films or series (which dominated the action films of the 1960s) introduced a staple of the modern-day action film: the resourceful hero. Such larger-than-life characters were a veritable "one-man army"; able to dispatch villainous masterminds after cutting through their disposable henchmen in increasingly creative ways. Such heroes are ready with one-liners, puns, and dry quips. The Bond films also used fast cutting, car chases, fist fights, a variety of weapons and gadgets, and elaborate action sequences.

Producer-Director John Sturges' 1963 film The Great Escape, featuring Allied prisoners of war attempting to escape a German POW camp during World War II, and featuring future icons of the action genre including Steve McQueen and Charles Bronson, is an example of an action film prototype.
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