Our Favorite Action Movie Franchises

John Wick is thinking he's back this weekend, so we have action franchises on the brain

John Wick is back in theaters for a fourth round this weekend. The Keanu-starring action flick is getting some of the best reviews of the franchise, and Chapter 4 further cements John Wick as one of the best action heroes going right now. With action cinema on the brain, we decided to write about two of our absolute favorite action franchises this week. 

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Drew: The Jason Bourne franchise

While many action movies opt for a heavily stylized, over-the-top, CGI-focused approach, the Bourne movies always charted a different path. Taking cues from the economical, no-nonsense character at the center of the franchise, these movies have favored a stripped-down and grounded aesthetic where intense hand-to-hand combat frequently features a pen or a book as a weapon. It’s heart-pounding and claustrophobic action sequences wrapped around a simple mystery: Who is Jason Bourne, beyond a killing machine with amnesia?

Matt Damon was not the first choice to play Bourne. The filmmakers looked into casting Brad Pitt, Russell Crowe, Tom Cruise, and other more established A-listers before landing on Damon, who had not done much action in the movies before. Before the first film, 2002’s The Bourne Identity, he trained extensively and performed many of the stunts himself. The character and the franchise would launch Damon to international stardom. 

Now that they had their Jason Bourne, director Doug Liman and screenwriter Tony Gilroy structured The Bourne Identity around Damon’s physical prowess, kinetic pacing, and smartly crafted suspense. That first movie is probably the tightest of the series; it has a lower budget than the sequels and the plot isn’t too cluttered with backstory. It also features a tender relationship between Bourne and Marie (Franka Potente), a woman who helps him locate his humanity amid all the fight and flight. 

The next two sequels fleshed out Bourne’s character and Operation Treadstone, the CIA black ops program that made him into a ruthless assassin. Paul Greengrass came in as director and formed a lasting partnership with Damon. Greengrass’s extreme shaky cam style isn’t for everyone – I remember being a little put off by it when the second film The Bourne Supremacy came out in 2004 – but there’s no denying that his visual imprint became the Bourne standard. Both Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum in 2007 piled on the impressive supporting cast of great character actors and That Guys, such as Brian Cox, Chris Cooper, Joan Allen, Julia Stiles, Albert Finney, and David Strathairn, giving the franchise a well-rounded, high-toned feel. Ultimatum is probably the peak of the Bourne series, in that it made the most money at the box office and wrapped up Jason’s storyline in entertaining and satisfying fashion. 

Five years later, the franchise returned with The Bourne Legacy, this time without its titular character, because Damon didn’t want to come back unless Greengrass was on board. Instead, Tony Gilroy (who had writing credits on the first three films) wrote and directed an extension of the Bourne story with Jeremy Renner in the lead role as a field operative controlled by a different black ops program exposed by Bourne in Ultimatum. While Legacy didn’t boast the same kind of frenetic fight scenes as the previous trilogy – and, let’s be honest, Renner is no Damon – the film remains very underrated. Edward Norton and Rachel Weisz are inspired additions to the cast and we get a standout early scene with a young Oscar Isaac. From a story perspective, Gilroy has always understood what is so compelling about these movies and his sharp dialogue was just as important to the series as the action. 

After Legacy’s mild failure with audiences and critics, Damon and Greengrass came back into the fold with Jason Bourne. This was a highly anticipated summer 2016 release that ultimately was a mistake and a disappointment. For a movie that featured Damon and Julia Stiles returning to their characters for the first time in almost 10 years, and a supporting cast that added Tommy Lee Jones, Alicia Vikander, Vincent Cassel, and Riz Ahmed, Jason Bourne is surprisingly dull and lifeless. 

Despite the bad taste left in many Bourne fans’ mouths, don’t be shocked if the franchise comes back to life at some point on the big screen. The type of action film that Bourne popularized feels timeless due to its reliance on stunts over CGI, and Damon remains a major movie star. Have audiences gotten enough of Bourne? I’m guessing they haven’t forgotten what made this action franchise so special. Cue the Moby song. 

Billy: The Alien franchise

The first three movies in this franchise launched the careers of potentially our three most prolific directors at making critical/box office hits. Ridley Scott opened up the franchise with Alien and the rumor is he pitched his 1979 masterpiece as “Jaws in space.” A flex coming from a director who had only one feature film under his belt. What he created was genuinely terrifying and is now one of the longest lasting franchises that … most … of the movies hold a positive place in my life. While for me the heights never reached how expertly crafted the first one is, each movie has an interesting story surrounding it at the very least.

Then came James Cameron into the fold. Off his success in The Terminator we should have known how different he would have made Aliens when compared to Alien, which is a silent claustrophobic horror movie. Aliens, a loud bombastic shoot-em-up action movie that uses the security of Ellen Ripley as a character to amp up the supporting characters’ personality to 11. A completely successful action movie that rivals the success of the first one critically and commercially. Setting up a franchise that can be made for a modest budget, make its money back, and launch careers of our youngest most promising directors consistently. Or so we assumed.

Alien 3 is next and while I like this movie and it is directed by my favorite director, David Fincher, this movie is disowned by its director and a clear example of inappropriate studio meddling. The budget has almost tripled and a first time feature filmmaker is in the chair. While a prolific music video director at the time, Fincher had not yet built the clout to do what he does on set. Long days, a lot of attempts to get a shot, and he is incredibly demanding is his routine. Not every director gets that freedom right away. 20th Century Fox didn’t quite know who they had at the helm and regret how they almost ousted one of our best living filmmakers. The end result is a muddled, but still successful horror-thriller in my mind. Effective scares, still great performances, and enough good here to understand why they keep going back to this franchise with more movies.

To wrap up fairly quickly I am only just going to mention the following FIVE sequels/spin-offs/prequels. The Alien Vs. Predator movies don’t exist in my mind. Dreadful gimmicks that are so far removed from the spirit of this franchise, but serve as a perfect example of the annoying aspects of genre franchise filmmaking that make me mad, but still don’t keep me away. The other three entries, Resurrection, Prometheus, and Covenant are all movies that are divisive. Huge supporters screaming that these are actually masterpieces and detractors that wish the madness of making more would end. It was nice to see Ridley Scott back in the chair for Prometheus and Covenant. The effective claustrophobia of the first movie is back and that is enough to make for more unsettling moments in the theater. And for me, it hardly gets more fun than that.