Movies in the Action/Adventure genre

From the outside looking in, I was dubious about how the filmmakers behind Twisters were going to handle a sequel-not-sequel to the 1996 blockbuster, Twister. With Bill Paxton dead and Helen Hunt not participating, there seemed to be no real p...

The box office performance of Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman assured there would be sequel but Burton’s desire for greater creative control caused the production of Batman Returns to linger in development longer than Warner Brothers preferred. In ad...

Ten years ago, with much fanfare, the DC Extended Universe was born. Warner Brothers, riding the wave of success from Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy, decided that rather than stick with stand-alone titles featuring their best-loved supe...

The Marvels is so poorly conceived and ineptly executed that it not only makes this a front-runner for the dubious honor of worst movie of the MCU but a contender for the worst superhero movie of all time (although I’d argue that Catwoman retain...

Blue Beetle is emblematic of what the superhero movie has become in 2023: an overlong slog through well-worn tropes. Gone are the zest and liveliness that characterized earlier films or the experimental genre-bending of the MCU’s salad days. Put...

Raiders of the Lost Ark was a nearly perfect action movie – upon its release in the early 1980s, it redefined the genre for decades to come. It also provided a trap for co-creators Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, forcing them to repeatedly tr...

The second Shazam! movie, sequel to the 2019 modest success, is an undercooked casserole of cliched narrative elements, underdeveloped characters, juvenile humor, and a deus ex machina cameo. It embodies all that’s bad about modern superhero mov...

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is an overlong blockbuster in search of an editor. It’s a series of impressive action sequences without a compelling narrative to connect them. It’s a frustrating example of how financial success, not creative im...

Black Adam embraces many of the worst elements and tropes of the superhero genre, resulting in a loud, discordant experience replete with fist-fights, pyrotechnics, and an overdose of CGI. While attempts are made to maintain a degree of faithfulne...

For younger fans of Marvel movies, it may be hard to remember anything that came before the advent of the MCU. For decades, however, studios had been trying to strike gold with Marvel properties in ways to rival the success experienced by Warner B...