best long-running and currently active blockbuster gonzo action movie series

i have only seen the first john wick (overrated) and parts of the third john wick without sound while on a plane (had some pretty awesome-looking fight scenes) so i am not making an informed vote, but it's still mission: impossible, right?

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Seems weird nobody took up this! It's a good question!

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the Mission Impossibles are really tight but I haven't seen them all (need to fix that). would probably be my vote, I love the F&F movies but they're fairly wildly inconsistent and have been on a slow downward slope over the last few.

Wick is no slouch obv, there's just less movies

This seems like a gimme for M:I

it’s wick if we’re going by how good the movies are

anytime i marathon the m:i movies i have to sit through m:i 3 and think the whole time “who directed this! he sucks!”

the f&f movies would throw thirty cars in my direction before once allowing me to think. still, they’re never going to make anything as good as fast five again. sky’s the limit for the other two

mi rogue nation is the best of all of these and john wicks are amazing but the rpg worldbuilding loses it a notch vs the general tightness of mi

Love all three of these, but Wick is the only one with top to bottom bangers. MI 2 and 3 are both pretty weak and F&F didn't really achieve greatness until Fast Five (Tokyo Drift rules, but feels like a spinoff at this point).

Brad is right that MI:3 is bad, and exhibits confidence in itself that isn’t warranted by how basic the filmmaking and plot is. I’ve said it before but Abrams being given the keys to MI and then to both Star Wars and Star Trek is proof that Hollywood doesn’t do artistic background checks.

Anyway, MI : great first movie, appropriately OTT second, bad TV movie third, excellent fourth, remarkable peak w/ the fifth, outstanding sixth, and the next one looks vv promising. Still gotta see the fourth Wick but it’s not once wavered IMO in the first three. They’re such effective films pulled off with what seems like ease but is obviously a lot of craft and hard work and details, and they’re vv smart for all the supposed simplicity. F&F flicks are fun but the peak feels like a very long time ago. Think it’s out of the running at this point.

i do not love the first wick. i appreciate the bare-bones plot (set up motivation in the first five minutes and then go), but most of the action is just shooting shooting shooting - there aren't really a lot of cool stunts or interesting setpieces. from the bits of wick 3 i saw, it seems like they upped the ridiculousness after the first one, which was probably the right move. but yeah i don't find the first one to be particularly fun.

as i've doubtlessly stated in the m:i thread to everyone's confusion and dismay, mission impossible 2 is actually my favorite movie of any of these (well maybe it's tied with john wick 2 and/or 4 (which i can't wait to see again))

john wick 2... god... the power of cinema to make common look like the coolest dude in the room

It’s kind of wild how Tom Cruise may as well be playing three different characters in those first three films, but I think it can be played off as part of his spycraft. From ghost protocol onward, it feels like a reboot franchise that just happens to have the same star. A necessary reboot after MI3, which is bad and lame btw.

Love ruby rose in JW2

I watched all 4 wicks last week. I rate them 2>4>1>3 but I think but they’re all relatively close, which speaks to the fact that they all sort of follow the same formula imo. 2 is my fav because it has the awesome lady from shanghai scene. in 3, there were I think three separate occasions where one of the assassins had bested wick in a fight and had a knife at his throat or a gun to his head, and just inexplicably let him get up and reset the fight

MI:3 has the 90 second shots of Tom Cruise flat-out sprinting with no break, which is hilariously cruel

i've never really understood the anti-MI:3 thing. it's not as good as the ones that follow but it's got a great PSH performance, bombs in people's brains, etc. MI:2 kind of feels like its own thing, the woo style is so far from the tone of the other movies that it's hard to think of it as being part of the series.

JJ did his thing in that Alias thing where he cold opens on something taking place towards the end of the story and then goes back to the beginning. That thing is actually one of my least favorite things in movies and TV.

Thing thing thing. ****JJ did his Alias thing

last two posts set a new record for use of the word "thing"
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lol damn expected F&F to get a few more bones thrown their way

good results

i need to ponder 'other' candidates tbh

agreed MI 1 and 2 are their own things id say 1 is very good as a reboot of the show and 2 is hyper woo nonsense but has great moments

3 by a distance the weakest and psh is as bad as anything else about it

4 gets into groove for what follows and 5 is top tier, 6 carries that energy as far as it can before becoming a roger moore bond but i will be sitting in a cinema for 6 the day it comes out

7

i guess

I saw this idiot boy-racer car with a death-quote from the bible next to some daft Paul Walker quote about how he'd be quite happy to die in a crash or some shit like that on the hatch door. I really hate cars and idiot drivers but at least that was an amusing distraction.