Action films are a staple of the Hollywood machine, once acting as a star-making vehicle for the likes of Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger, but in recent years, the genre has had a shift, of a sort.
Where once the action film featured young, up-and-coming talent with big muscles and even bigger guns, now the action hero looks a little different — to be more specific, they look a lot older. From Liam Neeson to Keanu Reeves, Tom Cruise to Sly and Arnie, there’s something about the wisened hero coming to save the day that audiences connect with.
Bob Odenkirk is the latest Hollywood actor to join the retinue of older action stars we love, returning to the role of a retired hitman forced back into the business in Nobody 2. Even if Breaking Bad helped him prove his worth as a dramatic actor, the comedian was anything but an action star before 2021’s surprise hit Nobody made him one.
The grizzled action hero arguably got a big boost in Hollywood after Liam Neeson starred in Taken. (20th Century Fox)
Now Odenkirk feels like a worthy successor to Neeson, and in fact several critics have compared his new career trajectory to the Irish star. But what Nobody proved is that audiences are pining for action, but not just any old action (so to speak).
What is it about the older hero that gets audiences so excited? It can be argued that this all began with Neeson, whose career received a second wind after he starred in the infinitely quotable action flick Taken. It all but ensured that Neeson became the new face of action for years, and while his movies in the genre delivered diminishing results, there was something comforting about seeing the star in the same kinds of stories over and over.
One could also argue it is the element of surprise that makes it so appealing. Action is perceived to be a young person’s genre, and so it is exhilarating to see a grizzled actor go toe-to-toe with younger people and win.
Keanu Reeves as John Wick in John Wick: Chapter 4, another example of an older action hero we love to watch. (Lionsgate)
There’s an element of wish fulfilment in this narrative. Not that older people want to fight younger people, but rather the idea that they want to prove they’re not down and out yet is appealing. As one gets older, one can feel they are being left behind and easily dismissed, the action hero proves that to do that is a mistake because they have plenty left to offer.
Action films with older stars also give us the “trust us” hero, by which I mean the tried and tested trope of a down-and-out hero, likely retired, returning to the career they once thrived in to help bring up a new generation. It happened in Top Gun: Maverick, and it was used to great effect in the 2025 hit F1, but it is a narrative that has been used for decades.
Audiences know and love the work of the great Hollywood stars, and trust them to deliver the goods. There is a comfort in tuning in to the latest Mission: Impossible, or the newest Fast & Furious, because we know what we’re getting, and even if it is predictable it is, first and foremost, fun. And sometimes that’s all you want from a film.
Arnold Schwarzenegger in Fubar, the actor is a staple of the action genre and even if he’s getting older it doesn’t make his work any less appealing to audiences. (Netflix)
Stars like Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt are just infinitely appealing to audiences around the world, it is also why Stallone and Schwarzenegger continue to delight viewers in their action films, even if movies like The Expendables entry Expend4bles aren’t all that good.
The other reason why audiences are enjoying older action heroes is likely because the actors themselves are getting older. Stallone and Schwarzenegger are staples of the genre from their days in The Terminator, Rocky, Predator, and Rambo respectively. That they’re getting older doesn’t make their movies any less appealing, and so audiences are getting used to seeing older action heroes onscreen.
The action genre is very much in line with the “dadcore” audience, so why shouldn’t the heroes they see be older? And with movies like Nobody thriving at the box office, and its sequel likely to do the same, it will continue for years to come.
Nobody 2 premieres in UK cinemas on Friday, 15 August.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source uk.movies.yahoo.com ’
