Are action movies dead? Is there no appreciation?

There is a reason all these movies get dumped out in the first 2 months of the year.

Didn't Expendables 2 make like 300 million dollars?

Action movies aren't dead. However, the 80s-90s over the top one liner explosion fests of pure macho manly awesomeness?

Yeah, they be dead, Jim. Doesn't help that we really haven't had a new generation of action stars to take the torch from the 80s and 90s action stars.

Hell Jason Statham is about the only new action star to REMOTELY stick.

Action movies that are expected to do well are released in the summer. Movies that are expected to bomb are released in January. There are many action movies that do well, but you don't find them in January, typically.

Now, whether you think those action movies are any good or not is a different question entirely, but they're still popular.

I think there's a sense that these movies are warmed over left overs. I recall Arnold's movies in the late 90s/early 2000s struggling too sometimes. Stallone was relegated to DTV for a while in the early 2000s.

The Last Stand with Arny wasn't too bad. It was pretty good I thought but it went the to much comedy route. I agree with the lack of action stars of this generation.

We have

Jason Stathom
Vin Diesel
The Rock

As our current action stars basically and none of them really are that great. Rock could have been but oh well. Action films have to be different now, and focus more on story. Die Hard is a great example of both past and present because Die Hard the first one had elements of movies of the 80's and action movies of current days.

Maybe it has to do with roided out people way past their prime.

All those movies mentioned in the first post star people who are relatively old, especially in the youth-obsessed Hollywood (Statham, who is the youngest there, is freaking 45), so I'm not surprised at all that these are people who don't have the drawing power they did of their prime. I enjoy action movies, but some of these guys need creative writers to squeeze new plots out to make the action interesting. The Expendables II was super boring. Going back some ways, Rambo, Terminator 2, and Die Hard were all interesting movies with neat concepts behind them. Generic "Cop/soldier/other bad ass out for revenge/doesn't play by everyone else's rules"-kind of shit can die without doing much harm to the world. There is a place for that stuff once in a blue moon, but you have to put some effort into the rest of these movies for them to survive. They are super cookie cutter.

If someone puts together a R-rated action movie with a really great plot or hook, it'll draw. I mean, The Expendables 2 was pretty dumb and honestly a waste of money, but it still drew because it had a hook (a bunch of famous dudes get together again). For movies that can't have all-star casts, you better come up with something cool.

Superhero movies have filled the role for the most part.

Stuff like Taken does well for itself, but basically, a lot of the action movies that have come along recently have been underwhelming.

Action movies will never truly die, but it's not their time in the limelight right now.