The Action Genre is the most lucrative category in the movie-making industry. There are hundreds of memorable action blockbusters.
But did you know there are some secrets about your favorite action movies even you didn’t know?
Safe House
The movie Safe House will always be remembered as one of the most underrated action flicks of the century.
Ryan Reynolds plays Matt, a CIA agent tasked with taking care of a safe house where a criminal is brought over. The criminal is played by Denzel Washington.
The movie has a very arduous torture scene that is not for the weak-hearted folks. Denzel Washington’s character is waterboarded in that scene.
Many do not know this but the waterboarding was actually real. Although it was only done for a few seconds, Denzel had asked the film crew and cast to be as real as possible so that he could get into the character’s mindset better. That is some next-level commitment Mr. Washington.
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
The movie has some really intense action sequences. Some of them were a little too much for the actors.
Michelle Yeoh, one of the lead actors in the movie, was supposed to do a forward jump in a scene.
That was something she has done a lot of times in previous movies so it was pretty much a piece of cake for her.
But a mishap happened right after she landed. Being a very dedicated and professional actor, she kept going even after her ligament had torn.
After the scene was over, Yeoh was rushed to the hospital where it was revealed that she had torn her ACL.
If she had gone for a little longer, then she might have lost motor functions in her leg altogether.
Casino Royale
China is the biggest market for Hollywood. With an army of theaters and a huge population that is adamant about watching anything and everything under the sun, the Chinese Mainland is the reason many movies enter the coveted Billion Dollar Club.
The James Bond movie Casino Royale was no exception. Widely regarded as the greatest James Bond action flick in recent years, Casino Royal still had to jump through a lot of hoops to be certified for the Chinese theaters.
By the time Casino Royale got all the paperwork done, the powerful Chinese Pirate Industry had already circulated high definition pirated copies of the movie throughout the country. Almost everybody had seen it by then.
Mad Max: Fury Road
All of the actors in Mad Max: Fury Road had to go through a very strenuous procedure.
For production purposes, all of the cast members had to have a cast over their heads and faces.
Rosie-Huntington Whitley (who by the way is one of the hottest creatures on Earth), had a slight mishap with her procedure.
When the cast was removed, all of her eyelashes ended up being pulled out because the cast had accidentally set over her lashes too.
That is the reason why her character does not have eyelashes in the movie. Whitley actually had no eyelashes for the next three months because of a mother of all make up fails.
Independence Day
Independence Day has is a great cult classic. It is one of those movies you can watch over and over again and you will never get bored.
The movie had some great special effects for its time, backed by a powerful ensemble cast. In one scene of the movie, Will Smith is seen dragging an alien carcass through the desert.
He says a rather famous line “And what the hell is that smell?!?!” This line was not in the script. It was completely spontaneous.
Will Smith was actually talking about a foul smell that had crept into the sets of the movie because they were shooting near the Great Salt Lake of Utah which is infamous for its rotten shrimp odor.
John Wick
How many of you know that John Wick was originally named Scorn?
Not many we suppose!
Keanu Reeves attended multiple interviews to promote the movie before it was released. He had trouble remembering the title and kept referring to it with the name of the lead hero.
Derek Kolstad states that a lot of money was being poured into advertising and they could not hope to recover the money earned if Reeves kept forgetting the title.
The name was changed to John Wick because Keanu Reeves could not remember the movie title. Now that’s just hilarious!!
The Fast and the Furious
The Fats and the Furious Universe has become one of the world’s greatest movie franchises.
It has given rise to more than half a dozen movies and even a spin-off series titled Hobbs & Shaw.
When the first Fast and Furious movie came, many of the actors like Michelle Rodriguez and Jordana Brewster did not even know how to drive. They did not even have a Driver’s License.
It was a miracle they managed to make it through an entire franchise dedicated to people doing impossible high octane stunts sitting behind the steering wheel.
The Dark Knight
Heath Ledger immortalized the role of the Joker when he played the character in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight.
Ledger had decided to get into the mind of the character by locking himself within a hotel room and simulating psychosis.
He kept a journal to record all his twisted thoughts. Before Ledger died of a drug overdose, the last thing he wrote in that ledger was “Bye-Bye”.
Some say that he got so methodical with the role of the Joker that he lost all faith in humanity and the world.
Independence Day (Yep, Again)
Yeah, we had to have it again. There are tons of facts about this movie that could be made into a whole new list altogether.
Will Smith’s Improvised line near the Great Lake of Utah is just one of the many unknown facts about Independence Day.
The movie was facing stiff competition from an alien invasion parody movie called Mars Attacks.
So they had to force the Studio to release the movie before Mars Attacks was released. To do so, they named the movie Independence Day so that the movie could be released on the 4th of July.
Die Hard
We cannot see anyone but Bruce Willis shouting “Yippie- Ki-Yay” as John McClane, the un-killable Cop in the Die Hard series.
But unknown to everyone, there was supposedly a massive twist in the tale for the series. John McClane’s role was originally given to Frank Sinatra.
Sinatra was almost 73 years old at the time. The Studio was forced to do it because of contractual agreements with Frank Sinatra.
But the decision was overturned because Sinatra realized that playing the character involved doing a lot of stunts and he would have broken a hip every two days if he went along.
