My favorite car chase is from Matrix. The suspension of disbelief is vital in all action movies. You have to fully immerse yourself in the concept of nothing being real, and hence carnage on the roads in any action movie is okay. I love the car flying into the helicopter scene in Die Hard (can’t recall which one… lol) and I adore James Bond parking his car remotely into the rental shop.
There is something about flipping cars, and speeding, and the cool way the directors slow down the point of impact. Very clever special effects.
In Accidental Hero there is a car chase, and I wrote it, realizing I wasn’t able to describe the terms, get to the gritty of it. So I called on my petrol-head husband and he detailed the car chase that I then took and added to… so when you read the car chase, remember that at the core of it is a Ferrari loving petrol-head. I also had a car chase in Ghost which had a fiery end - this one I managed to write all on my own!!!!
Ghost actually begins with a fist fight in an alleyway between the heroes of the book - never let it be said I give my guys an easy ride!
I also love Terminator with Arnie walking through the police station before saying he’d be back, there is something icily dramatic about that scene, a classic.
The sword fighting in early Robin Hood films, up and down Castle stairs, losing the sword, flipping the sword, all that power and grace behind wielding the sword… *swoons*
I recall the shootouts in old cowboy movies, the laser battles in Sci-fi films , and more importantly the lightsaber battle in Return of the Jedi between Luke and Vader. The tension is ramped up with swelling music and every time I see it I get shivers down my spine.
The iconic scene for me is the scenes in the factory towards the end of the film – Riggs tied up, Murtaugh being beaten up and his daughter threatened. I love that point in a film where even though you know the heroes will escape you can sit back and enjoy the fact that they are seemingly going to die.
The movie/book villain is vital in any
spy/buddy story, because it the one thing the heroes have to defeat before
they can move on. The best villain of all time was, to me, being a Star Wars
freak, is Darth Vader. Oh my God, when I saw Star Wars for the first time (aged
10) I was so scared of him. The absolute unbeatable power he had, meant that
the destruction of the death star became so much more; the heroes had overcome
the near impossible.
And Hans Gruber in Die Hard – the perfect
evil nasty, randomly shooting people, apparently without morals, or redemption,
he had to die, and boy was his death a good one! His evil was the perfect foil
for John McClane’s white T-shirted, bare footed, hero. Oh, and T-1000 (the
silvery changing baddie from Terminator 2) he was again apparently unbeatable,
which made his ending all the more sweet.
A good bad guy will have you rooting more
for the hero.
Then there is the quiet hero, Sam from the Lord Of the Rings books and subsequent films, and Murtaugh from Lethal Weapon who quietly loved his family and was pushed to extremes when they were threatened.
I love the hero who is willing to sacrifice themselves for the rest of the characters; the one who will fly to the asteroid on a space shuttle and know it was a one way mission, the one who throws himself at the bad guy, the one who stays behind when others leave. Of course I would hate for my heroes to die. I recall one film from my youth, where the hero flew his helicopter into a hanger to get the bad guys. The film ended with him dead and I was bereft and sobbing. So, no deaths for my heroes please. LOL.
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