DID YOU KNOW THAT THERE’S AN INTERNATIONAL SCUBA DIVING HALL OF FAME? That’s a real thing that actually, truly, honestly is really real. It was founded in 2000 and, per their website, it “honors the pioneers of the sport of scuba diving.”1 There’s also a Consumer Electronics Hall of Fame (I am an employed adult who is married with children and have been on this earth for more than three decades and I still don’t exactly know what the phrase “consumer electronics” means), and a Burlesque Hall of Fame (I know what “burlesque” means, thank you), and a Robot Hall of Fame (this one is not nearly as fun or interesting as you’re imagining it in your head to be), and a Hall of Fame for Great Americans (this one somehow sounds more fake than the International Scuba Diving one).
There are many Halls of Fame, in fact. Many, many Halls of Fame, to be sure. So many, actually, that there’s an entire Wikipedia page dedicated to all of the different Halls of Fame. But one that’s not on there yet, because I’m just right now making it up, is the Action Movie Kills Hall of Fame, which is what the following two chapters are about.
A number of questions about the Action Movie Kills Hall of Fame, and a number of rules regarding the Action Movie Kills Hall of Fame as well:
What is the Action Move Kills Hall of Fame? It’s exactly what you think it is: a very specific Hall of Fame that celebrates only the very best kills that happen in action movies.2 It’s not been designed to (directly) celebrate the action movies, mind you. And it’s not been designed to (directly) celebrate the action movie heroes either. And it’s not even been designed to (directly) celebrate the real humans who played the action movie heroes. It’s been designed to celebrate action movie kills. And, yes, sure, of course, a lot of people get killed in action movies, but, same as there are a lot of professional baseball players in the history of the MLB, only the very best, most important ones make it into the Hall of Fame.
Is there a scoring system or something that determines which kills get into the Action Movie Kills Hall of Fame and which ones don’t? Not really, no. There’s some stuff that can help, definitely. Like, it’s helpful if something cool was said either right before or after the kill (like in Die Hard 2 when John McClane does the “Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker” callback before blowing up the airplane). And it’s helpful if the kill is something that, for whatever reason, sticks in your bones (like in The Raid 2 when Rama kills Baseball Man and Hammer Girl during their fight). And it’s helpful if the kill was either extremely hard-earned (like the pencil scene in John Wick 2) or extremely satisfying (like when they finally killed the T-1000 in Terminator 2). But mostly, it’s all about feel.
All of the examples you just gave were from movie sequels. Does a movie have to be a sequel for one of its kills to be eligible for the Action Movie Kills Hall of Fame? What? No. It was just a coincidence. The kill does not have to have happened in a sequel.
Did you actually like Die Hard 2? Not especially, no.And I don’t think that that particular airplane explosion kill is one that could ever make it into the Action Movie Kills Hall of Fame either. But it’s just that I can remember the feeling I had being a kid and watching Die Hard 2 and hearing the “Yippee-ki-yay-motherfucker” line and realizing that they’d done it as a tie-in to the original Die Hard. That was maybe the first time in my life I can remember watching a movie give itself a high-five like that, and so I’ve just always had it in my head.
Does it matter who gets the kill in the action movie? Like, does it have to be the star of the action movie? No. It doesn’t have to be the star. It can be anyone. It can be a sidekick, or a villain, or someone who works for a villain, or a nobody, or an anybody. As long as the scene ends with someone’s family having to make funeral arrangements, then you’re good to go.
Okay, but so are there any rules at all in place here that govern if a kill is or isn’t eligible? It seems like there should be rules. There actually are some rules, yes. They are:
• THE NUMBERS RULE: Much the same way that heaven has a capacity limit, so too does the Action Movie Kills Hall of Fame. There have just been too many hall of fame–caliber kills that have happened in action movies to make it feasible for them to all be included here. That being the case, we’re going to cap it. The inaugural class of the Action Movie Kills Hall of Fame only has nineteen spots available. So eighteen kills will make the cut, and then all the other kills will have to cross their fingers and hope they make it in on the next go-round whenever it is that I revisit this idea because I’ve run out of other ideas.
• THE KILLING SPREE RULE: Any of the kills that happen during a killing spree are, of course, on the table. HOWEVER, the entirety of a killing spree is not. So, let’s say you wanted to pick the kill from the hardware store scene in The Equalizer where Denzel hangs the guy with barbed wire. That’s fine. That’s an okay thing to do. What you can’t do, though, is select the entire scene, no matter how great it is. It has to be one specific kill that gets picked.
• THE OVERSEAS RULE: Kills that happen in foreign films are absolutely eligible. We think of action movies as a distinctly American thing (and maybe they’ve become exactly that), but the Action Movie Kills Hall of Fame is globally inclusive. Just think on it like the NBA: The talent overseas is just too great to ignore.
• THE SUPERPOWERS RULE: A superhero movie is not an action movie. It’s just not. So any kill that has ever happened in a superhero movie is out. And maybe you’re thinking, “Well, that’s fine. Lots of superhero movies don’t even have kills, and the ones that do have kills usually aren’t interesting beyond the relationship that the audience has with whoever it is that’s being killed.” But to that I would say, “Sure, but what about the Magic Trick Kill that the Joker does in The Dark Knight? Or the ‘Some motherfuckers are always trying to ice skate uphill’ kill in Blade? Or the ‘Walk away from that, you son of a bitch’ kill from Iron Man 3?” There are more, for sure. And losing them all sucks. But rules are rules.
• THE ACTION MOVIES RULE: This is an extension of the superpowers rule above: The movie that a kill happens in has to, above all else, feel more like an action than any other kind of movie. And I know that that’s a hazy discussion to have, yes, but that’s because hall of fames are, by their own design, hazy. It’s what makes them so much fun (and also, at times, so infuriating). And here’s a good example of how tricky this rule can end up being: A kill from 1989’s Tango & Cash, which is a movie about two cops trying to solve a crime, would count. But a kill from 2012’s End of Watch, which is also a movie about two cops trying to solve a crime, would not count. And the only reason is because one feels like an action movie and one does not.
• THE STARTING POINT RULE: There has to be a rule in place that, unlike the one above, is absolutely firm and inarguable. As such, let’s make it so that no kills that happened in any action movie before 1982 are eligible. And I’m going with 1982 as the date because that’s the year that 48 Hours came out, and 48 Hours is often cited as the first Buddy-Cop movie, and Buddy-Cop movies are among my very favorite subcategories of action movies, right up there with Avenging A Loved One Who’s Been Kidnapped Or Murdered action movies and Forced Into Action action movies.3
Let’s go.
Have you ever heard of the foot-in-the-door sales technique? It’s a trick that you do where you offer up some easy-to-say-yes-to thing so that the person you’re talking to feels comfortable and like they’re in control of the situation. You do it once or twice before you get to the real thing you want them to agree to. That’s what I’m doing right now. I’m starting this with a pick that is Action Movie Unquestionable (Schwarzenegger! John Matrix! Bennett! The post-death quip!4 Commando! The golden age of action movies!) because the next pick is one that (probably) some people won’t see coming.