How Many Action Movies Can You Name?

By: Megan Kim
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Do you consider yourself to be an adventurous soul? Do you like excitement, daring moves, dangerous stunts, extreme sports, high-risk explorations, or just about anything that gets your adrenaline flowing at high pressure? If so, you’re probably a fan of action movies. And you probably think you know a lot about them. Well, you’ll soon be put to the test.

Most people think that the action movie genre is a relatively recent development in cinematic history. If asked what they considered to be the first action movie, a lot of people might say the first Rambo movie, or the original Star Wars, and not a few would probably cite Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone or 3 Ninjas.

But most serious historians of film consider a silent 1903 movie called The Great Train Robbery to be the first true action film. There were other more or less obscure movies over the next couple of decades that could be considered action films, but in the 1920s and 30s the age of the swashbuckler and the Western came along, filled with pirates, highwaymen, cowboys, and villians, and making superstars out of actors such as Douglas Fairbanks and Roy Rogers.

The war years of the 1940s and early 1950s predictably spawned a lot of combat movies about WWII and Korea, featuring rough and ready action heroes like John Wayne, Clark Gable, and real life war hero Audie Murphy, the most decorated American soldier of WWII, who along with Wayne also made some of the most legendary Westerns ever to grace the silver screen.

War movies and Westerns continued to be staples but the late 50s and 1960s saw the emergence of the spy thriller, with Alfred Hitchcock producing unforgettable suspense classics, and of course the debut of James Bond of Her Majesty’s Secret Service.

From the 1960s through today other action genres have been extremely popular, from detective mysteries to sci-fi flicks to horror films, especially psychotic killer and zombie movies, and new generations of stars have made their name with them.

But you already knew all this right? So prove it. Take the quiz and show us your action movie expertise.