Where have all the heroes gone?

I may have just watched Sylvester Stallone looking more and more like his mother everyday than the character of John Rambo who appeared what was probably the first modern action movie First Blood; (James Bond had being doing it for years but had got into a situation where the films had become almost a parody of the original super cool secret agent) but I want more. These were the kind of films where the story really didn't matter, it was a film driven by the actions of one individual over coming overwhelming odds and coming good in the end.
Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone and Bruce Willis were saving the world before lunchtime and the universe during dessert, films like The Terminator, Die Hard and Rambo were breaking box office records almost every weekend and spawning an endless series of sequels, between them, the T 800, John McClane and John Rambo have featured in eleven films, killed hundreds of cartoon like bad guys and saved a nation worth of damsels in distress, both male and female. All of them were A list stars who commanded millions of dollars in fees and the adulation of tens of millions of adoring fans, even the B list stars such Steven Segal, Jean Claude Van Damme, Wesley Snipes, Chuck Norris and Dolph Lundgren enjoyed the fruits of their labours, making film after film.
But those guys were then and this is now and we haven't moved on, Schwarzenegger is 60, Stallone is 61 and Willis is 52, all closer to picking up a pension than an AK47 and the so called next generation of action heroes have failed to materialise.
People have talked about Vin Diesel or Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson coming through to make the big leap to the next action movie superstar, but these are actors not action heroes, they have made the choice to not restrict themselves to one genre of film, they will try drama and comedy, which normally became the second choice of an action star. Both Vin diesel and The Rock have the screen presence and physical stature to carry off the incredible feats, but seem to have chosen to go in a different direction, they want to establish themselves as actors films first and one dimensional action figures as an after though. It's a brave move, neither of these men are ever going to be taken seriously as credible actors in the dramatic sense of the word, but it a changing climate where the morally dubious balance of right and wrong that has been forced down the throats of audiences for year after year with pantomime villains and hundreds of henchmen who cant shoot straight is decades out of date.

Give a film balance and some intelligence and the audiences will buy into it, just look at the success of Casino Royale or the Bourne Trilogy and see that cinema audiences still crave action, but don't want to be treated as idiots and have the political views of the director or producer blasted into their minds. We the audience are holding on for a hero, we want to be thrilled, we want to be excited, but most of all we want to be entertained.
I look around today and see a huge gap ripe for someone to step into, but that's a big step and some very big shoes to film. Schwarzenegger, Stallone and Willis may have the muscles, the guts and the one liners but put any of them in the real world, could any of them hold their own against the man who captured my imagination in the action stakes, this was a man who could without doubt kick ass on screen and off, he was born on November 27th 1940 and died on July 20th 1973; given a girl's name (Sai Fon which means small Phoenix,) this was quickly changed to Jun Fan, in the west we simply knew him as the Little Dragon;

You knew there was going to be a list; here are some of my favourite action films, once again in no particular order.
Raiders of the lost ark, Aliens, The Matrix, Goldfinger, Speed, The Killer,
Die Hard, Enter the Dragon, The Bourne Ultimatum, First Blood, Terminator 2, Star Wars.

Till the next time!

Bruce Lee.