John Wick, Taken, The Equalizer. Too many to name. Saw a preview for The Amateur (2025) which is another one coming out soon. It seems like that’s the ONLY justification for killing they can come up with.
Like this is the logic here: “Okay we need an action movie with lots of henchmen to kill, what evil thing can that bad guy have done in the 1st act so our hero is justified in killing tons of henchmen?” So the bad guy does some overtly evil thing at the start of the movie (often unrealistically evil). Then killing people is the rest of the movie. Revenge happens. The end.
I enjoy action movies, but I keep seeing the same revenge-killing movies that feel like copies of each other.
It’s definitely a trend right now, and I’d mostly attribute it entirely to John Wick. Wick was somewhat ground breaking because they handed director duties to a former stuntman / action coordinator and the entire plot only existed to flex the stunts and gun work. Now every studio wants to put a stunt guy calling the shots and we keep ending up with thin stories and directors trying to one up each other in concentrated action.
I don’t think the “endless henchmen” movies are going away, they’re almost becoming a subgenre themselves. But I agree I’d like to see more creativity on the story side.
Taken was the almost the exact opposite though, an action movie starring someone who couldn’t execute stunts and director with little action experience.