Characteristics
There are of course a number of different characteristics of action movies that make them appealing to a specific popularity base of people, but the main idea behind action movies is that the tempo needs to be kept up for as long as possible to the exclusion almost of everything else. Plot and character driven concerns are not really as important as making sure that there are a lot of fight scenes, chase scenes, high drama scenes and a number of other scenes that tend to keep the action going. These are movies that are very popular because of that continued action.
Popularity Base
The popularity base of action movies, without making things too generalized, tends to be more male than female. The idea of car chases, explosions and a number of other things that the average male finds cool is something that would quite naturally appeal to males more than females, but of course you can see both sexes frequently appearing at a number of different action movies. The popularity base also tends to be more towards the younger side of the age spectrum than the older side, but there are frequent exceptions to that generalization just as there are frequent exceptions to the gender generalization.
Example 1
One of the classic examples of an action movie has to be the Indiana Jones series of movies that have been out for a very long time. There are a number of different ways that Indiana Jones movies have become popular in the world today and while many people know them as adventure movies, action and adventure do not have to be mutually exclusive terms. With all of the different booby traps that Jones has to get himself through and all of the different times that he's fighting people like Nazis, you can see that there are a lot of action elements to this specific film.
Example 2
Another example of an action movie could be the Speed movies, the first of which starred Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reaves. These types of movies are very indicative of the action movie mindset because the whole movie itself involves a bus that can't go below a certain speed. When the bus is moving and different things have to happen, the speed aspect itself is something that people don't really look at as being an element outside of the movie; it is an element within the movie. And that more than anything else breeds the action that goes on in the movie.
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