Hooray for Hollywood: Actionnnn: Plotting Along

(Tried this before, but wasn't happy with it, so here we go again)
In honor of the coming Summer movie season I figured I would blather on about one of my favorite topics, the movies. I could go on about great movies, but that's boring, I'm going to talk about what sucks in movies. Yep, I'm an optomist at heart. And the easiest target to shoot at is the action movie.

I categorize action movies the following way:

Cop Movie: Individual or group of protagonists versus fairly intelligent Prime Bad Guy (PBG) and his group of rock-dumb henchmen. PBG can be inanimate objects that have malfunctioned and if not fixed can lead to some disaster.

Disaster: Protagonist versus coming disaster and The Man, who along with his supporters are rock-dumb.

Man of Action: Protagonist lands in the middle of a shit storm and must deal with it. Somewhere between Cop and Disaster.

I don't quite include most war movies and epics into the category, although some fall into it.

Lights, Cliché, Action

The Cop Movie is probably the most common action movie and it's plot can be summarized as follows:

A (renegade, retired, disgraced, disillusioned, aging, rookie) (Cop, spy, gunfigther, soldier, pilot, astronaut) is presented with life or death confrontation(s) that only he can deal with because (he's the only expert available, he's the "best we've got", they killed/raped/attacked/kidnapped family, personaly knows the antagonists).

He will have to fight through (henchmen, red tape, malfunctions, mental/physical disability) before being able to confront the antogonist.

When confronting the antagonist, the hero(es). will never be successful before (firing his last shot, firing at last minute, firing with last breath, deceiving PBG into confessing, or PBG coming back when thought dead/captured)

Man of Action movies are generally the same as Cop Movies except they are generally facing some faceless antagonist (swarms of aliens, nature) or multiple bad guys coming from different directions. Man of Action movies generally start out with hero(es) stumbling into the main situation.

Disaster movies contain elements of the other two forms. Take the flawed character from Cop Movie and put them up against A.) The Man, who always listens to his little inner circle and ignores dire warnings of coming disaster. B.) The Man, who realizes shit be goin' down, but has the wrong idea on how to deal with it. The Man is usually supported by a group of village idiots who are just as myopic if not worse. Once said shit hits, Disaster movies often turn into Man of Action movies as the good guys try to deal with the calamity

If the action movie is a buddy or ensemble movie, the protagonists will usually be on opposite ends of some spectrum, but find they have common ground by the end. Internal bickering is important for drama since aliens trying to gut you or a tornado trying to suck up a town is pretty low on the interest meter.

Up next.... Actionnnn: Stupid Movie Tricks