Action film is a film genre where one or more heroes is thrust into a series of challenges that require physical feats, extended fights and frenetic chases.
Story and character development are generally secondary to explosions, fist fights, gunplay and car chases.
Action films have had wide commercial appeal and enjoy box office success.
The action film revolves around a hero and the obstacles their character(s) must overcome.
While action has long been an element of films, the "Action film" as a genre of its own began to develop in the 1970s.
The genre is closely linked with the thriller and adventure film genres, and it may sometimes have elements of spy fiction and espionage.
While action films have traditionally been a reliable source of revenue for movie studios, relatively few action films garner critical praise.
While action films have traditionally been aimed at male audiences from the early teens to the mid-30s, many action filmmakers from the 1990s and 2000s added female heroines in response to the expanding social conceptions of gender, glorifying the strong female archetype.
In the '80s and '90s, Hollywood was producing more action films than ever before, but in an attempt to keep up with jaded audience expectations, increasingly bigger special effects and ultraviolence were emphasized over character, plot, or even coherence.
Though the action genre's popularity continued unabated, its lean towards the bigger/faster/more-is-better ideology has left many fans of action films pondering its future.