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158-473: Blue Thunder is a 1983 American action thriller film directed by John Badham . The Blue Thunder helicopter itself did exist as two copies of modified French Aérospatiale Gazelles . A spin-off television series, also called Blue Thunder , ran for 11 episodes in 1984. Frank Murphy is a Los Angeles Metropolitan Police Department air support division pilot and troubled Vietnam War veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder . His newly assigned observer

316-586: A "desperate attempt to mask the lack of content." Geoff King argued that the spectacle can also be a vehicle for narrative, opposed to interfering with it. Soberson stated that Harvey O'Brien had "perhaps the most convincing understanding of the genre", stating that the action film was "best understood as a fusion of form and content. It represents the idea and ethic of action through a form in which action, agitation and movement are paramount." O'Brien wrote further in his book Action Movies: The Cinema of Striking Back to suggest action films being unique and not just

474-510: A Global release status of Chinese-language martial arts films, most notably Zhang Yimou 's Hero (2002) and House of Flying Daggers (2004), Stephen Chow 's Kung Fu Hustle (2004) and Chen Kaige 's The Promise (2005). Most Hong Kong action films in the first quarter of the 21st century, such as those in Cold War (2012), Cold War 2 (2016) and The White Storm film series have their violence toned down, especially compared to

632-468: A Hughes 500 helicopter, and two radio-controlled F-16 fighter models were used in the filming of the movie. The helicopters were purchased from Aérospatiale by Columbia Pictures for $ 190,000 each and flown to Cinema Air in Carlsbad, California where they were heavily modified for the film. These alterations made the helicopters so heavy that various tricks had to be employed to make it look fast and agile in

790-846: A commercial core still managed to exist in Little Tokyo. Due to lack of housing in Little Tokyo, many Japanese Americans returning from the camps moved into apartments and boarding houses in the neighborhoods surrounding downtown Los Angeles . Notably, Boyle Heights , just east of Little Tokyo, had a large Japanese American population in the 1950s (as it had before the internment ) until the arrival of Mexican and Latino immigrants replaced most of them. The post-war Japanese-American population in Little Tokyo had become only one-third of its pre-war population. Many Issei and Nisei who had previously owned large businesses or were heavily involved in agriculture now returned with little resources to work in civil service or other simple jobs. Concurrently,

948-543: A crazy main character with deeper psychological issues, who went on a rampage and destroyed much of Los Angeles before finally falling to F-16s. The script was rewritten by American screenwriter Dean Riesner with directions on the style of dialogue from director John Badham. Filmed on location in Los Angeles beginning in the late months of 1981, Blue Thunder was one of Warren Oates' last films before his death on April 3, 1982, which occurred during post-production, and

1106-436: A fight sequence. In the 1980s, American martial arts films reflected the national move towards conservatism, reflected in films of Chuck Norris and other actors such as Sho Kosugi . The genre would shift from theatrical releases towards the end of the decade with the rise of home video, the lower box-office of American martial arts productions, and a significant portion of direct-to-video action films that first were made in

1264-556: A flight." McDowell's grimaces and discomfort can be seen during the climactic battle between Murphy and Cochrane in the film. Steenburgen commented to filmmakers afterward, "I don't know how you got him up there, I can't even get him in a 747 !" Designer Mickey Michaels created the helicopters used in the film after reviewing and rejecting various existing designs. The helicopters used for Blue Thunder were French built Aérospatiale SA-341G Gazelles modified with bolt-on parts and Apache -style canopies . Two modified Gazelle helicopters,

1422-500: A global audience of these films in the United States and Europe, but was cut short on Lee's death in 1973 leading the phases popularity to decline. Following a period of stagnation, Chang Cheh and Lau Kar-leung revitalized the genre with shaolin kung fu films and Chor Yuen 's series of darker swordplay films based on the novels of Gu Long . Kung Fu comedies appeared featuring Jackie Chan as martial arts films flourished into

1580-559: A great way to find Japanese video games that were either never translated into English, or were never domestically released in North America. There are also several stores that sell manga and anime related products. The Japanese Village Plaza is located roughly in the center of Little Tokyo on the east side of San Pedro Street . There are several restaurants in the plaza, plus a number of shops geared towards tourists. First Street and Second Street border Japanese Village Plaza and have

1738-566: A hero overcoming enemies or obstacles and physical conflicts or challenge, usually battling other humans or alien opponents. By late 2010s studies of genre analysis, the term "genre" itself is often replaced or supplemented with the words "mode" and "narrative form" with all three terms often being used interchangeably. Johan Höglund and Agnieszka Soltysik Monnet said that the difference between these concepts are elusive, but stated that genre could be defined as belonging to specific historical and cultural moments while "mode" and "form" can refer to

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1896-684: A high concentration of legacy institutions. East West Players , one of the nation's first Asian American theater companies and the longest continuously running theatre of color in the nation, specializing in live theater written and performed by Asian American artists, is located in Little Tokyo, performing in the David Henry Hwang Theater, a 230-seat venue in the Union Center for the Performing Arts. The Japanese American Community and Cultural Center (JACCC) runs

2054-495: A kiosk on Astronaut Ellison Onizuka Street and contains a monument to Astronaut Ellison S. Onizuka , a Japanese American from Hawaiʻi who was a mission specialist on the Space Shuttle Challenger when it disintegrated during takeoff in 1986. Little Tokyo has a variety of public art, including a memorial statue of Chiune Sugihara , Japanese consul to Lithuania before World War II and Righteous among

2212-647: A large redevelopment plan was put in place to be enacted in the early 1950s, but due to a lack of state funding and wealth in the Japanese-American community following three years of internment, the plan fell to stagnation. Following the construction there of the Los Angeles Police Department headquarters in 1953, Little Tokyo's commercial area shrunk by one fourth from its original size. 1,000 residents were displaced to other parts of Los Angeles. The current site of Parker Center ,

2370-454: A larger pattern that operates across a wider historical and cultural field. In their book Action Cinema Since 2000 (2024), Tasker, Lisa Purse, and Chris Holmlund stated that thinking of action as a mode is more helpful than thinking of it as a genre. The three authors suggested that action frames a certain manner of filmmaking and viewing exceed genre without eclipsing it stating that websites such as IMDb and Misplaced Pages rarely label films by

2528-702: A major convening point for AAPI artists in the entertainment industry, and a central incubator for the nation having twice before hosted the National Asian American Theatre Conference and Festival put on by the Consortium of Asian American Theatre Artists. Little Tokyo has also seen the rise of many adjacent movements in the AAPI entertainment world such as Asian American theater companies Teada , Lodestone Theatre, Artists at Play, Hereandnow Theatre, Asian AF Comedy shows, and

2686-536: A number of yakiniku restaurants, where meat is often cooked on a small grill built into the center of the table. Little Tokyo is the birthplace of the California roll , invented by a chef named Ichiro Mashita at the Tokyo Kaikan sushi restaurant. Two wagashi (Japanese sweets) shops located in Little Tokyo are among the oldest food establishments in Los Angeles. Fugetsu-do, founded in 1903, appears to be

2844-576: A number of restaurants that are open later than those in the court. The Weller Court shopping mall is located along Astronaut Ellison S Onizuka St., backing up to 2nd St. on the south and what was originally the New Otani Hotel, now the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Los Angeles Downtown , along Los Angeles Street, to the north and west. It has several restaurants, karaoke clubs, and a Bubble Tea cafe. For tourists visiting from Japan, there are

3002-400: A number of shops specializing in expensive name brand products such as Coach handbags. There is also a large bookstore, Kinokuniya , that is part of a well-known Japanese chain. They have a large selection of Japanese-language books, magazines, music CDs, manga , and anime , as well as a selection of English-language books on Japanese subjects and translated manga and anime. Weller Court

3160-420: A presence. East West Players saw the early careers of actors such as Daniel Dae Kim , John Cho , Reggie Lee , Amy Hill , Lucy Liu , Isa Briones , as well as playwrights Qui Nguyen . Lauren Yee , and David Henry Hwang . In 2018, actor George Takei returned to Little Tokyo for the first Post Broadway staging of the musical Allegiance by Jay Kuo & Lorenzo Thione co-produced by East West Players and

3318-669: A private sunrise demonstration in the Mojave Desert at "Pinkville" and is selected to pilot an advanced helicopter, informally called "The Special" but given the nickname "Blue Thunder" , during an evaluation exercise. It is a military-style combat aircraft intended for police use in surveillance and against possible large-scale civic disobedience or terrorism during the 1984 Summer Olympics . With robust bulletproof armor, powerful armament, and other accoutrements, such as thermal infrared scanners , unidirectional microphones and cameras, built-in mobile telephone, computer and modem,

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3476-554: A propensity for violent action, identified with the films of Chang Cheh . Violent female characters have been part of cinema since its early inception, with characters such as Kate Kelly brandishing a shotgun in The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906). Women traditionally appear in action films as romantic interests, tomboys , or sidekicks to male protagonists. Violent white women would appear in other genres as well such as

3634-521: A regular basis. Their original script was a more political one, attacking the concept of a police state controlling the population through high-tech surveillance and heavy armament. They sought and received extensive script help from Captain Bob Woods, then-chief of the LAPD's Air Support Division . The first draft of the screenplay for Blue Thunder was written in 1979 and featured Frank Murphy as more of

3792-407: A result, Little Tokyo saw a growth in community and the establishment of a commercial district. By 1908, around 90 Japanese-run boarding houses could be found throughout Los Angeles. In 1909, Little Tokyo was described as "bounded by San Pedro , First and Requena Streets and Central Avenue . The Los Angeles Times added: "It has a population of about 3,500 Japanese ... there are 10,000 Japanese in

3950-470: A rival competitor, which in reality is the new invention for its time period: the helicopter. In the 2002 video game Grand Theft Auto: Vice City , the player can infiltrate a military base and steal an attack helicopter to perform vigilante missions known as Brown Thunder , spoofing the film. In 1987, Coca-Cola Telecommunications released a Blue Thunder video tape cartridge for Worlds of Wonder's short lived Action Max game system. Using footage from

4108-728: A rooftop garden in the Kyoto Grand Hotel and Gardens , formerly the New Otani Hotel . The Go for Broke Monument commemorates Japanese Americans who served in the United States Military during World War II . With its proximity to Hollywood and its concentration as a focal point for the Pan Asian American community, Little Tokyo Los Angeles has long served as an incubator for Asian American and Pacific Islander artists and performers sporting

4266-511: A series of action sequences, stating that that the difference between Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and Die Hard (1988), that while both were mainstream Hollywood blockbusters with hero asserting masculinity and overcoming obstacles to a personal and social solution, John McClane in Die Hard repeatedly firing his automatic pistol while swinging from a high rise was not congruent with

4424-745: A significant portion. These films include Taxi 2 (2000), Kiss of the Dragon (2001), District 13 (2004) and Unleashed (2005). Whan asked about the Americanization of these French films, Christophe Gans , director of Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001) stated that "Hollywood ownership of certain elements [...] must be challenged, in order to show that these elements have also long been present in European culture." The most significant producers of French action films with international ambitions

4582-658: A similar level of popularity to that of the Western in the United States. The most internationally known films of this era were the films Kurosawa with Seven Samurai (1954), The Hidden Fortress (1958), and Yojimbo (1961). By at least the 1950s, Japanese films were looked upon as a model to be emulated by Hong Kong film production, and Hong Kong film companies began actively enlisting professionals from Japan, such as cinematographer Tadashi Nishimoto to contribute to color and widescreen cinematography. New literary sources also developed in martial arts films of this period, with

4740-406: A single genre and that streaming services such as Amazon Prime and Netflix similarly dilutes what is marketed and received as action. In transnational cinema, there are two major trends in action films: Hollywood action films and their style being imitated around the globe and the other being Chinese-language martial arts films. The roots of action films extend into the beginning of film but it

4898-454: A six-barreled 20 millimeter electric cannon, a "whisper mode" that lets the aircraft fly silently and a U-matic video cassette recorder ; Blue Thunder appears to be a formidable tool in the war on crime. Murphy notes wryly that with enough of these helicopters "you could run the whole damn country." When McNeely's death is seemingly turning out to be more than just a random murder, Murphy begins his own covert investigation. He discovers that

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5056-412: A subversive action group is intending to use Blue Thunder in a military role to quell urban disorder under the project codename T.H.O.R. ("Tactical Helicopter Offensive Response"), and are secretly eliminating political opponents to advance their agenda, which McNeely was looking into at the time. Murphy suspects the involvement of his old Vietnam nemesis, former United States Army Colonel F.E. Cochrane,

5214-451: A three-act structure centered on survival, resistance and revenge with narratives where the physical body of the hero is tested, traumatized and ultimately triumphant. The third shift in action cinema, the postclassical, was defined by the predominance of Eastern cinema and its aesthetics, primarily the wire-work of Hong Kong action cinema from the classical era, through the convention of the increasingly computer generated effects. This saw

5372-594: A tough police officer protects society by upholding the law against systematic corruption. This extended into films which O'Brien described as "knee-jerk responses" to perceived threats with rogue cop and vigilante films such as Dirty Harry (1971) and Death Wish (1974) where the restoration of order is only possible by force and antisocial characters prepared to act when society does not. The vigilantism reappears in other films that were exploitative of southern society such as Billy Jack (1971) and White Lightning (1973) and "good ol' boy" comedies like Smokey and

5530-450: A traditional ethnic enclave , there are relatively few Japanese residents in the area. Even so, the Japanese-American community was politicized by the internment and redress effort , which, along with the global and local growth of overseas Japanese investment, has assured that Little Tokyo has continued to exist as a tourist attraction, community center, and home to Japanese-American senior citizens and others. During its inception in 1980,

5688-463: Is Luc Besson 's France-based EuropaCorp , who released films like Taxi (1998) and From Paris with Love (2010). EuropaCorp produced Transporter franchise starred British actor Jason Statham and made him an action film star, which led him to feature in The Expendables series by the end of the 2010s. The action film genre has been a staple of Bollywood cinema . In the 1970s,

5846-574: Is a generic term to refer to several types of films containing martial arts. The wuxia film is the oldest genre in Chinese cinema. Stephen Teo wrote in his book on Wuxia that there is no satisfactory English translation of the term, with it often being identified as "the swordplay film" in critical studies. It is derived from the Chinese words wu denoting militarist or martial qualities and xia denoting chivalry, gallantry, and qualities of knighthood. The term wuxia entered into popular culture in

6004-402: Is an ethnically Japanese American district in downtown Los Angeles and the heart of the largest Japanese-American population in North America. It is the largest and most populous of only three official Japantowns in the United States, all of which are in California (the other two are Japantown, San Francisco , and Japantown, San Jose ). Founded around the beginning of the 20th century,

6162-729: Is based on Twin Dragons (1992). Other films such as the martial arts film Bhadrachlam (2001), borrows from American cinema with the Jean-Claude Van Damme film Kickboxer (1989). SS Rajamouli 's RRR (2022) was among the highest budgeted films made in India, and became a rare hit film outside of Indian diaspora, where it broke box office records in Japan and performed exceptionally well in American box office. Japan

6320-572: Is bounded on the west by Los Angeles Street, on the east by Alameda Street, on the south by 3rd Street , and on the north by First Street, but also includes a substantial portion of the block north of First and west of Alameda, location of the Japanese American National Museum , the Go For Broke Monument , and a row of historic shops which lines the north side of First Street. A timeline has been set into

6478-442: Is itself empowering and, if not, whether a hypersexualized female character can still represent strength and autonomy. Hypersexualized female action leads had tight fitting or revealing costumes that Tasker identified as "exaggerated statements of sexuality" and in the tradition of "fetishistic figure of fantasy" derives from comic books and soft pornography . This originated in television with characters like Buffy Summers ( Buffy

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6636-570: Is mainly a work, cultural, religious, restaurant and shopping district, because Japanese Americans today are likely to live in nearby cities such as Torrance , Gardena , and Monterey Park , as well as the Sawtelle district in the Westside of Los Angeles. However, the recent boom in downtown residential construction is changing the nature of Little Tokyo. What is left of the original Little Tokyo can be found in roughly five large city blocks. It

6794-415: Is novice Richard Lymangood. The two patrol the city at night and give assistance to police forces on the ground when needed. Upon returning from patrol, the pair are placed under a two-week suspension for allegations of voyeurism during a nearby mugging incident gone wrong that leads to the shooting death of city councilwoman Diana McNeely. Murphy is shortly reinstated for duty and is instructed to attend

6952-586: Is referred to as the "classical period" in the 1980s. This was followed by the post-classical era where American action films were influenced by Hong Kong action cinema and the growing using of computer generated imagery in film. Following the September 11 attacks , a return to the early forms of the genre appeared in the wake of Kill Bill and The Expendables films. Scott Higgins wrote in 2008 in Cinema Journal that action films are both one of

7110-573: Is this year's must-see action film. See it." Christopher John reviewed Blue Thunder in Ares Magazine #14 and commented that "For those who want a film that is both filled with action and thought provoking, Blue Thunder is a sure bet. Watch out, George , the Jedi have competition." The film garnered an Oscar nomination for Best Film Editing for Frank Morriss and Edward Abroms , but lost out to The Right Stuff . An acronym used in

7268-579: Is unreported. The film made $ 21.9 million in video rentals in the US. On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes , 78% of 23 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 6.6/10. On Metacritic it has a score of 66% based on reviews from 11 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Variety called it "a ripsnorting live-action cartoon, utterly implausible but no less enjoyable for that". Rita Kempley of The Washington Post wrote: " Blue Thunder hovers just this side of trash and

7426-592: Is where the first Japanese institutions, associations, and establishments were founded in Los Angeles as Issei (first generation Japanese immigrants) began to congregate in the area. The first Japanese religious institution founded in Little Tokyo was the Japanese Episcopal Mission of Los Angeles, now Century United Methodist Church, founded in June 1896 by a group of 5 issei from southern Japan. Other religious institutions continued to be founded:

7584-578: The femme fatales in film noir and horror films of the 1970s. Violent women were common in action films since the 1960s. These films featured working-class women exacting revenge. Films of the 1970s featured black women such as Pam Grier in films like Foxy Brown (1974). In the 1980s, a new symbolically transgressive character emerged in the form of Ellen Ripley in Aliens (1986) and Sarah Connor in Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) and

7742-550: The Bollywood action film consolidated with two films starring Amitabh Bachchan : Prakash Mehra 's Zanjeer (1973) and Yash Chopra 's Deewaar (1975). The box office success of these films made Bachchan a star and spawned the "angry young man" film in Bollywood cinema. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the action genre film declined considerably with new films predominantly featuring former bodybuilders failing to reach

7900-517: The Hong Kong action cinema , such melodramatic male bonding and marginalized women characters, while the Korean films also have greater elements of tragedy and romance emphasized. Most martial arts films made before the mid-1960s were Cantonese-language productions. In comparison, Mandarin-language films were an integral part of Hong Kong cinema due to the influx of Shanghai film talent in

8058-871: The JACCC at the Aratani Theatre. The Aratani has also served as a home venue to the Grammy Nominated Jazz fusion group Hiroshima (band) founded by Dan Kuramoto & June Kuramoto. Actress Tamlyn Tomita began her career when she was crowned "Nisei Week Queen" in 1984 which led to her breakout casting in The Karate Kid Part 2 . Filmmakers such as Justin Lin , Quentin Lee , and Justin Chon have premiered some of their early career making films at

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8216-562: The Jordan Downs housing complex. In 1945, many defense industry jobs disappeared and the workers moved elsewhere in search of new employment. Others were pushed out when Japanese Americans began to return and white landlords chose not to renew leases with their wartime tenants. Following the War, many previous Japanese residents returned to Little Tokyo to continue managing businesses by purchasing Bronzeville business leases. Albeit smaller,

8374-496: The Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival . Actor Dante Basco has been a mainstay performing his poetry alongside many others at Tuesday Night Project. Musicians such as AJ Rafael , Jane Lui , MC Jin and more have long relationships with Kollaboration since before the "youtube-boom" that saw many AAPI artists and musicians find an internet based audience. Little Tokyo continues to be

8532-611: The Museum of Contemporary Art , formerly called the Temporary Contemporary and now known as the Geffen Contemporary (named after David Geffen ). Additionally, the visual arts are represented by the arts non-profit, LAArtcore which devotes itself to creating awareness of the visual arts through 24 exhibitions each year along with educational programming. An art gallery called 123 Astronaut is housed within

8690-508: The September 11 attacks in 2001, which suggested an end to fantastical elements that defined the action hero and genre. Following the release of Quentin Tarantino 's Kill Bill: Volume 1 (2003) and Kill Bill: Volume 2 (2004) revisited the tropes of 1970s action films leading a renaissance of vengeance narratives in films like The Brave One (2007) and Taken (2008). O'Brien found that Tarantino's films were post-modern takes on

8848-460: The Zoot Suit race riots . In 1943, officials bowed to pressure from frustrated residents and proposed building temporary housing in nearby Willowbrook , but the majority-white residents of the unincorporated city resisted the plans. In 1944, 57 Bronzeville buildings were condemned as unfit for habitation and 125 ordered repaired or renovated; approximately 50 of the evicted families were sent to

9006-510: The xinpai wuxia xiaoshuo (or "new school martial arts fiction") coming into prominence with the success of Liang Yusheng 's Longhu Dou Jinghua (1954) and Jin Yong 's Shujian enchou lu (1956) which showed influence of the Shanghai martial arts films but also circulated from Hong Kong to Taiwan and Chinese communities overseas. This led to a growing demand in both local and regional markets in

9164-428: The 1960s with films like The Born Losers (1967) which was predominantly a drama, interspersed with martial arts scenes. American martial arts films predominantly came into production following the release of Enter the Dragon (1973), with the only higher-budgeted American film to follow in its wake being The Yakuza (1974). Lott noted the two films would lead to the two subsequent styles of martial arts films in

9322-609: The 1970s. James Monaco wrote in 1979 in American Film Now: The People, The Power, The Money, the Movies that "the lines that separate on genre from another have continued to disintegrate." Tasker said that most post-classical action films are hybrids, drawing from genres as varied as war films, science fiction , horror , crime, martial arts , and comedy films . In Chinese-language films, both wuxia and kung fu are genre-specific terms, while martial arts

9480-784: The 1980s. Other films again modernized the form with gangster films of John Woo ( A Better Tomorrow (1986), The Killer (1989)) and the Wong Fei Hung saga returning in Tsui Hark 's Once Upon a Time in China featuring Jet Li which again revitalized the swordplay styled films. By the turn of the century Hollywood action films would look towards Hong Kong cinema and bringing some of their major actors and directors over to apply their style to their films, such as Chan, Woo, Li, Michelle Yeoh and Yuen Woo-Ping . The release of Ang Lee 's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) led to

9638-706: The 21st century have been comic book adaptations, which commenced with the X-Men and is seen in other series such as Spider-Man , and Iron Man series. Tasker wrote that despite the central characters in superhero cinema being extraordinary, occasionally even God-like, they often followed the traces of the central character becoming powerful of which is fundamental to action films, often dealt with origin stories in superhero films. Action films often interface with other genres. Tasker wrote that films are often labelled action thrillers, action-fantasy and action-adventure films with different nuances. Tasker later discussed that

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9796-469: The 800 seat Aratani Theater, which features theatre, dance, concerts as well as cultural performances and events. Visual Communications , an Asian Pacific American media arts organization that annually presents VC FilmFest (Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival), in several venues around Little Tokyo. Tuesday Night Project is the longest running Asian American open Mic event in the nation running every 1st and 3rd Tuesday from April through October in

9954-522: The Bandit (1977). This era also emphasizes the car chase scenes as moments of spectacle in films like Bullitt and The French Connection (1971). O'Brien described these films as emphasizing "the fusion of man and machine" with the drivers and vehicles acting as one, concluding with what he described as "the ultimate in apocalyptic modernity and social erasure" in Mad Max 2 (1981). O'Brien described

10112-754: The Bollywood press who reported on him in the headlines of Bollywood magazines for his public brawls and affairs with leading actresses. In Dabangg (2010), Khan continued with this public persona, which was repeated in several of his later films such as Ready (2011), Bodyguard (2011), Ek Tha Tiger (2012) and Dabangg 2 (2012). From the 1980s, generations of actors in Telugu cinema have invoked Hong Kong action films, such as Srihari who stated he wanted to become an actor after watching his first Bruce Lee film. Several films in Telugu cinema were remakes of Hong Kong films, such as Hello Brother (1994) which

10270-657: The Central Japanese Association, Japanese American Citizen's League (JACL), and the Japanese American Chamber of Commerce. Concurrently, these leaders worked with Japan to establish kenjinkai or mutual aid societies each associated to one of the Japanese Prefectures. These associations would provide mutual aid and social opportunities to Japanese families that had immigrated from the same prefecture represented by

10428-538: The Comedy Comedy Festival. There are numerous Japanese restaurants, catering to both Japanese and non-Japanese clientele. Many of them specialize in one type of Japanese cuisine , such as donburi , Japanese noodles ( soba , ramen and udon ), shabu-shabu (which translated from Japanese means 'swish-swish', referring to the motion of dipping meat and vegetables in a communal bowl of boiling water), Japanese curry, sushi, or yakitori. There are also

10586-598: The Dragon briefly allowed an influx of Hong Kong films to Japan, but the trend did not last, with 28 Hong Kong films, mostly kung fu films, being released in 1974, and the number decreasing to five in 1975, four in 1977 and only two in 1978. Ryuhei Kitamura , director of Versus (2000), said in 2004 that he grew frustrated with the Japanese film industry as producers felt they couldn't make action films in competition with Hong Kong or American productions. Versus grew to become popular outside of Japan, and Kitamura said he

10744-617: The Go For Broke Plaza, promises to provide essential housing units while serving as a permanent home for the Go For Broke National Education Center, a nonprofit dedicated to educating the public about the courage and sacrifices of Japanese-American soldiers . At its peak, Little Tokyo had approximately 30,000 Japanese Americans living in the area. Little Tokyo is still a cultural focal point for Los Angeles's Japanese American population. It

10902-602: The Hong Kong film industry after the handover in 1997. Anglophone action film scholarship has tended to emphasize bigger budget American action films, with academics tending to find films that fall out of Hollywood productions as not quite fitting definitions of the genre. By 2024, many national and regional industries were known for action films. These include international films such as Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam , South Korean, Japanese, Thai , Brazilian , Chinese , South African , French and Italian action titles. At

11060-672: The Koyasan Buddhist Temple (1912), Japanese Union Church (1923), and Hompa Hongwaji Buddhist Temple (1925). The growing population in Little Tokyo was supplemented by the establishment of primary, secondary, and trade schools. A large amount of trade schools in Little Tokyo were sewing schools. The largest was the Rafu Yossai Gakuen which taught sewing skills to Issei women. During this time period various newspapers catered towards Japanese Americans in Los Angeles were founded. The first Japanese newspaper in

11218-610: The LAPD's former headquarters, was the original site of the Nishi Hongwanji Buddhist Temple. The south edge of the block where Parker Center stands was part of the First Street business strip of shops. The warehouses and new condominiums to the east of Little Tokyo were once residential areas of the district. Similar urban development would continue in the 1960s and 1970s, further shrinking the extent of

11376-688: The Nations . The Nisei Week festival is held every August, and includes a large parade, a pageant, athletic events, exhibits of Japanese art and culture, a taiko drum festival, the Japanese Festival Street Faire, a car show, and other events. There are also two Japanese gardens in the area open to the public: the James Irvine garden in the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center and

11534-807: The Red Lotus (1965) and King Hu 's Come Drink with Me (1966). In the 1970s, the Hong Kong martial arts films began to grow under the format of yanggang ("staunch masculinity") mostly through the films of Chang Cheh which were popular. This transition led to the kung fu film sub-genre at beginning of the decade and moved beyond the swordplay films with contemporary settings of late Qing or early Republican periods and had more hand-to-hand combat over supernatural swordplay and special effects. A new studio, Golden Harvest quickly became one of independent filmmakers to grant creative freedom and pay and attracted new directors and actors, including Bruce Lee . The popularity of kung fu films and Bruce Lee led to attract

11692-400: The United States was Rafu Shimpo , founded in Little Tokyo in 1903 and which continues to operate. Founded during this time were rotating savings and credit associations known as tanomoshiko , which provided funding towards emerging business ventures in Little Tokyo. Community Leaders in the 1920s and 1930s established local entities of prominent Japanese American associations such as

11850-484: The United States, Europe and Japan had during this period. Yip described Japanese cinema as the most advanced in Asia at the time. This was showcased by the international breakthrough of Akira Kurosawa 's films like Rashomon (1950). The film genre known as the chanbara was at its height in Japan. The style was a sub-genre to the jidai-geki , or period drama with an emphasis on sword fighting and action. It had

12008-406: The United States, with films like Enter the Dragon about people who reveled in combat, often in a tournament setting, and The Yakuza which had several genres attached to it, but featured several martial arts sequences. By the end of the 1970s, the style was an established genre in American cinema, often featuring tough heroic characters who would fight and not think about their actions until after

12166-591: The Vampire Slayer (1997–2003)) and Xena ( Xena: Warrior Princess (1995–2001)). These series popularity demonstrated a growing market for female action film heroes, in films of the 2000s like Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001), Charlie's Angels (2000), Ultraviolet (2006), Salt (2010) and series like Underworld and Resident Evil . These series like their television series earlier, had their leads eroticized as active and physically capable while also being scantily-clad, hyper-feminized similar to

12324-621: The Weller Court mall was opposed by some people in the community because it redeveloped a strip of family-owned small businesses. Community activists established First Street as a historic district in 1986. In 2004, they helped reopen the Far East Cafe, an acknowledged community hub. Little Tokyo continues to develop and change with the general development of the greater Los Angeles Area through ordinances, construction, coalitions, etc. The 2024 announcement of First North Residences and

12482-594: The action film genre has been a subject of scholarly debate since the 1980s. Soberson wrote that repeated traits of the genre include chase sequences, fights, shootouts, explosions, and stunt work while other scholars asserted there were more underlying traits that define the genre. David Bordwell in The Way Hollywood Tells It wrote that audiences are "told that spectacle overrides narrative" in action cinema while Wheeler Winston Dixon echoed that these films were typified by "excessive spectacle" as

12640-553: The action heroine's dual status of an active subject and sexual object was overturning the traditional gender binary because the films "assume that women are powerful" without resorting to justify her physical aggression through narratives involving maternal drive, mental instability or trauma. Purse found that female leads in films like Elektra (2005), Kill Bill , Underworld , Charlie's Angels and Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005) did showcase women having expensive cars, clothing, travel, homes and often high-paying jobs, but that this

12798-487: The area, sometimes called Lil' Tokyo , J-Town , Shō-Tōkyō ( 小東京 ) , is the cultural center for Japanese Americans in Southern California . It was declared a National Historic Landmark District in 1995. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 played a pivotal role in the first large wave of Japanese Immigration to the United States as the Japanese were heavily recruited to serve as 'cheap labor' in place of

12956-504: The association. By 1940, the breadth of kenjinkai covered 40/46 Japanese Prefectures. In 1941, Little Tokyo reached its peak population with approximately 30,000 Japanese Americans living in Little Tokyo. The 1941 Pearl Harbor bombing brought an end to the increase in Japanese American population in Little Tokyo. The incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II emptied Little Tokyo. Beginning in 1942, after

13114-435: The book Australian Genre Film , Amanda Howell suggested that this label was used to help distance Australian cinema from Hollywood films as it would be suggesting commerce over culture and that it would be "quite unacceptable to make Australian movies using conventions established in the U.S.A." Howell stated this to be the case with action films of the 1970s and 1980s with Brian Trenchard-Smith 's Turkey Shoot (1982) being

13272-516: The city who make this section their rendezvous." The area was a magnet for immigrating Japanese until the Exclusion Act of 1924 halted any further migration. Shops were along First Street, and vegetable markets were along Central Avenue to the south. Japanese Americans were a significant ethnic group in the vegetable trade, due to the number of successful Japanese American truck farms across Southern California. The East First Street area

13430-626: The city's Japanese population was rounded up and "evacuated" to inland concentration camps , a large number of African Americans from the South moved to Los Angeles to find work in the labor-starved defense industry. Its share in the Second Great Migration almost tripled Little Tokyo's pre-war population, with some 80,000 new arrivals taking up residence there. For a brief time, the area became known as Bronzeville, as African Americans and also Native Americans and Latinos moved into

13588-550: The classical form of action cinema to be the 1980s. The decade continued the trends of formative period with heroes as avengers ( Lethal Weapon (1987)), rogue police officers ( Die Hard (1988)) and mercenary warriors ( Commando (1985)). Following the continuity of the car and man hybrid of the previous decade, the 1980s featured weaponized men with who were either also carrying weapons such as Sudden Impact (1983), trained to be weapons ( American Ninja (1985)) or imbued with technology ( RoboCop (1987)). O'Brien noted that

13746-586: The concrete in front of these shops, using bronze lettering, showing the history of each of the shops from the early 20th Century until the renovation of the district in the late 1980s. More broadly, Little Tokyo is bordered by the Los Angeles River to the east, downtown Los Angeles to the west, L.A. City Hall the Parker Center to the north, and Skid Row to the south. Museums include the Japanese American National Museum and an extension of

13904-421: The country, the organization hosts its annual national culmination "KOLLABORATION STAR" event at the Aratani Theatre, as well as their EMPOWER conference as incubator events for APIDA artists in the music industry. With the proximity of these organizations and Arts non-profit organizations, many notable actors, musicians and entertainers of AAPI descent have either begun their careers here, or continue to maintain

14062-614: The coverage of Little Tokyo. In the 1970s, a redevelopment movement started as Japanese corporations expanded overseas operations and many of them set up their U.S. headquarters in the Los Angeles area . Named the Little Tokyo Project, this movement resulted in the opening of several new shopping plazas and hotels opened, along with branches of some major Japanese banks. Although this redevelopment resulted in many new buildings and shopping centers, there are still some of

14220-464: The decline of overt masculinity in the action film which corresponded with the end of the Cold War in 1991, while the rise of self-referential and parodies of this era grew in films like Last Action Hero (1993). O'Brien described this era as being soft where the hard bodies of the classical era were replaced with computer generated imagery such as that of Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991). This

14378-559: The direct-to-video field, or in similarly low-budget theatrical releases such as Bulletproof Monk (2003). While the American styled-films were predominantly made in the United States, productions were also made in Australia, Canada, Hong Kong and South Africa, and were predominantly shot in the English-language. Heroic Bloodshed is a that originates with English-language Hong Kong action and crime film fan communities in

14536-487: The earlier work of directors like Woo and Johnnie To . Antong Chen, in his study on the Hong Kong action film, wrote that the influence of China and the amount of Chinese co-productions made with Hong Kong created a shift in these films, particularly following the release of Infernal Affairs (2002). Harvey O'Brien wrote in 2012 that the contemporary action film emerged through other genres, primarily Westerns , crime and war films and can be separated into four forms:

14694-432: The early 1960s and saw a surge in production of Hong Kong martial arts films that went beyond the stories about Wong Fei-hung which were declining in popularity. These new martial arts films featured magical swordplay and higher production values and more sophisticated special effects than the previous films with Shaw Brothers a campaign of "new school" ( xinpai ) martial arts swordplay films such as Xu Zenghong's Temple of

14852-428: The end of the 1990s. Films such as Chunhang (2000) and Memento Mori (2000) and action films Shiri (1999) and Nowhere to Hide (1999) received commercial releases in North America, Asia, and Europe. The success of the latter two films was unprecedented, and was followed by other South Korean action films in the early 2000s reaching the top of the local box office. These South Korean films mimic some traits of

15010-532: The female leads in implausible elements, such as in Charlie's Angels , Fantastic Four (2005) and My Super Ex-Girlfriend (2006). The fighting styles of women also tend towards more traditionally feminine fluid movements of martial arts, over using guns or directly punching. Purse wrote that the contemporary female action film lead's sexualized brand had her in close proximity of post-feminism discourse about choice, power and sexuality. Marc O'Day interprets

15168-441: The film is dedicated to him. He made one movie and one TV episode before and after filming during 1981–1982 that were released after Blue Thunder. Although the film was shot in Los Angeles and real-life neighborhoods are mentioned, the LAPD did not allow any references to be made to them. Hence, the police force is known as the more-generic "Metropolitan Police" and Frank Murphy is part of the fictional "ASTRO Division", rather than

15326-461: The film, " JAFO ", meaning "Just Another Fucking Observer", is police community jargon and is mentioned repeatedly in the film in reference to any police helicopter's non-pilot second officer, in this case Daniel Stern 's character of Richard Lymangood. In the related TV series , the reference is expurgated for prime-time television as "Just Another Frustrated Observer" for Clinton Wonderlove ( Dana Carvey ). A screen still from Blue Thunder of

15484-537: The film, the player plays the pilot of the Blue Thunder helicopter as he tries to prevent the World Peace Coalition from being attacked by a terrorist organization. In 2015, Sony proposed a remake of Blue Thunder focusing on drone technology , with Dana Brunetti and Michael De Luca as producers, and Craig Kyle as writer. In 2017, it was announced that Columbia Pictures would be overseeing

15642-417: The film. For instance, the 360° loop maneuver Murphy performs at the end of the film, which catches Cochrane so completely by surprise that he is easily shot down by Murphy's gunfire and killed, was carried out by a radio controlled model. Blue Thunder was released on May 13, 1983. It was the number 1 ranked film in the United States on its opening weekend, taking in $ 8,258,149 at 1,539 theaters, overtaking

15800-414: The following films were voted the top ten best action films of all time. In Hong Kong, the "new school" of martial arts films that Shaw Brothers brought in 1965 featured what featured what Yip described as "strong, active female characters as protagonists." These female-centered films were challenged with the rise of a new male heroic prototype marked by a strong sense of youthful energy and defiance and by

15958-448: The formative trends at this point had become "identifiably generic" as film industries began to reproduced these films during the decade producers like Joel Silver and production companies like The Cannon Group, Inc. began to formulate production of these films with both high and low budgets. The action films of this era have roots in classical story telling, specifically rooted from martial arts films and Westerns, and are built around

16116-610: The formative, the classical, the post-classical and neoclassical phases. Yvonne Tasker reiterated this in her book on action and adventure films , saying that action films became a distinct genre during the New Hollywood period of the 1970s. The formative films would be from the 1960s to the early 1980s where the Anti-hero appears in cinema, featuring characters who act and transcend the law and social conventions. This appears initially in films like Bullitt (1968) where

16274-551: The former was one of the highest-grossing movies of the year in Japan. Following LoveDeath , Kitamura's next directing work was in the United States. The action cinema of South Korea mostly existed on the margins of the film industry in South Korea. The genre was initially called the Hwalkuk ("living theatre") was a term that indicated plays and films driven by action scenes, while this term has not been used regularly since

16432-430: The ground. While heroes in kung fu films often display chivalry, they generally hail from different fighting schools, namely wudang and shaolin . American martial arts films feature what author M. Ray Lott described as a more realistic style of violence over the Hong Kong wuxia films with more realism and are often low-budget productions. Martial arts began routinely appearing in fight scenes in American films in

16590-412: The helicopter erupts in a huge fireball, but Murphy quietly walks away unharmed and disappears, his enemies assuming he was killed in the explosion. In the meantime, the tape is made public, and the conspirators are arrested. Co-writers Dan O'Bannon and Don Jakoby began developing the plot while living together in a Hollywood apartment in the late 1970s, where low-flying police helicopters woke them on

16748-680: The helicopter flying in front of the Los Angeles skyline is used as the background image of the title screen in the Sega 1987 video game Thunder Blade . In the TaleSpin episode "Baloo Thunder," the episode title and certain plot elements are referenced and parodied from the film, when ace pilot Baloo helps out his inventor friend Buzz, who is being framed for stealing a "Top Secret Project" from his industrialist employer Shere Khan by an ambitious corporate spy within Khan Industries for

16906-511: The hunt-and-destroy operation. Cochrane, frustrated and bent on finally putting down his former subordinate, defies his orders to stand down and ambushes Blue Thunder in a heavily-armed Hughes 500 helicopter. After a tense battle, Murphy shoots Cochrane down, executing a 360° loop through use of Blue Thunder 's turbine boost function. His vehicle having sustained heavy damage and running low on fuel, Murphy then destroys Blue Thunder by landing it in front of an approaching freight train;

17064-489: The image of Indiana Jones in Raiders swinging his whip to fend off villains in the backstreets of Cairo. British author and academic Yvonne Tasker expanded on this topic, stating that action films have no clear and constant iconography or settings. In her book The Hollywood Action and Adventure Film (2015), she found that the most broadly consistent themes tend to be a characters quest from freedom from oppression such as

17222-611: The industrialized area. Al's Bar, Gorky's, the Atomic Cafe and LA Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE) are some well-known sites. Land use has been a contentious issue in Little Tokyo due to its history, the proximity to the Los Angeles Civic Center neighborhood, the role of Los Angeles as a site of business between Japan and America, and the increasing influx of residents into the Arts District . Unlike

17380-520: The late 1920s. These films were popular during the period, which comprised almost 60% of the total Chinese films. Man-Fung Yip stated that these film were "rather tame" by contemporary standards. He wrote that they lacked the kind of dazzling action choreography as expected today and had crude and rudimentary special effects. These films came under increasing attack by both government officials and cultural elites for their allegedly superstitious and anarchistic tendencies, leading them to be banned in 1932. It

17538-570: The late 1970s, with "action movie" becoming the more familiar term. The Korean action films came from Japanese cinema, James Bond series , and Hong Kong action cinema. As North Korea borders China, it block access to the continent from a South Korean perspective, the Cold War allowed South Koreans to substitute deferred travel beyond the border through films with locations shot in Hong Kong. While melodrama and comedy were staples in South Korean cinema, most action films were sporadic and tied to

17696-508: The late 1980s and early 1990s. In the Chinese language, the term used for these films is jinghungpin , literally meaning "hero films". Academic Laikwan Pang asserts that these gangster films appeared at a time when Hong Kong citizens felt particularly powerless with the handover of Hong Kong from the United Kingdom to China set for 1997. The key directors of the genre were John Woo and Ringo Lam , and producer Tsui Hark , with

17854-513: The late 1980s and early 1990s. Author Bey Logan stated that the term was coined by Rick Baker, in the British fanzine Eastern Heroes . The term is used broadly. Baker described the style as Hong Kong action films which feature gangsters and gunplay and martial arts that were more violent than kung fu films and academic Kristof Van Den Troost described it a term used to distinguish Hong Kong gun-heavy action films from period martial arts films from

18012-431: The late 1980s in the United States were martial arts films. Towards the end of the 1990s, production of low-budget martial arts films declined as no new stars in the genre developed and older actors such as Cynthia Rothrock and Steven Seagal started showing up in less and less films. Even internationally popular films like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) had negligible effects in American productions in either

18170-624: The most notorious. Smith had previously released films like Deathcheaters (1976) and Stunt Rock (1979) when financial incentives were available for overtly commercial projects. She commented that action films did tell identifiably Australian stories such as the Sandy Harbutt 's biker film Stone (1974) and Miller's post-apocalyptic film Mad Max (1979) derived from Australia's social and cultural realities, as well as how George Miller 's later Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) derived from Australia's long-standing cinematic fascination with

18328-475: The most popular and popularly derided of contemporary cinema genres, stating that "in mainstream discourse, the genre is regularly lambasted for favoring spectacle over finely tuned narrative." Bordwell echoed this in his book, The Way Hollywood Tells It , writing that the reception to the genre as being "the emblem of what Hollywood does worst." In the Journal of Film and Video , Lennart Soberson stated that

18486-414: The municipal government; beginning with two LAPD Bell 206s . After Murphy incapacitates the first one, forcing it to land via autorotation , he engages in a cat-and-mouse chase with the second by slaloming down the Los Angeles River viaduct until his pursuer crashes. Following this, two Air National Guard F-16 fighters are deployed to deal with Murphy, but he manages to shoot one of them down and evade

18644-421: The news station, but is almost confronted by one of the conspirators; the reporter Kate was sent to find intercepts Kate and gets the tape back, while the conspirator is knocked unconscious by a security guard before it can be electronically erased. Deeming Murphy as a security risk, Cochrane and the other conspirators employ every asset they can manage to bring Blue Thunder down, including the initial support of

18802-604: The notion that traditional marks of masculinity are not exclusive to men and that musculature was not natural, but something to be achieved. Accusations of these muscular women of the era were levelled at that them by 1993 were that they were "men in drag" and that the films generally have to "explain" why their female leads displayed physical aggression and why they were "driven to do it." As the 1990s went on, Hollywood films began having more conventional looking women in their action films such as The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996). A vibrant debate exists about whether hypersexualization

18960-695: The now excluded Chinese laborers. One of the people influenced by this first wave of Japanese Immigration was Hamanosuke Shigeta, a Japanese seaman who settled in southeast Los Angeles, an area which would eventually become Little Tokyo. There Shigeta established the first Japanese-owned business in LA, Kame Restaurant, along the East First Street . Attracted by the restaurant and nearby demands for labor, other Japanese immigrant men followed suit as they settled along East First Street in nearby boarding houses. The first Japanese boarding house in Los Angeles

19118-590: The oldest still-operating food establishment in the city and the first one to celebrate a centennial; its best-known offerings include mochi and manjū , and it claims to be an inventor of the fortune cookie . Mikawaya was founded in 1910, but is now well known as the company that introduced mochi ice cream to the United States in 1994. Little Tokyo has several shops that specialize in Japanese-language videos and DVDs , while other shops specialize in Japanese electronics and video games . These are

19276-412: The original Little Tokyo buildings and restaurants, especially along First Street. The Little Tokyo Project would transform Little Tokyo into its present version: an area bounded by Los Angeles Street , Alameda Street , Third Street , and half a block north from First Street. During the 1970s and 1980s, artists began to move into nearby aging warehouse spaces in the area, forming a hidden community in

19434-512: The other side of credibility, but it propels a willing audience into adrenaline heaven." Vincent Canby of The New York Times wrote: "The action sequences are what the film is all about, and these are remarkably well done, including a climactic, largely bloodless shootout among helicopters and jet fighters over Los Angeles." C. J. Henderson reviewed Blue Thunder in The Space Gamer No. 63. Henderson commented that " Blue Thunder

19592-473: The other. In the process, one heat-seeking missile destroys a barbecue stand in Little Tokyo and a second missile hits the sun-warmed windows of an ARCO Plaza high-rise building, in both cases having been fooled into missing the prototype by the heat generated by the false targets. Appalled at the heavy destruction in the city so far, and wanting to avoid further collateral damage, the mayor then suspends

19750-435: The physical effort required to completing a task and the abilities and skills acquired over time. Films from the period reflected on the cultural and social climate from the period, as seen in invoking Japanese or Western imperialist forces as foils. The kung fu film came out of the wuxia films. In comparison to the wuxia , film, the focus on the kung fu film is on the martial arts over chivalry, The martial arts films

19908-574: The popularity Bachan had. These films predominantly earned their revenue through longer runs at B-grade theatres. A cycle of action films came from these films in the 1980s and 1990s called the Avenging Woman film, where female protagonists seek justice for a rape victim, where the protagonist seeks revenge through violence. In 2009, the action genre was re-popularized with the box office success of Wanted (2009) starring Salman Khan . Khan reinvented his screen persona with that of his image in

20066-543: The postwar period. These films were targeted at the more educated and more refined middle-class audiences who saw themselves as above the contemporary martial arts films. Scott Higgins wrote in 2008 in Cinema Journal that Hollywood action films are both one of the most popular and popularly derided of contemporary cinema genres, stating that "in mainstream discourse, the genre is regularly lambasted for favoring spectacle over finely tuned narrative." Bordwell echoed this in his book, The Way Hollywood Tells It , writing that

20224-580: The previous number 1 film Flashdance . The film was ranked No. 2 in its second and third weekends. Overall, in the US, it took in $ 42,313,354 for its 66 days of release. Blue Thunder was released in West Germany on February 5, 1983, before its US release, being released worldwide between June and September 1983. Its UK release was August 25, 1983. It was released in East Germany and South Korea in 1984. Its total international box office income

20382-488: The primary test pilot for Blue Thunder and someone who felt Murphy was "unsuitable" for the program. During a test flight operation over the city, Murphy and Lymangood use Blue Thunder to follow and video record a meeting between Cochrane and the other government officials which would implicate them in the conspiracy, but Cochrane unexpectedly looks outside and sees Blue Thunder hovering in front of their window and realize what has happened. After landing, Lymangood secures

20540-650: The public courtyard of the Union Center for the Arts Cold Tofu Improv was founded in 1981 as the nation's first Asian American Improv & Comedy Group. Teaching classes in short form and long form improv. Kollaboration founded in 2000, is an organization focusing on advancing Asian, Pacific Islander, and Desi Americans (APIDA) in the Music and entertainment industries. With affiliates in San Francisco, Atlanta, Hawaii, Houston, Boston and throughout

20698-550: The real-life "Air Support Division". However, Air Support assignments are often known as ASTRO, or "Air Support to Regular Operations". The LAPD Hooper Heliport , which was still under construction at the time, filled in as the home base for the fictional version of the police air unit. The drive-in theater scene where Frank's girlfriend Kate recovers the tape was filmed at the Pickwick Theatre in Burbank, California ;

20856-402: The reception to the genre as being "the emblem of what Hollywood does worst." Tasker wrote that when action and adventure films secured awards, it is often in categories such as visual effects and sound editing. Time Out magazine conducted a poll with fifty experts in the field of action cinema, including actors, critics, filmmakers and stuntmen. Out of the 101 films ranked in the poll,

21014-413: The remake. Action thriller film While the term "action film" or "action adventure film" has been used as early as the 1910s, the contemporary definition usually refers to a film that came with the arrival of New Hollywood and the rise of anti-heroes appearing in American films of the late 1960s and 1970s drawing from war films , crime films and Westerns . These genres were followed by what

21172-441: The road and cars and a history of cultural anxiety towards a bleak and forbidding outback landscape opposed to the optimism of American action films. France is a major European country for film production and has made co-production commitments with 44 countries around the world. Around beginning of the 21st century, France began producing a series of films explicitly intended for international markets, with action films representing

21330-529: The serialization of Jinaghu qixia zhuan (1922) ( transl.  Legend of the Strange Swordsmen ). In wuxia , the emphasis is on chivalry and righteousness and allows for phantasmagoric actions over the kung fu film 's more ground-based combat. The Kung fu film emerged in the 1970s from the swordplay films. Its name is derived from the Cantonese term gong fu which has two meanings:

21488-485: The starting point of the genre being traced to Woo's A Better Tomorrow (1986) make a record-breaking HK$ 34.7 million at the Hong Kong box office. The style of these films would influence American productions, such as Michael Bay 's Bad Boys II (2003) and the Wachowskis ' The Matrix (1999). Korean media recognized the more fatalistic and pessimistic tone of these films, leading to Korean journalists to label

21646-433: The style as "Hong Kong noir ". The influence of these films was evident in early Korean films such as Im Kwon-taek 's General's Son (1990) and later films such Song Hae-sung 's A Better Tomorrow (2010), Cold Eyes (2013) and New World (2013). Postcolonial Hong Kong cinema has struggled to maintain its international identity as a provider of these types action films because the talents involved had abandoned

21804-420: The tape and hides it, but is captured upon returning to his home, interrogated, and then killed while trying to escape from them. Murphy hijacks Blue Thunder and arranges to have his girlfriend Kate retrieve the tape and deliver it to the local news station, using the helicopter to thwart her pursuers. After a crazy high-speed journey through the city which wrecks many police and civilian vehicles, Kate arrives at

21962-450: The term action film genre and adventure are often used in hybrid, and are even used interchangeably. Along with Holmund and Purse, Tasker wrote that the action films expansiveness complicates easy categorization and though the genre is often spoken of as singular genre, it is rarely discussed as singular style. Screenwriter and academic Jule Selbo expanded on this, describing a film as " crime /action" or an "action/crime" or other hybrids

22120-408: The theater has since then been demolished and replaced by a Pavilions supermarket. Malcolm McDowell , who portrayed antagonist F. E. Cochrane; ironically has an intense fear of flying in real life and not even his then-wife Mary Steenburgen could persuade him to overcome his phobia. In an interview for Starlog in 1983, Badham recalled, "He was terrified. He used to get out and throw up after

22278-445: The themes that rescinded irony to restore " cinephile re-actualization of the genre's conventions." The genre went into full circle resurrecting films from the classical period with Live Free or Die Hard (2007) and Rambo (2008) finding the characters navigating a contemporary world while also acknowledging their age, culminating into The Expendables (2010) film. The most commercially successful action films and franchise of

22436-529: The title character in China O'Brien (1990) who were physically muscular and or enacted more extreme violence that was usually reserve for male action leads. In her book Contemporary Action Cinema (2011), Lisa Purse described the media response to female leads in action films reveal a discomfort about their presence and are often described with hesitant terms of women moving into territories that are perceived as masculine. Revealing woman in this form deconstructs

22594-539: The turn of the millennium, Australian genre films have gained increasing acceptance in the Australian feature film industry, while the action genre represented a small percentage of its output in the 21st century. Scholars of Australian genre film generally used the term "action-adventure" which allows them to apply it to various forms of narratives such as tongue in cheek heroic posturing stories like Crocodile Dundee (1986), road movies or bush/outback films. In

22752-422: The use of locations such as Hong Kong. These films often featured one-legged or otherwise handicapped action characters similar to those of Japanese films ( Zatoichi ) and Hong Kong films ( The One-Armed Swordsmen ). These included Im Kwon-taek's Returned Left-Handed Man (1968), Aekkunun Bak's One-Eyd Park (1970) and Lee Doo-yong's Returned One-Legged Man (1974). In the 1990s, the country's national cinema

22910-703: The vacated properties and opened up nightclubs, restaurants, and other businesses. Prohibited from buying and renting in most parts of the city by restrictive covenants , the area soon became severely overcrowded. A single bathroom was often shared by up to 40 people and one room could house as many as 16 occupants; people frequently shared "hot beds," sleeping in shifts. Poor housing conditions helped spread communicable illnesses like tuberculosis and venereal disease. Crimes like robberies, rapes, and hit-and-run accidents increased, and in May and June 1943 Latino and some African American residents of Bronzeville were attacked by whites in

23068-475: The woman of exploitation films of the 1970s such as Caged Heat (1974) and Big Bad Mama (1974). While characters like Frank in The Transporter series are permitted to visibly sweat, strain and be bloodied, Purse found a reluctance for filmmakers to have their female leads have any appearance warping injuries to ensure a perfectly made-up face. Comedy is often used in films of this period to place

23226-448: Was "only a semantic exercise" as both genres are important in the construction phase of the narrative. Mark Bould in A Companion to Film Noir (2013) said that categorization of multiple generic genre labels was common in film reviews who are rarely concerned with succinct descriptions that evoke elements of the film's form, content and make no claims beyond on how these elements combine. Film Studies began to engage generic hybridity in

23384-408: Was a difficult market for Hong Kong action cinema to break into. Prompted by the success of Enter the Dragon and the popularity of Bruce Lee, Toei made their own Bruce Lee-style martial arts films, with The Street Fighter and its two sequels starring Sonny Chiba as well as a spin-off with a female lead similar to Hong Kong's Angela Mao called Sister Street Fighter . The success of Enter

23542-466: Was aiming for the foreign audience, as he was disappointed with the current state of Japanese films. Kitamura's characters have been described as "a careful combination of the maverick independence of 1980s Hollywood action heroes and the calmness and acceptance of Japanese samurai, a consistent criticism of Japanese people today." Kitamura followed up Versus with two manga-inspired big-budget action films, Azumi and Sky High . Both released in 2003,

23700-417: Was displayed in corresponding with corresponded with millennial angst and apocalypticism showcased in films like Independence Day (1996) and Armageddon (1998). Action films of mass destruction began requiring more overtly super heroic characters with further comic book adaptations being made with increased non-realistic settings with films like The Matrix (1999). The fourth phase arrived following

23858-577: Was established by Sanjuro Mizuno, who opened the Santa Fe Boarding House in 1898 to cater to Japanese laborers. To house the wave of new immigrants coming to Little Tokyo, early immigrants also opened more of them. By the early 1900s, the Japanese population in Little Tokyo had reached a population of around 3,000. It jumped to 10,000 following the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake , which convinced many Japanese to move from San Francisco to Los Angeles. In 1907, The Gentleman's Agreement

24016-469: Was in decline by the mid-1970s in Hong Kong in relation to the stock market crash which went from over 150 films in 1972 to just over 80 in 1975, which led to a downfall in martial arts films produced. When the economy became to rebound, a new trend of martial arts films, the Shaolin kung fu films emerged and sparked a revival of the genre. Unlike the wuxia , the kung fu film primarily focuses on fighting on

24174-509: Was in decline leading to Hong Kong gangster films filled in this void leading to large commercial success at the national box office. Early Korean heirs to Hong Kong action films include Rules of The Game (1994), Beat (1997), and Green Fish (1997) involving men who gain confidence and achieve personal growth as they embark on journeys to protect national state and meet devastating ends. South Korean cinema only received international attention in both art film and blockbuster formats towards

24332-599: Was not until the base of Chinese commercial filmmaking was relocated from Shanghai to Hong Kong in the late 1940s that martial arts cinema was revived. These films contained much of the characteristics of the previous era. During this period, over 100 films were based on the adventures of real life Cantonese folk hero Wong Fei-hung who first appeared in film in 1949. These films primarily on circuited within Hong Kong and Cantonese-speaking areas with Chinese diaspora . Yip continued that these Hong Kong films were still lagging behind in aesthetic and technical standards that films from

24490-504: Was only in the mid-20th century when action films developed into their own recognizable genre instead of being a collection of other types of films such as Westerns, swashbucklers or adventure films. Films have been described "action films" or "action-adventure film" as early as the 1910s. Only by the 1980s was the term action as its own unique genre used routinely in terms of promotion and reviewing practices. The first Chinese-language martial arts films can be traced to Shanghai cinema of

24648-541: Was only shown as being applicable to white middle-class women. Purse found that these women were empowered at the price of women of other ethnicities. This is seen in Aeon Flux (2005) where Sithandra dies protecting Aeon and Rain's death to make way for Alice in Resident Evil (2002). Little Tokyo, Los Angeles Little Tokyo ( Japanese : リトル・トーキョー ), also known as Little Tokyo Historic District ,

24806-407: Was signed between Japan and the United States in which Japan voluntarily restricted the emigration of Japanese laborers, allowing only families of current residents to immigrate, in exchange for the United States to ensure no discrimination against the Japanese people in the US. The implementation of the agreement led to an influx of women who joined family or husbands as new brides in Little Tokyo. As

24964-659: Was the second major project of the East West Development Corporation in association with the Community Redevelopment Agency, after the $ 30 million New Otani. Groundbreaking was held in November 1978, to be completed in 1979 with 62,780 square feet (5,832 m ) of gross leasable area. The architect was Kajima Associates. In the 1920s, the southeast corner of First Street was the beginning of Little Tokyo. At this corner

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