firehawk12 said:
Action scenes do for men what Brad Pitt taking off his shirt do for women. They look nice, stimulate one's eyeballs, but all the srs bsns stuff usually happens after all the action is done and people are left to reflect on whatever violence has just occurred.
Are there times when action might matter? Sure. But more often that not, we get Sucker Punch and Battle Los Angeles.
Im going to attempt to reconstruct your argument into an easy to digest form, please correct me if Im misrepresenting your position. It seems to go a little like this:
Premise 1: Action scenes are visually pleasing for a certain segment of the audience.
Premise 2: The important parts of the show usually occur after the action sequences are over.
Premise 3: Sometimes an action sequence will deal with the important parts of show.
Premise 4: However, most of the time that isnt the case.
Conclusion: Therefore, action scenes do not contribute to the development of the show.
Im going to stick on some implied assumption that, presumably, must be true for the argument to make any sense.
Premise 1: Action scenes are visually pleasing for a certain segment of the audience.
Assumption 1: This is what, for the most past, drives the creation of action scenes.
Assumption 2: This is a shallow reason to create a sequence in story.
Assumption 3: Therefore, its no surprise that they dont contribute to the important parts of the show.
Premise 2: The important parts of the show usually occur after the action sequences are over.
Assumption 3: The most important parts of a show are those that deal with character, story and theme.
Premise 3: Sometimes an action sequence will deal with the important parts of show.
Premise 4: However, most of the time that isnt the case.
Conclusion: Therefore, action scenes do not contribute to the development of the
show.
Setting aside the apparently useless P1 and its attached set of far-fetched assumptions, youre no doubt aware this is a rather shaky argument overall. You know this as you said usually and you admit there are times when the action scenes do matter. If action scenes do matter sometimes, even if that isnt the case in every single example, then they are important and can contribute to the development of the show. Therefore you cant claim, as a sweeping universal statement that action scenes dont contribute the development of a show.