The Action Genre and the ‘International Turn’ in Australian Cinema

Abstract

While the action genre is international and dates back to the earliest days of narrative film, it is perhaps most strongly associated with post-1960s Hollywood. According to Boxofficemojo.com, six of the 10 all-time top-grossing films worldwide are contemporary Hollywood-produced action films. Often borrowing its settings and iconography from other genres (including fantasy, science fiction, or the war film), the action genre’s focus on spectacle is ideal for multi-media marketing and allows it to more easily circulate among non-English-speaking cinema audiences. This chapter argues that action forms a significant—but not unproblematic—part of what Ben Goldsmith terms the ‘international turn’ in Australian cinema. After surveying its historical precedents in Australia and its positioning in the international marketplace, this chapter examines action’s role in recent Australian cinema as it steers a course between Hollywood-style genre film and more distinctive national offerings in its pursuit of global audiences. The chapter analyses the role of action in a range of Australian genre films and co-productions, including Daybreakers (Michael and Peter Spierig, 2009), Tomorrow, When the War Began (Stuart Beattie, 2010), Killer Elite (Gary McKendry, 2011), Son of a Gun (Julius Avery, 2014), and I, Frankenstein (Stuart Beattie, 2014), as well as Mad Max: Fury Road (George Miller, 2015) and the Mad Max franchise more generally.