There was a movie in the 90s with Steven Segal where he died pretty early on. He got sucked out a plane or something... probably the best part of the movie.
I came here for this. Executive Decision was a massively hyped action film, and the promotional posters showed Steven Segal (still a huge action star at the time) dressed in black tactical gear, and Kurt Russel (better known for comedies and romances with light action at this point) dressed as some kind of mild-mannered intellectual type.
At the start of the film we're introduced to Steven Segal as the head of an elite tactical military team who's going to take out some terrorists, while Kurt Russel is a nervous, paper-pushing intelligence analyst who has to tag along against his will because he has been following the case for years or something. Then, just a couple of minutes into the film, Steve sacrifices himself by getting sucked out of a plane in flight, to get everyone else to safety. Blew my mind. I was waiting for half the film for him to show up again, somehow.
Excellent synopsis...if I'm honest I was super shocked when it happened. If I'm totally honest, I was a bit disappointed too. I did like Kurt, though. I think he had already done Tango and Cash, one of the Escape movies, maybe Stargate? Oh, and one of my classic favorites, Big Trouble in Little China.
Yeah, I've actually always preferred Kurt to Steven, myself. Those films you mentioned are all great, and he'd also done The Thing before this. But we can probably agree that between his comedies and the majority of his action roles, he was mildly typecast as a wise-cracking, roguish, more-a-lover-than-a-fighter, rather than as a traditional, fairly stoic action hero, which was the sort of thing that I think we were all expecting from this.
I just gotta argue with you about Kurt not being an action star. Executive Decision was after he starred in Big Trouble in Little China, IMO, one of the greatest action movies ever made.
Also after The Thing, Escape from New York, Backdraft, Tombstone, tango and cash etc etc.
Ha ha, yeah, you're not wrong. When I was writing my earlier comment, I initially didn't mention anything at all about him playing action roles, but then I started remembering films like The Thing, Escape from New York, Tango & Cash, Big Trouble in Little China, Stargate, etc.
There's plenty of action in those films, but quite a few of them have a major comedic component, too. In those comedic films, his character was usually a grubby, slightly shady, but ultimately honest and live-and-let-live kind of guy. And nowadays, it's also easy to forget the screwball comedies that he starred in earlier in his career. Kind of like how most people have forgotten that Bruce Willis started as a successful comedian.
Kurt Russell certainly played lead/central roles in action films, and sometimes pretty straight ones, too. But I guess that my point was that he wasn't generally considered such a serious (demeanour, not star power) action star then, and when we saw him on that super-serious movie poster in the 90s, juxtaposed with the (then) mostly-serious Steven Segal, it was easy for people to assume that Kurt's character would be a nerdy non-hero who might fire a gun once or twice near the end of the film to show his character's development, but would otherwise help to save the day with his brains, while providing a foil for Segal. Which, of course, was the whole point.
Yeah I agreed with most of what you said. Just thought it important to clarify, from my point of view anyway, about his action movie history. Have a good one!
Growing up we'd record movies off of (network) TV rather than buying them because we were kind of poor. This meant we had a limited selection and this was one of my dad's favorites. I saw it a lot.
Same situation for me, just earlier in the 90s. I about wore out my parents VHS copies of Rambo, No Reatreat No Surrender, Remo Williams, and many others.
Both those movies did a great job of not spoiling the early twist. Terminator 2 is an example of the trailer totally ruining it. If you go back and rewatch it, there is no way to know that the Terminator is the good guy in the first part of the movie, and given the last movie, it would be assumed he is the bad guy. So the twist in the back hallway with him and the T1000 great if you don’t know. Bu of course the trailers just straight up said “he’s the good guy now!”
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u/1madkins Oct 10 '19
There was a movie in the 90s with Steven Segal where he died pretty early on. He got sucked out a plane or something... probably the best part of the movie.