By Robert Scucci
| Published
Filmmakers need to bring back the warehouse showdown, and I’m tired of letting them get away with over-the-top action sequences that cost tens of millions of dollars to produce. These days, every action sequence has to be elevated. The Gray Man (2022) gets off on leveling entire city blocks, and the John Wick films, which are some of my favorite modern action movies, go for intense choreography and enough changes in scenery to make me slip into an overstimulation-induced coma. The list goes on. Look at any superhero movie where entire cities get razed to the ground, with 2013’s Man of Steel being perhaps the most egregious example.
All of the above titles have a disappointing lack of warehouse showdowns, and I often wonder why. Well, the real reason is that all of these productions had massive bankrolls behind them, whereas warehouse showdowns are typically found in action movies with much smaller budgets.
It doesn’t have to be this way, though, because we’ve seen iterations of the warehouse showdown in Michael Bay films like The Rock (1996) and forgotten low-budget action thrillers like Army of One (1993) alike.
Personally, I’ve become so desensitized to action sequences that I think I need to be intravenously injected with a good old warehouse showdown at least once a month as part of my longevity treatment.
Why The Warehouse Showdown Is Iconic
These days, all action has to be elevated, but it wasn’t always like that. In the 80s and 90s, the warehouse showdown didn’t discriminate, and you can see varying levels of awesomeness across low-budget films like Raw Deal (1986), Stone Cold (1991), Hard Boiled (1992), and Showdown in Little Tokyo (1991). The setup is always simple. The good guys take out what they think are all the henchmen, then finally make it to the boss level, where the primary antagonist is surrounded by even more henchmen and apparently lives in a warehouse that manufactures nothing but sparks and noise.
All you have to do while watching a classic warehouse showdown is sit back, relax, listen to the glorious music of shell casings scattering across the floor, and brace yourself for plenty of well-timed explosions that light the entire place up as our heroes run from the coming, all-consuming fireball and dive into the conveniently placed marina right next door.
You don’t need $50 million to have a solid warehouse showdown. All you need is grit, squibs, decent lighting, and a revolving door of villains who can be thrown into a pile of highly flammable barrels that are also conveniently placed throughout the field of play.
It’s Not Just A Matter Of Budget
While it certainly sounds like I’m only into low-budget schlock (I am, but that’s beside the point), the warehouse showdown isn’t just for filmmakers with limited resources. Sometimes you get the best of both worlds, which is exactly what we see in 1996’s The Rock, directed by none other than Michael Bay. I say the best of both worlds because there’s a high-speed chase through the streets of San Francisco involving a bright yellow Ferrari F355 Spider, which obviously wasn’t cheap to pull off. Streets had to be shut down, and I imagine a sequence like this required dozens of technicians on the payroll.
But here’s why The Rock is one of the greatest action movies of all time. What is Alcatraz? That’s a rhetorical question. I know Alcatraz is an out-of-service prison where you can throw a couple of quarters into a crank machine and get a crappy souvenir in the form of a flattened penny with the Golden Gate Bridge stamped on it or whatever. Still, the point stands that Alcatraz is basically just a giant warehouse, and you better believe there’s going to be a showdown.
The same can be said for RoboCop (1987) and Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), which both use steel mills as de facto warehouses for their showdowns. It’s a simple, self-contained setup that requires no worldbuilding and no constant changes in scenery. It’s the setting for the final showdown, where you can get close-ups and maybe even a great one-liner from our heroes while they focus on what’s most important: blowing sh*t up and taking out dozens of enemies in a very short amount of time.
As modern filmmaking continues to push the envelope, with the Space Pontiac in F9 coming to mind, sometimes we just need to go back to basics and blow the roof off a warehouse for the love of the game.
