Introduction to Visual Culture

Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning: Action and Mise-en-Scène Analysis

The most recent Hollywood action film I watched was Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning (2025), directed by Christopher McQuarrie. This movie is the eighth and might be…

Analysis of the Action Film

A defining action moment in Source Code (Duncan Jones, 2011) occurs when Captain Colter Stevens identifies the explosive under a commuter train seat just before detonation. In a…

The most recent Hollywood action movie I watched was Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011), and the screenshot I took comes from one of the big battle scenes in downtown Chicago. This moment really shows how modern franchise action movies try to overwhelm the viewer with destruction, speed, and CGI. The frame is honestly chaotic: a Decepticon ship tearing through the sky, explosions going off in the street, cars flipped over and burning, and tiny human figures being tossed around in the background. There isn’t one main thing to focus on because there’s so much happening at once. That overload is basically the film’s whole approach to action. In my screenshot, the mise en scène stacks mechanical violence on top of an already wrecked city space. You can see burned-out vehicles, cracked pavement, debris everywhere, almost no part of the frame is calm. The brightest spot is the blue glow coming from the Decepticon ship, which naturally pulls your eyes toward the robot instead of the people running below it. The humans look small and exposed, which is one of the movie’s main ideas: humans don’t stand a chance against these giant alien machines. That imbalance shows up all through the film, and this frame captures it perfectly. When you look at the shots before and after this moment, the editing is extremely fast. During about a minute of the Chicago battle, there are dozens of quick cuts jumping between wide aerial shots, collapsing buildings, explosions, and close-ups of soldiers trying to escape. I felt like I never stayed in one POV for more than a second. One moment I’m behind a flying Decepticon, and the next I’m dropped back to ground level surrounded by smoke and fire. Lisa Purse talks about this type of editing as a way to “immerse the viewer in the sensory overload of combat,” and the movie definitely does that. Even though the film tries to make the transitions smooth, the constant cutting makes me super aware of the camera. The camera movement is also exaggerated and definitely not how a real person would see things. It swoops, spins, and dives into angles that would be impossible in real life. Instead of trying to hide the camera, the movie basically shows off what it can do. Geoff King calls this the “spectacle-driven aesthetic” of blockbusters, where the main goal is to create huge visual moments, not realism. The way the film cuts mid-explosion or mid-transformation adds to that feeling. It never lets the viewer settle into one shot before another one crashes in. The action in the frame is fast, loud, and visually packed. The robots move with impossible strength, destroying cars or entire parts of buildings in one move. The city feels like it was designed just to be torn apart. Most of the characters you see are men, especially soldiers, who are yelling or firing weapons that don’t really do anything against the robots’ tech. This lines up with Yvonne Tasker’s idea of “muscular spectacle,” where action movies put male bodies in the middle of danger even when the real power comes from something non-human. A lot of scholars say the same things we see in this screenshot, hyper-fast cutting, huge CGI destruction, and total visual overload are trademarks of today’s Hollywood blockbusters. With the rise of digital effects, directors build action scenes around destruction because they know audiences will respond to it. Purse argues that these movies train viewers to expect high levels of visual stimulation, almost to the point where calm scenes feel empty. This single image from Dark of the Moon fits exactly into that trend. On top of that, the movie was a massive commercial success. It made over $1.1 billion worldwide, which shows that audiences clearly support this kind of CGI-heavy, destruction-focused action filmmaking. The franchise basically built its reputation on scale and chaos, and people still show up to see it. As for real-life impact, some scholars say that constant exposure to this kind of destruction can shape how viewers process violence. It’s not like one movie suddenly makes someone desensitized, but watching this style repeatedly can make large-scale destruction feel normal or even entertaining. Action films also help shape ideas about masculinity, military power, and technology. Even though movies like Dark of the Moon don’t directly cause behavior, they still play a role in building cultural ideas around conflict, heroism, and power. Overall, the screenshot I captured shows exactly what the Transformers franchise is known for: massive destruction, overwhelming movement, and a visual style built on chaos. It also reflects the bigger trends in modern action filmmaking, where spectacle comes first and everything else, including the human characters comes second. Box Office Mojo. “Transformers: Dark of the Moon.” Accessed November 2025. https://www.boxofficemojo.com/title/tt1399103/. King, Geoff. Spectacular Narratives: Hollywood in the Age of the Blockbuster. London: I.B. Tauris, 2000. Purse, Lisa. Contemporary Action Cinema. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011. Tasker, Yvonne. Spectacular Bodies: Gender, Genre and the Action Cinema. London: Routledge, 1993.

Breaking Down- Transformers: Dark of the moon

Spider-Man: No Way Home

The following screenshot is from the movie Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021). The image depicts a critical moment in the film: the Mirror Dimension chase. In this scene,…

Natural Born Killers: Mallory’s Shot and the Real-Life Implications of Trauma-Induced Violence

Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers (1994) is a psychedelic action romance about a psychopathic couple on a murder spree undergoing media glamorization. The budget for this film was…

Action Sequences: Using Illusions and Intellect Over Violence

Within the action genre of Hollywood, it has become common to see many films that are just copies of each other. These films often display high-stakes scenes where…

Analysis on the 2025 action-comedy film Bride Hard

Bride Hard The movie I have watched most recently is the 2025 action-comedy film, Bride Hard. In terms of the screen grab, the main character, Sam, played by…

Fragmented Fear and Cinematic Violence: A Media Analysis of Weapons (2025)

The screen grab from Weapons (2025) captures a tense moment framed within a dim, high-contrast environment that blends horror and action aesthetics. The scene highlights a cluttered interior…

The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes: An Exploration of Social Class

The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes: An Exploration of Social Class Isabelle Catenaccio (T00660180) VISA 1500-01 Professor Terryl Atkins November 26, 2025 Introduction Released in…

Critical Analysis of “Battleship”, a Hollywood Action Film

Battleship, released in 2012, is an American Hollywood action film. The sci-fi naval film, storyline follows the United States Navy when an abrupt global alien invasion occurs. Many…

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