Many people will come to the defense of outrageous events in movies and otherwise unbelievable activities by claiming movies are all about the “suspension of disbelief.” That’s why cars can turn into robots, animals can talk, heroes can surf anything to safety, and all the Jewish people rode unicorns to Israel at the end of Schindler’s List. See, that last one is a joke about how not all movies are about the suspension of disbelief. Sometimes movies make a greater impact by maintaining a thread of realism throughout. No, Die Hard isn’t the most realistic film in the world, but when a shoeless McClane has to run over broken glass, you can relate to “that must fucking hurt” because you can see it affects him for the next ten minutes of the movie. In movie time that’s like 8 years, so it’s no wonder he’s back to running and jumping by the end of the film. While I’m the first to admit I enjoy action films where a commando can jump from a plane flying 150mph and fall 300 feet into a swamp and be fine, there are a few minor movie injuries that bug the shit out of me.

This piece contains spoilers for Sucker Punch. If you haven’t seen the movie yet, go watch it before diving in. Once the first images hit, or when the first synopsis hit, or maybe even when Zack Snyder dreamed up the concept for Sucker Punch ten years ago – a time bomb was set to explode twice, and it finally did this weekend. The first explosion was the basis for the existence of the movie, and it continued exploding many, many times during the runtime. The second was the question of feminism. Now that the movie is out, it has also exploded. The reactions from before the film was released varied, and they still do. Some see it as feminism merged with geek culture (which assumes geek culture isn’t sexless to begin with). Some see it as an affront to the advancement of women parading in thigh high boots. One who gives a strong argument for the latter is Angie Han of /film, who writes the hell out of an editorial called “On Zack Snyder’s Sucker Punch: Why Ass-Kicking and Empowerment Aren’t Always the Same Thing.” You should absolutely go read it before reading this, although I’ll do my best to condense her arguments (in a fair way) in order to respectfully counter them.

At the end of 2010 we counted down the ten best action films of the year as an introduction to this column, the (almost) cleverly titled Bullet Points, our newest, most explosive column focusing on the action world. Beyond just reviewing action films, Bullet Points sets its sights on the genre as a whole- from stunts to guns, ass kickings to wire-fu and even just what the hell makes action films so great in the first place. In what is effectively our first official Bullet Points entry we wanted to get right to the ignition point of the explosion and discuss the ultimate principle of the action universe. That is, what makes a damn fine shoot ‘em up, beat ‘em up, blow ‘em up?

A few years ago, Neill Blomkamp directed a short series of commercials for Halo, giving us just a glimpse of what a movie might look like with him at the helm. Now, with District 9, we know what we’re missing, but we’ll always have his short film and the question of what it might look like if he had a proper budget behind him.