Action hero  

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This page Action hero is part of the adventure film series.Illustration: Great Train Robbery (1903)
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This page Action hero is part of the adventure film series.
Illustration: Great Train Robbery (1903)

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An action hero (sometimes action heroine for women) is the protagonist of an action film or other form of entertainment which portrays action, adventure, and often violence. Other media in which such heroes appear include swashbuckler films, Western films, old-time radio, adventure novels, dime novels, pulp magazines, and folklore.

History

The origin of the action hero is rooted in the history of imperialism with adventure stories being primarily written for boys, to imagine being men on travels and experiencing exciting action. Shawn Shimpach wrote, "The young, white men who were (or became) the aggrandized subjects of these stories motivated the narratives through their penchant for action and resolved conflict through violence informed by grit, wits, and innate skill, securing, in each story, the future of the world for which they were responsible and in the process confirming their masculine identity." In the early twentieth century, this storytelling was commercialized, and the stories were "readily adapted" to film. One of the earliest action-hero actors was Douglas Fairbanks. In the Chicago Tribune, Donald Liebenson wrote, "Douglas Fairbanks was Hollywood's first major action hero, best known for the costume epics that established him as the screen's most dashing swashbuckler." One of the defining action-hero characters played by Fairbanks was Zorro. Fairbanks was followed by Errol Flynn, who achieved fame as Robin Hood in the 1938 film The Adventures of Robin Hood.

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Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Action hero" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

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