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Notes -
I'm surprised this never occurred to me, but it definitely seems like the last decade or so of Strong Female Action Heroes in films has been as if major Hollywood studios handed Seagal billions of dollars to make his god-fantasy wish-fulfillment vehicles just with more expensive CGI. And then blamed the audience for being bigoted against fat people (or whatever other category you could stick Seagal into) when they complained about boring, unlikable, unrelatable protagonists with no growth.
JCVD is also a funny choice of example in the previous post, since AFAICT, JCVD isn't held in all that high regard today outside of the campy nostalgia. What do people remember him for today, maybe Street Fighter, famous mainly for the franchise and for being a filmmaking disaster, and Bloodsport, the one that was a breakout film for him. There are far better examples of similar action stars from his era who were far more successful, such as (obviously) Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone. And the films these guys were known for - e.g. The Terminator, Rambo, Rocky, Predator, Total Recall - were generally praised for having good scripts. Not fancy or deep or thought-provoking - though maybe on occasion - but having fun plots with charismatic, likeable characters that were easy to root for in stakes that made sense and seemed important and often even went through some journey of growth themselves.
To add on re Jcvd, the most prominent film of his I recall is JVCD, that meta film where he plays a loser version of himself directing his thousand yard stare at his own miserable life as essentially an international joke because of his old action films.
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I think Van Damme is also remembered for his leg splits, incidentally. His ability in that regard is almost a meme unto itself.
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