Summary
My wife and I watch a lot of action movies together, or as she calls them, ‘One Attacker At A Time Please’ movies. Not all action flicks fit this mould. Mad Max, Top Gun, andIndiana Jones, for example, are just standard action movies. But flicks like The Equalizer,John Wick, and my current movie of the year, Monkey Man, plus classics like Enter the Dragon, are archetypes of the One Attacker At A Time Please genre. And these movies are basically just musou games.
Though the name seems fairly self-explanatory, I’ll expand a little. One Attacker At A Time Please movies feature highly choreographed hand-to-hand combat sequences where one character takes on a lot of enemies, but these enemies are polite enough to take turns. Two or three people may rush John Wick at once, but it’s very rare that 16 all try and kick his teeth in at the same time, even though there are 16 of them and they all share the same teeth-kicking desire.
The Best Action Movies Have A Hundred Enemies At Once
Sometimes they give the illusion of them all attacking at once. The Equalizer movies set up a big action scene by zooming in on Denzel Washington’s eyes and showing the reflection of all the objects he’s about to use for extreme violence - a corkscrew, a credit card, sometimes less imaginatively, a shotgun. So while it seems like they all rush forward, each character can be dealt with in rhythm to ensure that our hero is never overwhelmed. He may grab an assailant’s wrist and force them to shoot their friends. He may break a knee cap, move on to a new foe, then kick the knee-capped foe’s head as they eventually try to stumble up. Occasionally the final few simply surrender in fear.
It might seem odd to compare this type of movie to a musou game when we already have two genres that explicitly use the word ‘action’: action, and action/adventure. Action/adventure is pretty easy to dismiss - that’s more like the action movies that don’t include One Attacker At A Time Please; Mad Max, Top Gun, Indiana Jones.
These include big worlds to explore and plenty of platforming or traversal sections withnoattackers at a time.Tomb Raider,Zelda,Horizon, and most obviously, Mad Max and the upcoming Indiana Jones game, are all action/adventure. While John Wick goes jetsetting, it’s very rare that he’s doing something without being peppered with bullets or roundhouse kicks.
Action games are a lot closer. We’ve merged hack ‘n’ slash, beat ‘em up, and character action games into the all encompassing action genre, and the relentless stream of enemies is a fairly constant theme. If they did make a John Wick game, it would likely be a…strategy resource management game? Wait, they really did that? Okay, but if they made a second one, it would be an action game. Same for The Equalizer, Monkey Man, and any of the other examples I could have listed. Turning an action movie into an action game is the sensible choice. But those movies, deep down, feel more like musou.
When Does An Action Movie Become A Musou Movie?
It’s hard to describe the difference between an action game and a musou game until you sit down to do it. Musou titles largely fall into the category of action games, but they have specific characteristics that set them apart. This is largely to do with scope and durability. In action games, you have many tough fights where the enemy just will not go down. In musous, one kick is all it takes, they’re falling over again. Musous see you deal with huge swathes of foes who can be swatted away in an instant, which is how John Wick feels.
Screen Rant has John Wick’s kill count at 439 across his four movies, averaging just shy of 110 per movie. Meanwhile, they haveEthan Hunt from Mission: Impossible at 64 kills, though this was tracked before Dead Reckoning. That puts Hunt at just over ten per movie, a figure inflated by the series’ black sheep, M:I2, wherein Ethan kills 24 people. Across Mission: Impossible and Ghost Protocol, he registers just three kills. This is why one feels like a musou, and the other does not.
Mission: Impossible occasionally dabbles in One Attacker At A Time Please, but not to the levels of John Wick or The Equalizer. Throughout Mission: Impossible movies, Ethan often fights the same people over and over again. His foes are durable, and part of the story is that a select few very specific people are coming to kill him. When John Wick meets someone, they’re already dead. Like musou cannon fodder, they exist only to be slain.
Maybe it’s the newDynasty Warriorstrailer getting me in the mood for musous, maybe it’s a Sunday well spent watching all three The Equalizer movies back to back (they’re good, but the first is still the best). But One Attacker At A Time Please is our own secret, specific genre of movie, one that won’t be found in theNetflixcodes or Letterboxd lists. If I had to describe it to someone, I’d say they’re action movies - but they’re also musou games.
Dynasty Warriors: Origins
WHERE TO PLAY
Fueled by exhilarating 1 vs. 1,000 action and the rush of massive armies, DYNASTY WARRIORS: ORIGINS delivers an unrivaled sense of realism to the battlefield! A nameless hero conquers the turbulent and chaotic Three Kingdoms alongside legendary figures in the latest entry of the DYNASTY WARRIORS series.The most exhilarating action in the series’ history: Tension-filled battlefields where you are challenged by a massive, endless army as far as the eye can see. How will you face the onslaught of enemies? In addition to your own military prowess, you can fight in tandem with your allies’ armies in tactical battles unique to the DYNASTY WARRIORS franchise and experience the most exhilarating action in series’ history.A new Three Kingdoms from the perspective of an original protagonistThe Three Kingdoms story is set in the vast Chinese continent, where beliefs of heroes intersect. See how this magnificent and alluring world is newly depicted through the eyes of the original protagonist, a “nameless hero”.
