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is it really THAT hard to write a decent action movie script?

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yes, it is.

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I strongly disagree.

Seriously, most of the action movies make horrible mistakes. Resident evil for instance. They go in with a million and one high tech guns that are useless. Then at the end they are killing beasts with revolvers? It's like they are intentionally messing things up.

Stick to what made the comic book or the video game great and don't concentrate on holleywood effects and big bangs.

It's not that hard to make a decent movie with a decent plot especially when somebody already did almost all of the work for you.

Hollywood = stupid.

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Sorry, Wacki, but your avatar is indeed descriptive of you in regards to this topic. You really have no clue what you're talking about.

If you think it's easy, go to Hollywood and let them all know your brilliant plan - I'm sure they'll throw money at you and hail you as the second coming of Orson Wells.

It's incredibly difficult to write a very good genre screenplay. There are an inordinate number of pitfalls awaiting one who attempts to do so:

Most of the conventions of the genre are well know to the point of cliche; stick too closely to them and you're being derivative, break the rules and you're no longer writing the genre you're being paid to. It's a very, very fine line.

The audience these days is more sophisticated, aware and involved in the movie-making process than ever before. You can't slip a sub-par plot twist or charactization past them (for the most part).

Every story has been told. Think back when Die Hard came out and the next fifteen years of action movies were, "Die Hard on a bus," or "Die Hard on a boat." There really is nothing new in the genre to be told - only in HOW a story is told. And that takes incredible skills by everyone working on the film, not just the writer.

A good film is ridiculously hard to make. A bad film is ridiculously hard to make. When you do happen to run across a good one, count yourself lucky, because all that means is the stars were aligned for this particular project.

Again, if you think it's not difficult, I challenge you to write a great action script. I have an agent and a manager and I'd love to find a project from an unknown to give to them.

So...put your money where you mouth is, and then maybe you'll be able to not so resemble your avatar.

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To be fair, Dominic, no matter when you were born, every story has been told for a thousand years. You put an enormous amount of emphasis on novelty, but not only is novelty not necessarily that important, it often is more something destructive than an asset.

All the comic book guys who flood fan websites for years before a superhero movie even comes out get into a character for certain reasons, and get disappointed when those reasons by and large aren't made manifest in a movie. Different characters are emphasized(like Wolverine's role being played up and that of Cyclops being minimized in X-Men), the story is often changed, abilities are changed, you know where I'm going on all that. Things are changed and not always for the better. And what fans often want is NOT novelty, but fidelity.

They want to see the characters and situations they love done justice. It's Hollywood's desire to "jazz up" or "make modern" what is already a successful and maybe beloved franchise(or they wouldn't have even heard of it in the first place) that is the problem, not the solution. When people complain of these things they are not missing the point. They are saying the "Hollywoodization" is missing the point, and they're usually right.

The difficulty of being a writer or churning out even somewhat passable Hollywood product is not really the issue; just something you can relate to. I understand that. Creating is hard.

But just because doing something is hard doesn't mean that the product is any good. It can be hard to capture lightning in a bottle, but considering that people doing superhero movies have the characters already developed in great detail and refined over years, it's not exactly pulling miracles out of thin air.

Stuff like this really doesn't have to be novel to be good. Comics are inherently extremely cinematic, and have already proven themselves novel enough if they've become successful products.

More examples: Look at how The Incredible Hulk failed -- he acted like a big petulant baby instead of the angry, confused Hulk that readers got to know for a few decades.

Look at how Spiderman succeeded -- simply telling his story with some similarity to feel of the original story was fine. Even David Koepp's writing couldn't screw that one up.

Look at Catwoman -- Halle Berry is sexy, we get it. But that's not a movie. Catwoman was a somewhat interesting character in the comics; but by all accounts the movie just grabbed the title and made crap up on the fly.

Look where the first Batman was weakest -- in its dumb romance with Vickie Vale. Completely unnecessary and unbelievable and ... 100% Hollywood. Required Hollywood. You know, the Hollywood that says that Oliver Stone's Vietnam movies really needed more romance.

Comics need to be realized on the screen, not Hollywoodized on it. They're already strong enough products on their own. Until recently, the only thing Hollywood seemed to have a chance in hell at doing is destroying a comic franchise by making a terrible movie about it that had no respect for the source material. It's still a pretty close call every time, even though they've finally had enough decades worth of failing to "improve" comics by giving them the Hollywood genius treatment.