Action movie economics

One night, while sitting around my parents' living room, wallowing in glasses of cheap wine and under a layer of shallow lamplight, we asked my Father casually how he liked the movie Collateral. He mumbled something to the effect of "There were a lot of high paced chases down tunnels, and cars flipping over." (This response, slightly curmudgeonly, out-of-touch, and cynical, made the edges of all our mouths crawl up into subtle smiles.) Then he suggested with a smirk that Hollywood could use the same damn clips of cars flipping over and blowing up, whirling into tunnels and through back alleys, for practically every action movie they made. Imagine the money and energy it would save. And, quite frankly, would anyone really notice?

H and I rented an action movie this weekend, and, before it was even in the dvd player, I dead-panned that there would be at least one shot of a helicopter. I could picture it, the camera below, on the rooftop of a building, the blades swooshing as the seemingly unwieldy beast hovered in mid-air. And low and behold, within the first five minutes, a helicopter made an appearance just like so. We've all seen this same scene a dozen times, and is one shot really so different from any other? And so, we'll add a chopper clip to the pile, Papa, wavering above a deep blue sky, and call your archive near complete.