The 6 Best Action Movies Released Between 2020 and Now

Image via Lionsgate Entertainment Published Oct 3, 2026, 5:30 PM EDT Liam Gaughan is a film and TV writer at Collider. He has been writing film reviews and news coverage for ten years. Between relentlessly adding new titles to his watchlist and attending as many screenings as he can, Liam is always watching new movies and television shows. In addition to reviewing, writing, and commentating on both new and old releases, Liam has interviewed talent such as Mark Wahlberg, Jesse Plemons, Sam Mendes, Billy Eichner, Dylan O'Brien, Luke Wilson, and B.J. Novak. Liam aims to get his spec scripts produced and currently writes short films and stage plays. He lives in Allentown, PA. Sign in to your Collider account The 2020s has been an interesting decade for action cinema because the genre had gone through a significant revival at the end of the 2010s. Although superhero fatigue had just started to set in, there was more desire for classic action cinema that reflected films like Die Hard, Lethal Weapon, First Blood, and Commando from the ‘80s. Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic did become a massive barrier within the production of these ambitious films, and several of the biggest action franchises in the world have had to take a backseat. While No Time To Die managed to perform pretty well after being pushed back several times due to COVID, it didn’t receive the same critical acclaim as Casino Royale and didn’t earn the awards recognition or box office of Skyfall. The Mission: Impossible series struggled with a production that was shut down during the pandemic, leading to a ballooning budget; Mission: Impossible- Dead Reckoning was a great film that sadly underperformed as a result of running into the “Barbenheimer” train, and Mission: Impossible- The Final Reckoning was a disappointment that ended the series on a somewhat underwhelming note. The 2020s has seen an evolution in the action stars who were once the most dominant in the world, as Arnold Schwarzenegger hasn’t made a new film (despite teasing King Conan), Sylvester Stallone was booted from the Creed franchise, and Bruce Willis sadly retired due to a critical illness. Jason Statham has become even more popular thanks to gritty revenge thrillers like The Beekeeper and Wrath of Man, and Gerard Butler has also seen some action successes, dispute also cashing in on the live-action How to Train Your Dragon. Although there haven’t been any young stars that have taken the mantle to be this generation’s A-lister, there have been a number of directors who have been doing inventive work within the genre, such as David Ayer, Guy Ritchie, Dan Trachtenberg, and Jeremy Saulnier. There’s also been a few new favorites, many of them belonging to classic franchises, that have earned the right to call themselves modern classics. 6 ‘Tenet’ (2020) Image via Warner Bros. Tenet is a slick techno-thriller that gets better on every rewatch, as keeping everything straight on the first round of Christopher Nolan’s inventive action epic can get pretty confusing. It’s one of the most imaginative original premises of any action film this decade, and proof that Nolan knows how to have a lot of fun; while Tenet doesn’t have the obnoxious quipiness of a superhero or Fast and Furious sequel, it does have the type of dry humor that is reminiscent of classic Bond films, including Nolan’s favorite On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. John David Washington has the presence and charisma needed to be one of the best modern action stars, and Tenet was a great transition for him that led him to other fun roles in Becket and The Creator. While Robert Pattinson is having a ton of fun (as a character not unlike Tom Hardy in Inception), it’s Kenneth Branagh who deserves credit for delivering a gleefully over-the-top performance as the film’s villain. 5 ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ (2022) Image via Paramount Pictures Top Gun: Maverick is an anomaly because it was a legacy sequel almost 40 years in the making that ended up being better than the original. Tom Cruise was able to transition the character of Pete Mitchell into a mentor for a new generation of heroes, all while still taking center stage as the greatest movie star in the world. Top Gun: Maverick has a sharp screenplay that understands how to hit all the necessary emotional beats, giving Cruise a surprisingly ample amount of room to give a deconstructive performance. It’s one of the rare instances where he has an age-appropriate romance courtesy of a great performance by Jennifer Connelly. The death-defying aerial combat scenes made Top Gun: Maverick the most immersive use of IMAX in film history, demanding to be seen on the biggest screen possible because of the sheer scale of what Joseph Kosinski had accomplished. 4 ‘Avatar: The Way of Water’ (2022) Image via 20th Century Studios / courtesy Everett Collection Avatar: The Way of Water was another long-anticipated sequel that had to justify the gap after James Cameron’s 2009 blockbuster had become the highest-grossing film of all-time and a complete cultural phenomenon. Avatar: The Way of Water had a very difficult task in having to introduce an entire younger generation of Sully children and developing them into unique characters, all while justifying the return of Quaritch (Stephen Lang) as a Na’vi and exploring all the different tribes that exist within Cameron’s universe. The visual effects that Cameron developed for the film might be the single most advanced and developed in cinematic history, particularly when nailing the natural Biomes of Pandora. Avatar: The Way of Water is a deeper film than its predecessor for what it says about naturalism, xenophobia, multiculturalism, militarism, and spiritual reawakening, but it also boasts an electrifying action-packed finale that gives Titanic a run for its money when it comes to the best aquatic set piece in Cameron’s filmography. Collider Exclusive · Action Franchise Quiz What Action Series Would You Thrive In? Wick · Fast · Mission · Die Hard Four franchises. Four completely different ideas of what a hero is: the assassin with a code, the family that never leaves anyone behind, the man who does his own stunts, and the guy who simply refuses to die. Only one of them runs on your particular brand of trouble. Eight questions will tell you which one you would survive. 🐕Wick 🏁Fast 🧨Mission 🎄Die Hard FIND YOUR FRANCHISE → 01 How does a room know you've walked into it? Every action hero arrives differently. Some of them arrive before they arrive. ASomeone recognises me, and the temperature in the room drops without a single word being said. BLoudly and warmly. I arrive with my people, and we're already laughing about something. CI'm the one who told everybody where to stand. I walked this room twice before anyone else arrived. DBy accident. I wasn't supposed to be here, and now I'm the only one who can do anything about it. NEXT QUESTION → 02 It turns physical. What does your fighting actually look like? Choreography is character. Yours says something about you. AEconomical and devastating. Trained technique, no wasted motion, finished before most people notice it started. BLoud, heavy and weirdly joyful. I'm not elegant, I hit like a truck, and I always have backup. CTo plan, until the plan breaks. Then I improvise at full sprint and refuse to stop moving. DBadly, honestly, and with a lot of swearing. I take more damage than I deal and I still don't go down. NEXT QUESTION → 03 Who is standing beside you when it starts? Some franchises are built on a team. Others are built on one person walking in alone. ANobody. I have contacts, favours and people who owe me, but when it begins I work alone. BEveryone. My people are the entire point, and I'd trade the whole mission for any one of them. CA small hand-picked team I trust completely, and I'd still take the worst part of the job myself. DA voice on the other end of a radio and a building full of people who don't know I exist. NEXT QUESTION → 04 It has gone badly wrong. What keeps you upright? Act two exists to find out what you're actually made of. AFocus, commitment and sheer will. Grief is fuel if you point it in the right direction. BThe people counting on me. I don't appear to have a limit when it's family on the line. CRefusing to accept the odds. Somebody has to do the impossible part, and it's going to be me. DSpite, mostly. And a growing sense that these people picked the wrong building. NEXT QUESTION → 05 There's a vehicle. What are you driving, and how? No action franchise has ever survived without a car chase. This one is yours. AA black muscle car I am unreasonably attached to, and I will dismantle an entire empire over it. BSomething impossibly modified, at impossible speed, off an impossible ramp. Physics is a suggestion. CA motorbike at full throttle through a city I memorised last night. And then off a cliff. DA borrowed car, badly, while somebody in the passenger seat politely asks me to slow down. NEXT QUESTION → 06 How do you feel about the people giving the orders? There is always an institution. There is rarely a good one. AThere are rules and I respect them absolutely, right up until somebody breaks one against me. BI don't take orders. I take care of people, and everything else tends to sort itself out. CI serve the mission, not the memo. If my people are in danger, the orders come second. DThey're in a van outside telling me what I'm doing wrong while I'm the one bleeding on broken glass. NEXT QUESTION → 07 Underneath all of it, what are you actually doing this for? The stunts are the reason people come. This is the reason they stay. ASomething was taken from me that can't be replaced, and I've been settling that account ever since. BBelonging. I built a family out of people who had nowhere else, and I'll defend it with everything. CThe conviction that if I stop, people die. I don't know how to hand that to anyone else. DI just wanted to get through the holidays with my family. Everything after that was self-defence. NEXT QUESTION → 08 When the credits roll, what do people say about you? Every franchise is really an argument about what makes someone worth watching. AThat I was a myth people warned each other about in whispers, and that they were right to. BThat I never left anyone behind, the door was always open, and there was always a place at the table. CThat I did the impossible part myself, every single time, and never asked anyone to risk it for me. DThat I was just a guy in the wrong place at the wrong time, who turned out to be very hard to kill. REVEAL MY FRANCHISE → Casting Has Been Completed Your Franchise Is…Four action series. One of them is built around exactly the way you handle pressure, people, and a room that has just gone very quiet. Here is where you would survive the trilogy, and probably headline it. John WickYou are precision with a grudge. You don't posture, you don't escalate, and you don't warn anybody twice. That is exactly why the people who know you are so careful never to be the reason you start. The Wick films run on discipline: an underworld with actual etiquette, a hero who honours every rule of it, and a world that unravels the instant someone breaks one against him. You share that quality. You are extraordinarily reasonable right up to the line, and then completely immovable past it. Focus, commitment and sheer will. You'd be the one carrying grief through three sequels and turning it into technique rather than noise. People wouldn't call you dangerous. They'd say your name quietly and let that do the work. Fast & FuriousYou understand the thing the whole franchise is secretly about: the cars are spectacular, but the crew is the point. You collect people, you keep them, and you'd drive through a building for any one of them. This series went from street racing to orbit without ever changing its actual subject, because loyalty scales and plot doesn't have to. You have the same instinct. You build a family out of whoever turns up, and then you defend it past the point of reason. You'd thrive here because the franchise rewards exactly your strengths: warmth, nerve, an absolute refusal to leave anyone behind, and a relaxed relationship with physics. The mission can wait. The barbecue cannot. Mission: ImpossibleYou over-prepare and then take the dangerous part yourself anyway. It looks like control, but it's really responsibility. You have never worked out how to ask somebody else to carry the risk. This is the franchise of the plan that collapses on schedule: the team, the mask, the rooftop, and the one person sprinting flat out because sprinting is all that's left. You share that refusal to accept an outcome. Told the odds, you treat them as an administrative error. You'd thrive here because these films reward competence and loyalty in equal measure. The mission matters, but nobody on the team gets left on the wrong side of a door. Some people delegate the cliff. You have never once been that person. Die HardYou are not the most trained person in the building, the best equipped, or the one anybody would have picked. You are simply the one still standing at the end, which turns out to be the only qualification that matters. Die Hard invented the modern action hero by making him mortal: outgunned, out-planned, bleeding, and extremely funny about it. You share that stubbornness. Adversity doesn't make you noble, it makes you sarcastic, and then it makes you unstoppable. You'd thrive here because these films reward improvisation and nerve over preparation, and you've never had the luxury of preparing anyway. You didn't want any of this. You just declined to be the person who let it happen. ↻ RETAKE THE QUIZ 3 ‘John Wick: Chapter 4’ (2023) Image via Lionsgate John Wick: Chapter 4 concludes the most influential action franchise of the past 20 years on a high note with its most technically impressive, brilliantly staged, emotionally acted, and jaw-droppingly beautiful installment yet. John Wick had become this generation’s Die Hard in the sense that it launched a thousand imitators; in the same way that Speed could be pitched as “Die Hard on a bus,” a film like Monkey Man could be sold as “John Wick with Dev Patel.” This certainly raised the stakes for what Chad Stahelski and Keanu Reeves would do with the actual conclusion to the franchise, given that it was made clear that John Wick: Chapter 4 would provide a conclusion to the story that had begun nine years earlier. After all the teasing, John Wick: Chapter 4 confronted John with his fate in a non-stop barrage of fistfights, gun battles, and martial arts that included other action legends like Donnie Yen, Scott Adkins, Hiroyuki Sanada, and Clancy Brown. John Wick: Chapter 4 had the nearly impossible task of constructing a film of nearly three hours in length that is able to keep outdoing itself, introducing new characters along the sendoffs to Ian McShane, Laurence Fishburne, and the late Lance Reddick in one of his final roles. It’s wild that the original John Wick was an extremely low-budget film that was nearly sent direct-to-DVD, but that it became a titanic epic with visual parallels to Lawrence of Arabia. 2 ‘Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga’ (2024) Image via Warner Bros. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is one of the most underrated films of the decade, proving once more than a poor box office performance is not an indication of quality. Rather than making a non-stop chase thriller like he had with Mad Max: Fury Road, George Miller crafted a revenge epic that explored how a young Furiosa (Anya Taylor-Joy) built her gritty experience as the greatest Imperator in the desert without losing sight of her humanity. It’s often a beautiful and atmospheric film, but the “bullet farm” chase sequence is as good as anything in the other Mad Max sequels. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is the right type of prequel because it serves as a perfect prelude to Mad Max: Fury Road, leading directly into it in a way that felt poignant, given that Miller had come up with the scripts at the same time. While comparing any new entry in the series to Mad Max: Fury Road is going to be a challenge because it is perhaps the greatest action film ever made (at least alongside Die Hard), it does boast an even better villain thanks to Chris Hemsworth’s hypnotic performance as Dementus. 1 ‘The Furious’ (2026) Image via Lionsgate Entertainment The Furious is the best film of 2026 that not enough people have seen yet, and should be a must-watch for anyone that is a fan of The Raid films. The spectacular action bonanza from director Kenji Tanigaki (a former stunt artist and choreographer) stars Xie Miao as the mute translator Wang Wei, who takes it upon himself to demolish a child trafficking ring after his young daughter (Yang Enyou) is kidnapped. It’s as simple and effective of a premise that could be asked for, as The Furious’ storytelling comes from its balletic and immersive martial-arts scenes that are molded to perfection. The Furious is proof of why stunt performers and choreographers make for great directors because Tanigaki knows how to further complicate each fight scene, yet make it clear what the intentions of the protagonists are. It’s a film that justifies its brutality because the villains are unquestionably evil and worthy of being eviscerated in the most creative ways possible, but there is also some depth to the analysis of the corrupted police state and how law enforcement has silenced journalists. Xie may not have been an action star who many had heard of outside of his home country of China, but it’s safe to say that everything he makes from now on is going to be an absolute must-watch. The Furious Release Date June 10, 2026 Runtime 113 minutes