Being a pre-teen in the ‘90s had its ups and downs, but being able to take in the cinematic hits of the decade was a rite of passage all on its own. It was the decade that allowed Leonardo DiCaprio to catapult and hold onto stardom thanks to titles like The Basketball Diaries, Romeo + Juliet, and, of course, Titanic, while it also redefined the idea of what a “teen movie” could be thanks to timeless favorites such as 10 Things I Hate About You, Clueless and Scream. And, while every genre had plenty to add to the discussion, growing up with the range of action films that hit screens throughout the decade was a treat all on its own.
Michael Mann paired with Robert De Niro and Al Pacino to keep audiences on their toes while positioned at the edge of their seats with Heat, while Brian De Palma and Tom Cruise paired top-tier stunt work with an explosive storyline in what would be the first of many Mission: Impossible movies. Speaking of franchise territory, the decade was bursting at the seams with plenty of new universes, including Lana and Lilly Wachowski’s The Matrix and the continuations of already well-established fan-favorites from Die Hard to The Terminator. Right smack-dab in the middle of it all, George Gallo saw space for a new kind of buddy-cop movie when he first established the idea for what has blossomed into the Bad Boys franchise.
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Collider Exclusive · Action Hero Quiz Which Action Hero Would Be Your Perfect Partner? Rambo · James Bond · Indiana Jones · John McClane · Ethan Hunt
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Five legends. Five completely different ways of getting out alive — with style, with muscle, with charm, with luck, or with a plan so intricate it probably shouldn’t work. Ten questions will reveal which action hero was built to have your back.
🎖️Rambo
🍸James Bond
🏺Indiana Jones
🔧John McClane
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🎭Ethan Hunt
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01
You’re dropped into a dangerous situation with no warning. What do you need most from a partner? The first few seconds tell you everything about who belongs beside you.
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02
You have to get somewhere dangerous, fast. How do you travel? How you get there is half the mission.
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03
You’re pinned down and outnumbered. What does your ideal partner do? This is when you find out what someone is really made of.
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04
The mission is paused. You have one evening to decompress. What does your partner suggest? Who someone is when the pressure drops is who they actually are.
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05
How do you prefer your partner to communicate mid-mission? Good communication is the difference between partners and a liability.
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06
Your enemy is powerful, well-resourced, and has the upper hand. How should your partner approach them? The approach to the enemy defines the partnership.
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07
Things go badly wrong and you’re captured. What do you trust your partner to do? Who someone is when you need them most is the only thing that matters.
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08
What does your ideal partner bring to the table that you couldn’t replace? A great partner fills the gap you didn’t know you had.
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09
Every partnership has a cost. Which of these can you live with? No one comes without baggage. The question is whether you can carry it together.
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10
It’s the final moment. Everything is on the line. What do you need from your partner right now? The last question is the most honest one.
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Your Partner Has Been Assigned Your Perfect Partner Is…
Your answers have pointed to one action hero above all others. This is the person built to have your back — for better or considerably, spectacularly worse.
Rambo
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Your partner doesn’t talk much, doesn’t need to, and will have assessed every threat in your immediate environment before you’ve finished your first sentence. John Rambo is not a man of plans or politics — he is a force of nature shaped by survival, loyalty, and a capacity for endurance that goes beyond anything training can produce. He will not leave you behind. He has never left anyone behind who deserved to come home. What you get with Rambo is the most capable, most quietly ferocious partner imaginable — one who has been through things that would have broken anyone else, and who chose to keep going anyway. You’ll never need to ask if he has your back. You’ll just know.
James Bond
Your partner will arrive perfectly dressed, perfectly briefed, and with a cover story so convincing it’ll take you a moment to remember what’s actually true. James Bond is the most professionally dangerous person in any room he enters — and the most disarmingly charming, which is the point. He operates in a world of layers, where nothing is what it appears and every advantage is used without apology. You’ll never be bored. You’ll occasionally be furious. But when it matters — when the mission is genuinely on the line and the margin for error has collapsed to nothing — Bond is exactly the partner you want. He has survived things that have no business being survivable. He does it with style. That is not nothing.
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Indiana Jones
Your partner will know the history, the language, the cultural context, and exactly why the thing everyone else is ignoring is actually the most important thing in the room. Indiana Jones is brilliant, reckless, and occasionally impossible — but he is also one of the most resourceful, most genuinely knowledgeable partners you could find yourself beside. He approaches every situation with a scholar’s eye and a brawler’s instinct, which is an unusual combination and a remarkably effective one. He hates snakes and gets personally attached to objects of historical significance, both of which will slow you down at least once. It doesn’t matter. What Indy brings is irreplaceable — and the adventures you’ll have together will be the kind people write books about. Assuming you survive them.
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John McClane
Your partner was not supposed to be here. He does not have the right equipment, the right information, or anything approaching the right odds. He has a sarcastic remark and an absolute refusal to accept that the situation is as bad as it looks. John McClane is the greatest accidental hero in the history of action cinema — a man whose superpower is stubbornness, whose contingency plan is improvisation, and whose capacity to absorb punishment and keep moving would be alarming if it weren’t so useful. He will complain the entire time. He will make it significantly more chaotic than it needed to be. And he will absolutely, unconditionally, without question come through when it counts. Yippee-ki-yay.
Ethan Hunt
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Your partner has already run seventeen scenarios by the time you’ve finished reading the briefing, and the plan he’s settled on involves at least two things that should be physically impossible. Ethan Hunt operates at the absolute edge of human capability — technically, physically, and intellectually — and he brings the same relentless precision to protecting his partners that he brings to dismantling organisations that shouldn’t exist. He is not easy to know and he will never fully tell you everything. But he will carry the weight of the mission so completely, so absolutely, that your job is simply to trust him — and the remarkable thing is that trusting him always turns out to be the right call. The mission will be impossible. He will complete it anyway.
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New Action Heroes Are Born
In 1995, then up-and-coming director Michael Bay brought high-octane energy and perfectly timed comedic one-liners to screens around the world with Bad Boys, the first film in the series that introduced audiences to Martin Lawrence and Will Smith’s pair of narcotics detectives. The film served as Bay’s first foray into feature-length filmmaking and paved the way for him to lend his vision to other favorites like The Rock, Armageddon and Pearl Harbor — just to name a few. Soon, interested viewers will be able to stream the first two films in the Bay-built franchise completely free of charge when Bad Boys and its 2003 follow-up, Bad Boys II, crash onto Tubi on June 1.
In the more than 30 years since Bad Boys first graced our screens, the franchise has gone on to spawn three other films. After raking in huge dollar signs at the global box office as the helmer of the first two installments, Bay stepped away from the director’s chair, clearing a path for Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah to take over and return audiences to their favorite action universe with 2020’s Bad Boys for Life and 2024’s Bad Boys: Ride or Die.
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Head over to Tubi on June 1 to stream Bad Boys and Bad Boys II.
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