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The general belief is that action movies don't require any special world-building. After all, the story is the primary focus, often chronicling how the hero takes on the largest number of enemies possible and still comes out victorious. Everything else is secondary. The action scenes are the most important aspect of the film.
However, that's not always the case. Some of the best, most elaborate action movies create such an intricate world that it wouldn't be out of place in any genre, not just action. Unsurprisingly, these movies have a lot more to offer than just heroes battling the villains over and over again.
7 Inception (2010)
When discussing the movies with the best world-building, Inception has to be mentioned since it's the one movie about actual world-building. A group of thieves has to steal a secret from someone's mind, but things get a lot more complicated.
Director Christopher Nolan has the talent for creating new worlds but the one in Inception is the most complex, not to mention fascinating to discover, as the heroes bend the rules of what the audience thought possible. Another reason why this movie became legendary is its ending, which can be interpreted in multiple ways.
6 Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014)
Both the first movie and its 2017 sequel manage to connect the real world with its fictional one in a clever way. Kingsman is introduced as a super-secret organization that's been protecting the world for a long time. And in the sequel, their American counterpart, Statesman, enters the scene. What makes the movie especially compelling is how it blends what the audience knows and what they haven't seen before.
The story is about a young guy's transformation to a super spy, but all done with the realization of typical rules of action movies. As such, The Secret Service comes along as a more realistic spy parody than most of them are, even though it doesn't lack strong, sarcastic British humor.
5 The Lego Movie (2014)
The Lego Movie offers by far one of the most complex worlds - because there's more than one. It's not limited by rules of science like many live-action movies; it can do almost everything it wants. As a result, characters from multiple popular franchises meet in the movie, along with "The One," a guy destined to save the world.
The movie's world-building includes many subtle jokes and details that are impossible to discover all when watching it for the first time. And, of course, the movie's ending proves that the whole story is even more complicated than the audience originally thought.
4 Code 8 (2019)
Based on a short movie of the same name, this 2019 film takes the audience into a world where super-powered people exist but are persecuted and shunned. While the story is somewhat simple - a young man with special powers begins working with a criminal to make money and help his mom - the dark and difficult world the characters live in is even more captivating.
Some superhero movies remain optimistic, but Code 8 isn't one of them. The potential of the world, with its distressing atmosphere, hasn't been entirely explored, so a sequel to the movie is set to come this year.
3 Pokemon: Detective Pikachu (2019)
Even though it might seem like Pokemon: Detective Pikachu orients itself to a younger audience, it still creates a complex world. Humans and Pokemon live side by side in this world, giving viewers a glimpse into their personal relationships and everyday lives.
The story about a young man solving a mystery alongside detective Pikachu works too, though, and the movie is funny, well-acted, and imaginative.
2 John Wick Series
The John Wick series seemingly has a simple plot. A guy wants to avenge the death of his dog, so he kills a bunch of people and then becomes a pariah because of his actions. However, other than Keanu Reeves' performance in the titular role, it's the world-building that elevates the John Wick movies to a higher degree.
The movie creates its own world in which the assassins have a special hotel where they can't fight each other, along with a whole set of rules to follow. As the sequels prove, they take the rules very seriously as John becomes a hunted man when he kills someone in the Continental.
1 Free Guy (2021)
Free Guy originally poses as a sci-fi picture that works with impossible themes, ones that could never exist in the real world. That's not quite the case as it later turns out. Initially, the audience doesn't know what to think of the NPC called Guy, who broke through his predictable programming.
But as the viewers learn more about the characters and their actions, they discover that Guy is the first artificial intelligence hidden in a computer game. The joy of discovering everything that's possible in the game and how far Guy can evolve as an intelligent entity as well as the action scenes, acting performances, and clever Easter eggs all make Free Guy an ideal movie for the fans of this genre.