Let’s be honest: action movies do not have the most well-crafted dialogue. They usually just devolve into threats, quips, and heavy exposition, but no one has ever pretended to see a Schwarzenegger movie for the script. But there’s also something appealing about their simplicity. If acclaimed films can feel literary and obtuse, there’s a reassuring comfort in Murtaugh telling us that he does not have time for this shit.
As an ode to these straightforward and sometimes Neanderthalic scripts, the culture infographic fans at Pop Chart Lab created a poster dissecting the structure of the best action one-liners. You might remember sentence diagrams from middle school, and it should come as no surprise that many of these famous quotes (like “I’ll be back” and “Welcome to Earth”) break down easily. Some with terrible grammar are harder to deconstruct, while others are just too long for any useful analysis.
This chart is a fun and somewhat ridiculous look at the best and worst dialogue from the action genre. Commando might not have won an Oscar for its screenplay, but it sure does make a fun English exercise.