He has covered everything from Marvel to the Oscars, and Marvel at the Oscars. He also writes obsessively about the box office, charting the many hits and misses that are released weekly, and how their commercial performance shapes public perception. In his time at Collider, he has also helped drive diversity by writing stories about the multiple Indian film industries, with a goal of introducing audiences to a whole new world of cinema.
It might seem strange that, despite movies such as The Mother, starring Jennifer Lopez, and The Unforgivable, starring Sandra Bullock, both doing tremendously well on Netflix, a very similar new film starring Milla Jovovich was released in theaters. The movie in question grossed just $2 million in its box-office run in March 2026, which is roughly one hundredth of what Jovovich’s Resident Evil films used to gross worldwide around a decade ago. But the action star hasn’t had a hit since her tenure on that franchise concluded in 2017 with Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, which grossed more than $300 million worldwide.
She attempted to launch two new series with her director husband, Paul W.S. Anderson, with Monster Hunter and In the Lost Lands. But both movies failed to recoup their respective reported budgets of $60 million and $55 million. Jovovich’s new film was directed by Adrian Grünberg, who broke out with the Mel Gibson-led action movie Get the Gringo several years ago and went on to direct Rambo: Last Blood, starring Sylvester Stallone. Both movies had a similar premise, as does his movie with Jovovich, which follows an ex-soldier who is pulled back into her former life when her daughter is kidnapped.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The movie we’re talking about is Protector. Released theatrically in March, it received poor reviews and is now sitting at a 21% score on Rotten Tomatoes. The aggregator website’s consensus reads, “Only intermittently redeemed by Milla Jovovich’s ferocious performance amid its otherwise ridiculous and uninspired execution, Protector veers into baffling, trope-leaden revenge flick territory.” In his review, Collider’s Robert Brian Taylor compared the film to Liam Neeson’s blockbuster Taken and praised Jovovich’s central performance, but criticized the movie for spending “way too much of its time recycling the most basic of action movie tropes.”
Despite the poor reviews and underwhelming box-office performance, *Protector *seems to be finding an audience at home. According to FlixPatrol, it was among the most-watched movies on the domestic iTunes chart following its debut this week, when the leaderboard was topped by Avatar: Fire and Ash, The Housemaid, and Send Help.
You can watch Protector at home and make up your own mind about its left-field climax. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.
](/tag/movie/protector-2026/)
](/tag/action/)
](/tag/thriller/)
Adrian Grünberg
Ho-Sung Pak, Kenneth H. Kim, Arianne Fraser, Delphine Perrier, Mun-Bong Seub, Ceasar Richbow