Rohan Naahar is a News Writer for Collider. From Francois Ozon to David Fincher, he’ll watch anything once.
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.
Everybody knows what a great year 2026 has been for the horror genre, specifically non-franchise horror titles. Movies such as Obsession and Backrooms have grossed a combined total of nearly $800 million worldwide. Directed by Curry Barker, Obsession emerged as a cultural phenomenon, having generated more than $400 million globally against a reported budget of less than $1 million. It also received excellent reviews and is now sitting at a “Certified Fresh” 94% score on the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes. In addition to Obsession and Backrooms, a handful of other horror films have also made an impression, either at the box office or among critics and fans. However, the year 2026 has been equally exciting for fans of action movies.
Not too long ago, the epic Chinese-language wuxia movie Blades of the Guardians was released on the PVOD market after grossing more than $200 million in the Middle Kingdom. Starring Chinese and Hong Kong icons such as Wu Jing, Nicholas Tse, Tony Leung Ka-fai, and Jet Li, the movie was directed by the legendary action choreographer Yuen Woo-ping. He remains best known for introducing Western audiences to wire-fu through the Oscar-winning Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Blades of the Guardians holds a 97% score on Rotten Tomatoes, where the consensus reads, “Blades of the Guardians masterfully showcases director Yuen Woo-Ping’s feel for fluid action, delivering a fiercely entertaining spectacle surging with pulpy melodrama and grand battles.”
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.
Now, another action movie with a higher Rotten Tomatoes score than both Blades of the Guardians and Obsession is taking the digital market by storm. The movie in question debuted at home this week after a quietly successful box-office run during which it grossed more than $6 million domestically. We’re talking, of course, about the martial arts extravaganza*** The Furious***. Starring Xie Miao and Joe Taslim, the film now holds a “Certified Fresh” 98% critics’ score and a “Verified Hot” 94% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes.
The site’s consensus reads, “The Furious detonates into a relentless, blood-soaked spectacle of breathtakingly inventive martial arts choreography, with director Kenji Tanigaki delivering a brutal, balletic action extravaganza.” According to FlixPatrol, The Furious, which follows a man who takes down an army of human traffickers to rescue his kidnapped daughter, debuted among the most-popular movies on the domestic iTunes chart.
