I think action movies are in a decent place...if you're looking at the low-budget side of things. People with less than two weeks on their hands shoot 80-90 minute fight films brimming with energy and a certain amount of confidence that is really hard to come by in larger productions. And these productions are far better than their equivalents in the 80's and 90's.
The big problem with the large scale ones is that our "blockbuster" films are IP-driven CGI fests. It also doesn't help that the action in these films is usually the worst part of it (Thor 4 had awful set-pieces, as did Dominion, as did Uncharted etc.) but even when they're decent, it's still firmly one type of movie. It's become so dire that critics have finally come around to liking Michael Bay (a bit too late imo, but better late than never).
The mid-budget action film has mostly become a streaming thing, and when your product is a streaming exclusive, you're simply not going to get the handcrafted for the big screen experience. If Netflix's big action films like 6 Underground, The Gray Man, or the upcoming Day Shift were all produced by New Line and distributed by WB instead, I don't think we'd be having this discussion at all. It's just that the "mid-budget genre film" has become a small screen thing, so to aficionados like us, it looks like they've disappeared.
