Action Movie Trivia
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This action movie trivia quiz has 214 free questions with answers and runs from the 1980s golden age (Die Hard, First Blood, Commando, Predator, RoboCop, Lethal Weapon, Escape from New York, Enter the Dragon and Police Story) through the 1990s blockbusters (T2, Speed, Point Break, The Rock, Face/Off, Con Air, Heat, The Fugitive, Independence Day, Air Force One, Cliffhanger, The Matrix) to the modern era of John Wick, Fury Road, Ghost Protocol, Taken, The Raid, Casino Royale, Skyfall, Gladiator, 300 and Kill Bill. The easy questions ask which pill Neo takes, what speed the bus can't drop below and why John Wick comes out of retirement. The medium ones cover directors, novels and the real stunts behind the scenes. The hard ones want the original casting of the Predator, the price of the costliest aerial stunt ever performed, the number of people Rambo actually kills in First Blood and which Bond film had a Texas hold 'em game in Montenegro. Every answer has been checked against a reference encyclopaedia, and each question shows its explanation and citation once you have answered.
30 of 214 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which 1979 Roderick Thorp novel was adapted into Die Hard (1988)?
Nothing Lasts Forever
Nothing Lasts Forever came to Thorp in a dream after he watched The Towering Inferno: gunmen chasing a man through a skyscraper.
Q 02Which stage actor made his feature-film debut as Die Hard's villain Hans Gruber?
Alan Rickman
Alan Rickman was in his early forties and had never made a film when producer Joel Silver saw him play the scheming Valmont on Broadway and cast him as the villain.
Q 03In Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), who plays the shape-shifting, liquid-metal T-1000?
Robert Patrick
Robert Patrick trained to sprint without visibly breathing hard, and became fast enough to outrun the boy's dirt bike, so its top speed had to be raised.
Q 04Which martial-arts star was originally cast as the creature in Predator (1987)?
Jean-Claude Van Damme
Jean-Claude Van Damme was hired to play an agile, ninja-like creature and wore the first suit on set; the redesigned Predator went to 7-foot-2 Kevin Peter Hall.
Q 05In First Blood (1982), how does the abusive deputy Art Galt die during the manhunt for Rambo?
Falls from a helicopter
Falls from a helicopter: Galt defies orders and leans out to shoot Rambo, who throws a rock that makes the pilot lose control; in David Morrell's novel, Rambo kills his pursuers himself.
Q 06In Speed (1994), the bus is rigged to explode if its speed drops below what?
50 mph
50 mph: the bomb arms once the bus passes that speed, so to stay above it the driver has to jump a fifty-foot gap in an unfinished elevated freeway.
Q 07In Point Break (1991), the bank-robbing surfers wear rubber masks of what?
Ex-presidents
Ex-presidents: the gang wears Reagan, Carter, Nixon and Johnson masks, never touches the vault and is out of each bank within ninety seconds.
Q 08Which actor plays General Hummel, the rogue Marine who seizes Alcatraz with stolen nerve gas in The Rock (1996)?
Ed Harris
Ed Harris plays Hummel, who is no simple villain: he wants $100 million paid to the families of Marines who died on secret missions under his command.
Q 09In Gladiator (2000), which emperor does General Maximus serve before the emperor's son Commodus seizes power?
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius wants Maximus to restore the Republic rather than let his own son rule, so Commodus murders his father and orders the general's execution.
Q 10In Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011), Tom Cruise scales the outside of which building?
Burj Khalifa
Burj Khalifa: Tom Cruise climbed the outside of the Dubai tower himself, held by safety cables that were digitally erased afterwards.
Q 11Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) left rain-soaked Australia to shoot mainly in which country?
Namibia
Namibia's Namib Desert stood in for the wasteland; a leaked conservation report later accused the production of damaging parts of the desert.
Q 12Who plays Imperator Furiosa in Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)?
Charlize Theron
Charlize Theron shaved her head to play Furiosa, and the film went on to win six of the ten Academy Awards it was nominated for.
Q 13In John Wick (2014), what is the name of the beagle puppy whose killing brings Wick out of retirement?
Daisy
Daisy was a last gift arranged by Wick's dying wife Helen to help him grieve, so when a mobster's son kills her, he loses the one thing he had left of his wife.
Q 21Heat (1995) was promoted around the first on-screen scenes together of which two actors?
Al Pacino and Robert De Niro
Al Pacino and Robert De Niro were both in The Godfather Part II but never shared a frame; in Heat they finally sit face to face over coffee in a diner.
Q 22In Enter the Dragon (1973), Bruce Lee's final duel with the villain Han takes place in a room full of what?
Mirrors
Mirrors: Lee smashes them one by one to find the real Han, a finale that reached Hong Kong cinemas six days after his death at 32.
Q 23In Taken (2008), Liam Neeson's ex-CIA officer Bryan Mills hunts kidnappers in which city?
Paris
Q 14The Matrix (1999) popularised which slow-motion visual effect?
Bullet time
Bullet time was shot with an arc of still cameras triggered around the actor, so the view seems to circle a moment frozen in mid-air.
Q 15Which colour of pill does Neo take from Morpheus in The Matrix (1999)?
Red
Red: that pill shows Neo the truth about the Matrix while the blue would return him to his old life, and 'red-pilled' has since become slang for a supposed awakening.
Q 16Which film hero did George Lucas name after his own Alaskan Malamute?
Indiana Jones
Indiana Jones takes his first name from Lucas's dog Indiana, who rode in the passenger seat of his car and also inspired the Wookiee co-pilot Chewbacca.
Q 17Which TV star was the first choice to lead Raiders of the Lost Ark but was tied to a CBS series?
Tom Selleck
Tom Selleck had to pass when CBS would not release him from Magnum, P.I.; a Hollywood strike in 1980 then delayed the show, so he could have made Raiders after all.
Q 18The Bourne Identity (2002) opens with Jason Bourne being pulled from which sea by fishermen?
The Mediterranean
The Mediterranean: Italian fishermen find him adrift with two bullets in his back, no memory and a tiny laser in his hip that projects a Zurich bank-box number.
Q 19RoboCop (1987) is set in a crime-ridden near-future version of which city?
Detroit
Detroit is the setting, but the film was shot mostly in Dallas, whose newer skyline looked more like a city of the future.
Q 20In Aliens (1986), how long has Ripley been drifting in stasis when she is found?
57 years
57 years: by then colonists have settled the very moon where her crew found the alien, and all contact with them is soon lost.
Paris: once his daughter is taken there, Mills is told he has about 96 hours to find her before she disappears for good.
Q 24In Casino Royale (2006), what game does Bond play against Le Chiffre?
Texas hold 'em
Texas hold 'em replaced the baccarat of Fleming's novel; Bond must bankrupt Le Chiffre at a Montenegro table where each seat costs a $10 million buy-in.
Q 25Which actor died of a heart attack during the making of Gladiator (2000)?
Oliver Reed
Oliver Reed, playing the trainer Proximo, died in Malta during the shoot; his remaining scenes used a body double and digital effects. The film won Best Picture and Best Actor.
Q 26Who won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for playing US Marshal Samuel Gerard in The Fugitive (1993)?
Tommy Lee Jones
Tommy Lee Jones's marshal chases Ford's Dr. Kimble, who jumps from a dam spillway to escape him; the film, based on the 1960s TV series, was nominated for Best Picture.
Q 27Top Gun (1986), the year's highest-grossing film worldwide, won an Academy Award for which song?
Take My Breath Away
Take My Breath Away won the Oscar for Giorgio Moroder and Tom Whitlock, a lyricist Moroder had taken on at his studio after Whitlock fixed the brakes on his Ferrari.
Q 28Who wrote Lethal Weapon (1987)?
Shane Black
Shane Black wrote the script in about six weeks, and its producer then gave him an acting part: Hawkins, the first of the squad killed in Predator.
Q 29In John Carpenter's Escape from New York (1981), Manhattan has become what?
A maximum-security prison
A maximum-security prison: after crime rises 400 percent the whole island is walled off, and when the President's plane crashes inside, one convict gets 24 hours to bring him out.
Q 30What injury did Jackie Chan suffer sliding down a light-covered pole in Police Story (1985)?
Second-degree burns to his hands
Second-degree burns to his hands: the bulbs had heated the pole, and the fall also hurt his back; the film opens with a car chase straight through a hillside shantytown.