I wasn’t the first to make the connection, but once I noticed it, it was everywhere. You walk past a poster for a new movie and think, Why is every action hero named Jack, John, James, or, occasionally, Jason?
I turned to my friends and colleagues, asking desperately if they had also noticed this trend, as I made my case by listing off well-known characters: John Wick, Jason Bourne, Jack Reacher, John McClane, James Bond, Jack Bauer, and double hitter John James Rambo.
I worried I might have fallen victim to the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon. Now that I had become aware of it, was each glimpse of a John Wick ad reaffirming my unsubstantiated theory?As a data researcher, I had to get to the bottom of it. What followed was months of categorizing hundreds of action movies, consulting experts in the field of name studies, reviewing academic papers and name databases, and seeking interviews with authors and screenwriters as to the rationale behind their naming decisions. It turned out I had only scratched the surface.
The first step was to define my data set. Since there exists no one official pantheon of action heroes, I started by turning to the first port of call for many researchers: Wikipedia. According to its list of action movies, 2,206 modern movies had been released in the genre, beginning in 1962 with Dr. No, the first movie to star James Bond. From these movies, I narrowed down the list to include only Hollywood productions and movies centered on a male everyman–type hero. The trope is well known: A lone man facing seemingly unbeatable odds conquers any foe put in his way—be it his government, a terrorist cell, or a natural disaster. Gone from the list were movies that featured ensemble casts or were about buddy cops or female heroes. (This last category didn’t take long to remove.) If it was not immediately clear whether the movie was built around a single man of action, I dug deeper, consulting trailers, plot summaries, and other marketing materials to make an informed decision. (This also led me to watch some great action movies I’d never heard of, like 2002’s Extreme Ops.) After going through all 2,206 action movies, I was left with 790 movies featuring an everyman-type lead.
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