Shawn Shimpach wrote, "The young, white men who were (or became) the aggrandized subjects of these stories motivated the narratives through their penchant for action and resolved conflict through violence informed by grit, wits, and innate skill, securing, in each story, the future of the world for which they were responsible and in the process confirming their masculine identity."
[2] In the Chicago Tribune, Donald Liebenson wrote, "Douglas Fairbanks was Hollywood's first major action hero, best known for the costume epics that established him as the screen's most dashing swashbuckler.
"[3] One of the defining action-hero characters played by Fairbanks was Zorro, which Michael Sragow called "the most influential action figure in film history and the happiest movie warrior of all time".
[5] In the middle of the twentieth century, "...the action genre was predictably populated by suave, attractive heroes living adventures of thrilling, exotic excitement, unimpeded by (if clearly aligned to) national, cultural, or state borders."
Shimpach said they "offered up extraordinary (if not always completely serious) white men who resolved conflict through direct action and violence while displaying their effortless mastery of urban spaces, new technologies, fashion, and their own bodies.