Arnie, of course, always said he’d be back. But the big screen return of a small army of other 1980s action heroes has come as more of a surprise. Already we’ve had the Austrian Oak dusting off his leathers in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, Sylvester Stallone going one more round in Rocky Balboa and Bruce Willis up against another batch of global terrorists in Die Hard 4.0 (or Live Fast of Die Hard if you’d prefer.) Even Aussie throwback Crocodile Dundee found time for a limp visit to LA back in 2001.

In 2008 John Rambo will be back in the sweaty headband (the trailer is honestly the most violently over-the-top thing I’ve ever seen. It looks great) and even Indiana Jones will return, giving Harrison Ford one more chance to be cool. Rumour also has that Mel ‘Sugar Tits’ Gibson will appear in Lethal Weapon 5 and maybe (though probably not) Mad Max 4: Fury Road. Most of these guys are well into their 50s and 60s. They should be playing golf or making cosy courtroom dramas, not jumping onto fighter jets and going 10 rounds with world champion boxers. Only Schwarzenegger seems to have retired, following T3 with the real life role as Governor of California. But even he acts like he’s still in an action movie, vowing to single-handily save the world from eco-disaster, “Hasta la vista, global warming.”

So why are these action heroes coming back? The cynical answer would be that recently, their careers have been struggling. Whist Stallone battles to maintain his dignity in lame comedies like Spy Kids 3D Harrison Ford has become a bland and emotionless actor in forgettable thrillers like K19: The Widowmaker  and Firewall. Who would have thought that the man who was Han Solo could be so dull – stupid nerf herder.

Bruce Willis has been trying hard to become a versatile actor, turning his hand at everything from Richard Linklater indies like Fast Food Nation to animated voice over work in Over the Hedge. But like Ford, his latest films seem drab and uninspired. Gibson meanwhile prefers directing bloody historical epics and offending entire religious communities to ‘actin’ crazy’ in front of camera.

Yet in the 1980s these men were kings. They were God’s who ruled over Planet Hollywood; butch warriors who righted onscreen wrongs and blew the bad guys to hell. They were invincible and dominated over a decade of mainstream event movies.

At their best film such as Rocky, First Blood  and Die Hard were genre defining. They were gritty, tense and toyed with realism. Above all they were action packed, from John McClane throwing himself of a high rise to Rambo waging a one-man-war against civilisation. Action cinema had never been like this.

These were great character parts too, mostly focusing on “one man…” and in turn they demanded strong central performances. Stallone excelled in the role of Rocky, so much so that people would mistake him for that character for the rest of his life. He is slow witted (Rocky not Sly), punch drunk but human and sympathetic. He’s a hero any generation can identify with.

Stallone’s career may have slipped into the doldrums recently, but you get the sense that Rocky Balboa wasn’t made to simply save his career. He genuinely loves the character. It’s a part of his life and has offered since 1976 a semi-autobiographical platform for Stallone to tell his story. Rocky Balboa examines an aging man, past his prime, standing up to be counted one last time. Is that Rocky or Stallone?

During filming he commented:

“I’m saying goodbye to Rocky and it feels like I’m saying goodbye to Sylvester Stallone too.”

This was intended to be his last hoorah, a goodbye to his film career, not a resurrection. And he would have to fight to get it made. Studios, and lets be honest us too, felt Rocky was passé. The news of a new Rocky film was met not with excitement, but laughter and gentle mockery.

The series had grown increasing more ludicrous as the 1980s wore on (in Rocky 4 he manages to convert the entire Russian population to Capitalism. The fight scenes meanwhile, became gladiatorial death matches between behemoth warriors.) But that’s how the action genre went in the late 80s, embracing the excess of Reagan-era America. Films like The Running Man  and Rambo 3 (which made the Guinness Book of Records as the most violent film of all time) saw the genre descended into a cliché of chiselled muscles, phallic weaponry, lame quips and running away from explosions in slow motion.

In Rocky Balboa the character is no longer the Nietzschian Superman of the 80s. He’s old and therefore vulnerable again. Stallone’s film is full of a nostalgia that comes with growing old and as Rocky visits places from his past, the film returns to the grimy, street-level realism of that 1976 original. It is shot almost entirely on the crumbling streets of Philadelphia and the boxing scenes, while less colossal, are given a verite drama by the decision to shoot on high-def. It’s like watching a real televised fight and the punches seem real. The film was a deserved critical and commercial success.

Die Hard 4.0 had no such allusions to realism and less noble reasons for a revival in the first place. In this case the studio (20^th Century Fox) was determined for another installment of their popular franchise. Willis was less keen. He was trying to become a versatile character actor remember? But following The Sixth Sense he had struggled to pick winning material.

Whilst Bruce was working on a forgettable war picture entitled Tears of the Sun, Fox oddly produced a Die Hard 4 screenplay with the same name. Willis was pissed but the studio had a solution, “star in Die Hard 4 and you can have the title.” That’s the rumour. But whatever the real reason, Willis’ career was floundering and a guaranteed hit like this would put him back on top.

The macho posturing of this genre had long been out of date and in the 90s the formula shifted. Stars of action movies were no longer muscle bound lunkheads, but method actors like Nic Cage in The Rock or Matt Damon in The Bourne Identity. Even worse, some of them were friendless geeks like Peter Parker in Spider-Man. Our new heroes got picked on by the jocks and relied more on their mind than their muscles.

The new Die Hard film acknowledges this change and appeals to this new audience with the casting of Justin Long as Willis’ computer-nerd sidekick – It’s the old world meeting the new. Long is there for the younger generation, Willis their dads. John McClane may be archaic but when it comes down to it he gets the job done and we love him. He’s like an old friend and he’s always welcome.

Indiana Jones is another old friend coming back for a big screen visit (and he too has been given a nerdy sidekick – in this case Transformers’ Shia LaBeouf.) Mel Gibson’s recent vilification could see Lethal Weapon’s wise cracking Sgt. Riggs return to smooth over Mad Mel’s public image; series director Richard Donner apparently has a script ready to go. If it goes any further maybe we could even see Steven Segal do an Under Siege 3, Dolph Lundgren making a new Masters of the Universe or Jean-Claude Van Damme in…erm…Universal Soldier 4. Oh wait, he already did. It went straight to video in 1999.

Whilst this revival is enjoyable, can these stars really re-establish themselves as movie heavyweights? Or are they a merely a nostalgic reminder of why we used to love these guys, before they fade completely into obscurity? Remember these films are not exactly new and their strengths lie in looking back not forward.

“It is really difficult at this stage to create a new character,” says Stallone. “I don’t have the time or youth to create a new Rambo or Rocky.”

And after these characters have been used up, what next? What can any of them do next? More bland thrillers for Ford and Willis? Maybe Stallone could follow Arnie into politics (Gibson should definitely avoid this move.) Maybe they should just stick to what they’re good at for the rest of their lives and produce Bubba Ho-Tep style rest home action pictures. Why not? Hell, I’d go see them.