And after that, Ridley’s Scott’s Napoleon promises to be a bloody battlefield epic in the vain of Braveheart and Gladiator, except this one examines its warlord not through his sworn enemies but via his explosive romance with Vanessa Kirby’s Empress Josephine.

Whereas four decades ago Rocky Balboa was sent out to fight Ivan Drago – a straightforward stand-in for dead-eyed Soviet power – these days his protege Adonis Creed finds himself in the ring with his old school friend, both men forced to confront their own repressed emotions in the process.

Part of it too is down to simple economics: with mid-budget films having been all but squeezed out of existence, and the threshold for box-office success now absurdly high, global takings have become pivotal to whether a movie sinks or swims.

So it’s yippee ki-yay not just for Gruber’s brand of erudite European mastermind, but also the unhinged Arab terrorist (True Lies, London Has Fallen), the icy Russian psychopath (Air Force One, GoldenEye) and the crazed Latino gangbanger (Falling Down, End of Watch).

Back in the day, it was standard practice for the bad guy to set out his stall with the theatrical murder of a civilian, before getting to the real sadism a bit later on: for Heath Ledger’s Joker this meant impaling a rival henchman with a pencil; Die Hard 2’s racketeer preferred to plough a jumbo jet full of passengers into the ground.

I'm a bot and I'm open source!