I think the worst feedback you can get aside from “I liked it” is “Sure, there are some problems, but ‘it’s just a movie’”.  You should never excuse illogical or unrealistic scenarios simply because ‘it’s only a movie’.

I recently watched several action movies and found I most enjoyed the films that were realistic or at least plausible.  The ones that were so far-fetched there’s no way it could happen in real life, I constantly had to recheck my suspension of disbelief or I’d turn it off.  

2012 was loaded with unrealistic situations and near-misses, but I kept passing them off as merely entertaining and kept watching.  This movie is supposed to be all spectacle and it is quite spectacular, but there was no edge-of-my seat intensity because I knew they were always going to get out in the nick of time.  Even the moment when the streets were opening up and the limo was just racing along, inches ahead of the crack until confronted by a toppling skyscraper, which when it landed didn’t collapse, but instead lay sideways so the limo could cut right through a plate glass window without hitting any supporting pillars, desks or people and come out the other plate glass window virtually unscathed, I was really struggling to stay in the game.  Yeah, it was an impressively creative idea, but so unrealistic I had to consciously weigh the two and decide to stay on the side of creative to carry me through the rest of the movie. 

It is your responsibility as an action writer to come up with scenes we’ve never seen before, but that doesn’t mean you should turn your live action film into a cartoon.  In cartoons, anything is possible; characters pull anvils from the sky or mallets from their ‘pockets’, but that’s acceptable because those are the rules of the cartoon world.  If those are the rules of your movie, great, but most action films are based in the real world.

True Lies had an astounding scene with the plane cutting into the side of a skyscraper but it’s intense and it works because it’s realistic; it could happen.  Die Hard is a great action film because Bruce Willis’ character gets hurt in the process, he survives, but there’s always that sense that he might not.

Hollywood is at times guilty of opting on the side of the spectacle at the expense of reality because it sells.  Spectacle does sell, but what’s more terrifying than something that could realistically happen?  If 2012 had put a little bit more reality into the spectacle, it would have been insanely intense.  Movie makers want audiences to go home thinking they should buy tickets on an arc just in case. 

Slasher films aren’t scary to me because they’re essentially cartoons.  The audience is so far removed from the victims that it’s just spectacle.  That works for me because I don’t want to be scared by that.  But thrillers scare the hell out of me because they are grounded in reality.  After watching something like the Exorcist or Poltergeist or Blair Witch, the audience is left with a haunting feeling and don’t we write films to affect people?