July
29
Who killed the movie fight scene?
(Posted by David S. Cohen)
Saw The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor last night, and couldn't help shaking my head at the fight scene between Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh. Admittedly, like athletes late in their careers, neither can do some of the things they did 20 years ago -- Hey, who can? -- but was it really necessary to cut the fight up into little bits, the way you would with actors who can't perform fight choreography for more than a second or two at a time? These are two of the most dynamic, skillful martial arts performers in recent memory. Wouldn't it have been great to watch them move around?
So I was especially interested in this video slide show from Dennis Lim Slate.com: Let's Step Outside: The Evolution of the Fight Scene from the Duke to the Dark Knight. Particularly note the fight between Chuck Norris and Bruce Lee, where at one point they actually go to slow-motion to make sure you can see what they're doing -- and be sure you know it's them doing it.
Jackie Chan has said that once he came to Hollywood, insurance people wouldn't let him do the stunts he did in Hong Kong. Probably true. He's broken probably every bone in his body over the years, and now he's over 50. In The Myth, it looked as if Stanley Tong, who directed him in Rumble in the Bronx and Supercop, was cutting around his limited mobility, planting him atop statues and other props that limited how much he'd have to use his legs. But at least Tong let him play out the choreography from the waist up.
Cutting fights with these great stars this way is a waste. It would be like taking a Gene Kelley or Fred Astaire dance number and cutting it MTV style. With dance hot again in movies and television, maybe it's time to go back to basics in putting such movement performances, including martial arts, on the screen.
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I'll tell you who killed the Hollywood fight scene - Asian martial artists. They have turned every movie fight now into a silly ballet, half of which takes place up in the air, that looks nothing like a fight and conveys no sense of danger or real violence. In a fight scene I want to see fighters, not dancers.
Posted by: Bigshaker | July 29, 2008 at 11:54 AM
Bigshaker, what about Errol Flynn? Douglas Fairbanks?
Posted by: GoJoe | July 29, 2008 at 06:19 PM
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Jackie has not done all of his own stunts. Nor has he always done his own kung fu and acrobatics. Those unsung heroes, the doubles, known and unknown, have helped Jackie throughout his careeroing back to the movies that he made in the 1970. Apparently, we in the West are the last to know...
Posted by: unsung | July 30, 2008 at 01:44 AM
Bigshaker expresses a preference for realistic fights in movies, and of course he has a right o do so. But most movies are, to one extent or another, fantasies. Realistic as opposed to what, the hammering slugfests in John Wayne westerns? Truly realistic movie fist fights would mostly end after a single a punch, or leave the characters so swollen and bloody that they'd spend the rest of the film in a hospital bed.
The most realistic looking martial arts fights I've seen on film are the aikido encounters in the early Steven Seagull movies. But, again, they're about 2 1/2 seconds long. A British thriller writer named Andy McNabb, an ex-special forces type peddling his inside knowledge, makes a point of describing shockingly realistic fights to the death: guys rolling around on the floor pissing themselves and literally chewing each other's faces off. In a horror picture or a war movie, maybe, people would pay to see something like that. assuming the MPAA would allow it.
Posted by: David C. | July 30, 2008 at 07:12 AM
I don't like the slow mo computer generated arrow shower either.
Smartasses. who the heck do they think they are to make fighting look beautiful instead of realistic?!
Posted by: Ramesh | July 30, 2008 at 01:05 PM
Though he's dead wrong on the subject of Asian martial artists, Big Shaker has a pretty cool blog: http://bigshaker.blogspot.com/
Posted by: David C | July 30, 2008 at 02:22 PM
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