How To Do A Fight Scene
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How do you write a fight scene? In this video essay, I analyse several great fight scenes to help you improve your writing craft.
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You can use a move twice...as long as it fails the second time.
in the same fight scene? That would be really hard to do and weird.
@@92brunod not really, the enemy can adapt and see what happened, so they know how to avoid it
You can use the same move a lot of times: Win - fail - fail - fail ... fail - fail - WIN - the End. 80es action comedies had that for breakfast, lunch and dinner. A bit dated, now, but it'll probly sell again.
@@92brunod Happens more than you might think. Throw thing at goon, kills him, throw thing at second goon, he dodges it. Shoot second goon, he dies, shoot third goon, he has a bigger gun and stops you first, shoot explosive to kill 3rd goon, no more explosives for the 4th, new tactic.
James Bond does it quite a bit, a direct escalation of a fight by trying the same thing until it stops working and trying something else.
@@Task32 I feel like that could be a good way to fight taskmaster for the very first time
"Never use the same move twice"
One punch man: "ok"
@surfitlive if one punch man kicked that would be scary, because your legs are way stronger than your arms i think? All those squats put to waste
Hahahaha
In Saitama's defense, he usually don't need which is also is own personal drama.
That being said, that also make it even cooler when he actually bother to do so like in his fight against Garou. :D
Dude Saitama is trying his best to spice things up, but he can't get past 1 move because everyone dies in one punch.
Maybe he really should learn martial art to move while acting cool.
@@hungryalien8494 haha yeah all his combos starts with a quick jab, i imagine he has like these 200 hit combos in his head with all sorts of intricate moves but he can never do them because they all start with a jab
Wide stable shots, no shaky cam, minimum cuts and great choreography that feels there is a lot at stake.
chinese kung fu films??
yes they look great...@@tyrawr4394
someone likes the prequel trilogy just a little bit
@@polytanium You mean Star Wars? Absolutely. I also like the Matrix trilogy, Undisputed series, Kung Fu Hustle. I think these movies do action almost perfectly.
Look at the raid and the sequel. Its great
I think John wick is incredible at mailing fight throughout the whole series of 4 films. Despite John being so far ahead of anyone else’s league you still see him get hurt a lot and he always leaves a fight scene limping before jumping into another fight. Truly incredible
Only problem that the franchise starts having though is that it starts failing to follow that last golden rule. If you look at the first movie, every fight scene is important to the story, whether it’s introducing a character to an audience, introducing a character to another character (example: part of what makes the club fight work well is because its Iosef’s first time seeing John wick in action and also causes him to go into hiding), or advances the story in some way. As the franchise went on though it started to add unnecessary fight scenes here and there that didn’t really do anything for the story, especially in the latter 2 releases. It gets away with it since its john wick and has mechanically amazing fight scenes, but they don’t always serve the story later on
@@edun4513 I feel those fight scenes Being there is better than not being there at all, considering John Wick does have so many people trying to kill him.
Not all of the fight scenes may be important in 3, but there is still a reason for their occurrence.
@@Awesomeflame16 For the most part sure, but take the 3rd movie for instance i think the opening alone does a pretty good job to show the threat hes up against, given we see a 7 foot tall man try to kill him early, 3 different fight locations that dont linger too long and are all creative. The scenes of the adjudicator’s assassins wiping out whole groups of people incredibly quickly also shows that. Some of the other fights though are kinda unnecessary like the dog scene and many of the later fights could’ve benefitted from a bit shorter length. Getting bored during a fight scene doesn’t just make that section less enjoyable but also all the other fights as well
Sure, but noone uses the weapons they have. They go to unarmed combat, or let John get close to them, why?
I see nothing wrong with Jean Claude VanDamnnnnn! helicopter kicking everything and everybody.
I like that in Kingsmen, the villain "does" just shoot him..
But that's not a fight scene anymore, the fight is over. The shot is fast, unexpected and releases tension and lands really well while causing the audience to immediately feel the punch of desperation and grief that Eggsy gets smacked with and it has a massive impact on him. If there was another fight scene, the audience wouldn't have time to calm down and they would feel agitated (is that the word? English isn't my mother language) and wouldn't be able to calm down for a longer time, always expecting another massacre to jump from behind a corner.
Yeah but then they undo all of that emotional value in the next film.
@@leifevenson8998 Yeah. I was kind of disappointed about how the plot turned out... But I'm still glad he's back.
well of course, it’s not that kind of movie
@@leifevenson8998 Yeah, that was awful. I know people can say "well it's just Kingsman, it's supposed to be silly", but that's the one part that was supposed to have real emotion. They then try to make Merlin's death emotional, but meh, if they want they'll just stich him back together for the next film.
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And they would have gotten away with it too if it weren’t for you mendling CZcams watchers, and that pesky auto-scrubbing function.
Zoinks
It could've been Raid shadow legends as well, though.
Jinkies!
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Gotta admit, that's a writer's challenge I haven't heard before-- accurately and engagingly transcribing a Jackie Chan fight scene. I imagine keeping the lighthearted spirit of the scene would be difficult... I'm almost tempted to try my hand at it myself.
Same
Novelists who describe action scenes tend to add quite a bit of detail about what characters are thinking and what they're feeling during the fight. The way the first hit to the head feels like a burst of electricity, or the way a blow to the nose makes your face go numb so that you only realize you're bleeding when you taste the blood, etc. They can describe the protagonist's fear or confidence, or how much pain shoots through him each time he moves because one of his ribs was broken early on, etc. That's the one thing they can do better than a filmmaker.
yeah same
That's more of a choreography problem than a writing problem.
Same. And I haven’t even gotten myself to start writing the novel I’ve been thinking off. Maybe this could be a good way to get myself into the thick of it quicker than I can get lazy.
I think the best thing about the Church fight scene from Kingsmen is dynamic camera. Having a camera that moves with the characters makes you feel like you are in it - something the directors obviously wanted considering the POV shots. But you can also see this in the Upgrade fight sequence, where the camera is begins moving with the characters as the baddy is getting his ass kicked. You aren't just watching, you are participating.
I'd like to add the way both scenes you mentioned handle the dynamic camera very differently to illustrate the characters' mindset.
Both Harry and Grey are both controlled by an external technology that forces their nervous system into combat.
With Harry, the SIM Card, as Valentine explains, turns up aggression and switches off inhibitors, so we get quite a shaky camera that works hard at focusing on Harry while initially being very covered by all the other fighters to sell the claustrophobia of being in such a crowded fight, but still having some moments of stability to sell Harry's Kingsman training.
WIth Grey, the AI microchip gives perfect robotic fighting ability that has an exact computed counter for every hit. So, the crew had a whole new camera movement that I've never seen before, where the whole thing moves along a curve with zero deviation, basically no shaking and a dead set lock on Grey where not even the enemy has any influence on our viewpoint regardless of his efforts to kill Grey.
Same with the corridor fight scene in oldboy
Agree being able to see the fight is what is good. So many of the latest "action" movies with their shaky cameras. WTF I can't even see the fight.
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Gotta admit that transition was smooth
You missed out on some true British comedy
What monster liked this comment when it was at 420?
Imma be a party pooper with a genuine statement and I’d appreciate if someone could help me out: I don’t get it
something i hate about fights: when the camera is so cutty and shakey you cant tell what the hell is going on.
Edit: yeah I know it's just an editing trick to hide the fact that the actors aren't actually hitting eachother, I'm annoyed when it's overdone to the point that the fight is nauseating to watch.
That's one of the good parts about movies like John Wick. The lack of a shaking camera, although exposes more weird looking moves, makes the fight scenes so much cleaner and the choreography can be fully immersed in
So basically Steven Seagal movies
but BvS warehouse scene had shaky cam but it was good
Yep that's why I hated the Bourne movies
That one squid game fight with the lights was hard
I think it's really telling that the most memorable part of that John Wick fight (at least for me) wasn't the cool new aspect of fighting with dogs, but rather the race between John and the two enemies to reload their guns first.
yeah good point. that part was so cool
Yep, I definitely remember that part while the rest of the fight is very blurry. At fault is definitely also the environment, which usually helps understand how much of the fight is left, in the case of an escape from a certain place, while in that fight all the scenary was the same
One of the Matrix movies (I forgot which one) had a massive Agent Smith horde fighting Neo. Everyone I've seen who's watched that fight scene has said that, while the special effects slowly die as the fight progresses, the fight itself is phenomenal. The scripting, the choreography, everything is as perfect as it could be.
Second ome
The 2nd one, court battle
I got so bored watching that fight... It took waaay too long just showing "cool moves" that meant nothing.
the thing with the John wick fight scene, you are supposed to be glued to the screen because its so fast paced and realistic as can be, whereas in Jackie chan fights, you're paying more attention because there is plenty of comedic moments and ingenuity. it's like having a well made Italian baked cannoli versus having a delicious bowl of swirly, sweet ice cream. they're both delicious deserts, but they're very different in form.
And furthermore his argument leans away from blow by blow back to using the same move twice. He even emphasizes these points along that regard.
That specific fight in Wick3 was mind-numbingly boring though. Because I thought "this is going on for way to long" in the middle of the action - that is not a great thing to happen.
It was specially puzzling because it felt so out of place in the Wick series, because most of the fights are pretty good.
But the dog one.. oh my.
@@Aspartem it felt incredibly out of place to me.
It felt forced. We already know the protagonists are the best at what they do, we don't need a fight to happen just for the sake of it and that's what it felt like. It was just filler.
It completely took me out of the film because unlike pretty much all of the Wick fights, it wasn't in a real space. It wasn't a marketplace (or whatever it was supposed to be) it was a dog show with sand and rugs. The intentions of the choreographer were telegraphed before the fight even began. Dogs dogs dogs.
The weakest fight in the films so far.
My opinion of that specific fight in Wick 3 is that they had an idea for a "video game" shot and I liked it for the first half, it definitely overstayed it's welcome imo
Leave the ice cream, take the cannoli
I’m a simple woman. I see Kingsman on the video’s icon, I click to watch.
Literally same! I clicked this video thinking that it was just gonna be about that church fight scene😂
I'm not gonna like- it's already perfect.
@@vikkxen_23 I’m guessing it used to be 69
@@armedwithwings3953 yea ;-;
Fair.
With John wick I really like the attention to detail in the gun fights, also how realistic the choreography can be like when he reloads or just aiming for weak points, or maybe that's just me.
Keanu Reeves is really doing a lot of that action and it's not a camera trick. Even the car chases and stuff. He's doing most of it but just a natural at the movements required.
Exactly. It’s really well choreographed action with lots of attention to detail. As a gun guy who competes in dynamic shooting competitions, I really enjoy the more “realistic” shootout scenes and gun-fu action, especially since not many movies do this. They’re not just firing a tonne of bullets and missing each other while they stand 10 meters apart as in many other action films. They’re also not standing out in the open mowing down wave after wave of bad guys. They’re ducking for cover, utilising the space around them, reloading at realistic intervals, all while using real shooting techniques which the actors trained many times to get right. This all kind of comes apart to me once they introduced the completely bullet proof bad guys and suit, especially in the last fight in John wick 3 and almost the entire 4th film.
Yea I don't really agree with his opinion on that scene, sure we were seeing a similar interaction with them shooting guys and the dogs going up to bite people, but for his attention span to dwindle after seeing the same actions a few times is ridiculous and exaggerated. We don't see the dogs in action at all the rest of the movie, and for that one scene we get to see their interaction with dogs fighting. If we kept seeing the dogs throughout the movie, then I'd understand it would get repetitive and boring, not every action in an action sequence needs to be different for it to be interesting to watch. The whole idea of watching the dogs fight were for that scene, and that scene only which makes it special. If you doze off watching that scene then I pray for your patience in life.
Keanu Reeve's role in the fight scenes were great. My issue is that the bad guys are absolutely stupid. "We have 20 guys with guns in the opposite end of an empty ballroom with no cover. Let's Kung Fu battle him!"
I personally think that one Scene in John wick where the end up in the room with the knife case is one of the best. He throws at least a dozen knives but only actually hits one or two because he’s a human (regardless of assassin status) and desperate fighting 2 other guys i think.
"Never use the same move twice"
Naruto: I'm sorry, I couldn't hear you over my rasengan and my shadow clones
Dragonball: I'm sorry, I couldn't hear you over my generic massive energy beam.
@@Winasaurus "generic" lmao you can't call the guy who started the trend generic
@@ren.67 Yes, I'm sure no other anime in the history of the world had big beam attacks before Dragonball. Not like any other anime or shonen was created before Dragonball.
Don't look up astroboy or his laser attacks or anything. And I'm sure it was never even written into any comics/manga either.
Bro got like a million different combinations for those jutsu. Don't forget the occasional talk no Justsu
Asta: What's that? I was too loud and my swords are swinging so hard they're cutting air and whistling loudly
Batman: I don't kill people
Also batman: yeets a wooden crate at some dudes head
Batman: he's probably fine....
The DCU Batman doesn't seem to have that rule
This version of Batman kills
Yep, that Batman doesn’t care
Also batman: the box killed him
Yeah that Batman kills because in the DCU the Robin was killed by the Joker before Batman V Superman happened, which caused him to snap.
One thing about the upgrade fight I liked was the camera adjusting with each of the AI's attacks, it really made it more cool too watch and emphasized the power coming from the character
The raid has absolute fantastic fight scenes, especially the second one. The cinematography, the plot, the brutality, the realism it’s great. I really like that the protagonist is struggling with literally every single fight and you don’t know if he’ll die or not
The Raid and ESPECIALLY The Raid 2 were amazing fights.
The last 2 fights with the weird trio (dunno if they had a group name) was stupidly ridiculous, it was one of very few moments where I scrunched up like a ball for 10 minutes straight because it was so intense.
It's the fact that every single move felt like what each character would actually do following the last move, as if the actors were just told to kill each other with every ounce of hatred in their body and zero dialogue while the cameras just rolled (but of course, the way the cameras tracked the choreography had every bit in selling every move).
Just what I was looking for, a Raid comment and how awesome its fights are.
“The hero always winning isn’t fun”
“Never use the same move twice”
Saitama: “Who are you calling bald?”
but there's a good deal of irony with that, like sometimes jackie chan does it(different way) but like if you kill 5 guys in the exact same way, even tho they keep trying different things, thats hilarious cuz you're easily destroying them, the literal exact same way and they're going nuts doing different stuff(in saitama that's what happens essentially, he gives some variety but most of the variety comes the people attacking him, trying different things and nothings working to build more and more irony).
There's plenty more to it, great storytelling elements, like establishing how he got there or how he's feeling, or revelation or pushing the plot forward by introducing a new set of villains, how his invulnerability impacts different people in various ways from awe to anger, things like that yk lol (sorry if this feels patronizing, this was lowkey to just help me get my thoughts on paper so thanks for giving me the chance).
Every time that Saitama does a 1 hit KO, he loses because he realizes that none of his fights last longer than one punch. Have you been reading the manga? Saitama says it himself.
Pretty sure anybody who watches opm for saitamas fight are idiots.
@@Zack-fu4lo Hard agree. Saitama's WRITING and the side character fights are the main attraction.
@@djroscurro9859 I disagree, although if he had added an "only" to it it would be pretty spot on. The saitama fights are crappy when they start and end with the punch, but there's some comedy to be had in some of them (besides the 1hko), and in others it's some payoff/relief after other heroes have been fighting the baddie and struggling for a while. Or perhaps just a spectacle, like the season 1 finale
Damnit. You just made me yell at my wife “honey did your internet drop out too?”
I was about to restart my phone.
I paused it and turned it on again a couple times before I realized my play/pause was overtop of it. I was gonna exit CZcams and come back in that’s what usually works. And the funniest thing is I read this comment before I watched that part. And I still got tricked.
My laptop is slowly failing. I thought it was one of my frequent network failures...
I noticed that the spinner is different than the real one
The circle is too big.
In defense of the A New Hope lightsaber fight, the props were apparently very fragile. So what they're doing is essentially at the limit of the tools they had to work with. What we're left with is essentially a duel between not just two master-level fighters but two who know each others' moves. They're at a stalemate and making small feints and brief passes to see if this or that might work and nope, nope, he still remembers that move. It ends because Obi-Wan decides to lose. And *that* is why it remains a fascinating fight to me.
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In 1977, those "two people tapping sticks" was the coolest thing we'd ever seen.
And heard. People don't know how cool those sound effect were the first time you hear them. There's a reason people make the light saber sound all the time.
3 years later though they made a great fight between Vader and Luke. couldn't have been that much different
I believe that the props were too fragile to withstand heavy blows so the actors were instructed to be gentle with them.
@@elliotlovgren2031 it is what alistair said, they were afraid of breaking the props, but in the SW universe it is because they are both older masters who know to not overextend or they would lose. Everything eventually gets an explanation lol
justalurkr I watched it at like age 11 and it was fuckin awesome!!!
"Blow by blow" doesn't mean the same move over and over, it means choreographing a fight scene to emphasize each individual hit. Essentially the Batman clip you raved about, and the clip with Grey and almost every fight scene in film.
I think the essence of what he was criticising, along with the criticism of the expert he quotes about that, concerns the "boring" nature of either too descriptive fight scenes in books (which tend to drag and not move the plot forward), or conversely, uncreative fight moves in film which also tend to drag and not move the plot forward, or one of each.
I'm not neccesarily disagreeing with you. I wouldn't know if what you said concerning the TERM is correct. Rather, the actual point that the expert in the vid was making, and The Closer Look's criticism thereof, I believe, is valid. The latter was merely using the term in the same way that the expert was. In short, the term should be viewed within the context of what the vid is talking about, not outside of it.
If "blow by blow" genuinely means "emphasizing each individual hit", then that's actually a positive thing when it comes to cinema. In books, this would in fact get quite boring if done far too much.
Yeah, I found it pretty suprising he got it that wrong
Sanderson's lecture is more how to write a fight to allow a reader to visualize while following along and not be lost on a morase of boring description. Literature uses the reader as an active participant in creating the story. Actual cinema just puts it up there on the big screen for us; thus, why it's called cinematic.
@@RedFloyd469 I still feel The Closer Look's total disregard for blow by blow as a whole is kind of excessive. Blow by blow isn't an objectively bad kind of action scene, it's just very obvious when it's not used properly. I also feel that the particular John Wick scene he used is hardly blow by blow simply because it's more of a fire fight than an actual fist fight, where blow by blow can be used more creatively.
You're half right though
The interesting thing is that sometimes you can compensate these three rules, as if they're a spectrum. For example the kingsman fight scene you showed a bit of at the beginning: I never really believed he was gonna lose, but the choreography was just so damn good and the moves were so interesting I didn't even care.
It's also part and parcel of there being a church setting. Harry jumps on the benches, I think a few chalices and candles were thrown around, a gun was hidden in a bible, one of the guys gets their entire spine vaporised when thwacked into a podium... basically, setting is important as well, because it provides the props that would show brutality. If Valentine chose a mob warehouse, it would be much less engaging (relatively speaking) for all the mob people to just throw crates at each other or something.
So having a good setting for the fight scene that enables character development or badass action is a good thing, so long as it makes sense in the story (where Valentine chose the church setting as a guinea pig for an aggression microchip because the specific church he chose was populated by a hate group)
Id also throw in the mix the first Batman/Bane fight from Dark Knight Rises - it’s the first time we see Batman’s struggle against a villain physically and Bane spends the whole fight basically toying with him. The dialogue between bouts as well as the raw punchy action really brings Batman down a peg and not only has action but character development for both Bane and Batman and foreshadows the evil of Bane’s plan
George Lucas: “They fight”
it's because obi wan doesn't have the highground
The Void30 then he changes his mind for the prequels lmao
MrMarco if you haven’t heard I’m referencing episode III. Where did the final battle George for the script just wrote “they fight” for 20 minutes
@@thevoid3010 i didn't know that very funny
The Void30 The Ultimate Book Writer: They fight
The Ultimate Movie Director: Okay call the Theater Club , the cheerleaders and the Jackie Chan fan club. I GOT THIS
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I think we can all agree that was this episode ;)
@@TheCloserLook
...
*_STONKS_*
That was very clever and annoying as well.
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This is something I like about the Bloodsworn Trilogy. For those who don’t know, it is a series of fantasy books in a Norse-inspired medieval world. The author is actually a historical battle reenactment guy, but with real chainmail and learning actual tactics.
The fights in the books are very good because every single one feels natural and understandable in how the fight comes about, they all serve the story well in some way, and every one of them is brutal and evocative while maintaining distinction from each other and variety within the fights. So far, most of the fights have primarily involved humans with real weapons and armor, with a few fantastical elements here and there, but the amount of variety that occurs even when everyone is wearing chainmail, almost everyone has a shield, and only a handful of weapon types is remarkable.
The animated series The Legend of Vox Machina has some pretty good fight sequences. Lots of emotional core, variety of blows, ebb and flow with regards to the tide of battle, and everything advances the story.
Crazy how a turn based strategy game gets these crazy avengers style fight scenes for pretty much every fight lol
Bruce Lee pretty much proved that a hero dominating in a fight isn't boring. The same approach was done in Jet Li's Once Upon a Time in China series.
@Chinedu Atisele Bruce dominates most of that fight. Once he starts bouncing, Chuck had no chance.
A lot of kung fu films have amazing domination fight scenes
Yea. Something I've learned watching films over the years. A movie doesn't need [blank] to be good; it just has to do everything else better.
@@jacobshirley3457 Hence, the key is execution regardless of the approach. There are no rules in filmmaking.
True, the key is execution and how it serves the story
*2017:* Elton John saves the life of the Kingsman Agent.
*2019:* Eggsy becomes the legendary Rocketman.
_Coincidence? I think not._
_ROCKETMAN! Burning out his fuse up here alone..._
Plot twist: the film rocketman takes place inside the kingsman universe as Eggsy paid Elton back for saving his life by playing the role in his biography.
Backstage
@@TheCloserLook Haha! That's awesome.
@@TheCloserLook
Better: Kingsman takes place inside the Rocketman universe and Eggsy and Elton are actually the same person using time travel
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6:32
You jerk. That transition was so smooth that I didn't see it coming. You got me. You got me bad.
but the buffer changed from dots to a circle long ago
@@7even254 doesn't even matter it got my dumbass too
Bruh he got all of us 😂
Oh my god
Same 😂
“People don’t really consider stationary as being a lethal weapon but-“
Laughs in John Wick
Laughs in joker (from the Dark Knight when he meets Gotham's criminals and shows them a magic trick to make a pencil disappear)
Laughs in Agent Poindexter aka Bullseye in Daredevil season 3.
@@ItsTheGuy77 nice one😂 I love that guy🙌🏾
Rory Staden-coats bruh I hate the John wick sequels, poor realism, bad choreography, you know who's going to win and their just absurd to the point of being laughable. I remember seeing a clip where John loads about 3 shells into an empty shotgun and shoots about 14 shots. Like really.
And Mel Gibson.
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I'd like to mention some of Monty Oum's animated work as great examples of animated fights. A lot of hus scenes almost appear like dances, with the action flowling extremely well with the music.
An incredible fight scene of his is the RWBY Red trailer, it stills gives me chills. I'm not sure how he made his old work, but when he worked on Red VS Blue and RWBY all his fight sequences were done with mocap, which explains the dance-like style he had. He was incredibly talented nontheless
* Subtly ignores that Bat-Man is killing people *
that's the cure to evilness I can't judge him
@@willbordy3878 you're missing the point of this comment
Bru
@@willbordy3878 but batman refuses to do so in so many situations where he could have killed villains...so it didnt make much sense why he would kill this time
@@willbordy3878 what this comment meant was that Batman's only rule is not to kill. Always. In all versions and age.
I think you missed the fight in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead's Man Chest when Will, Jack, and the British dude are fighting in a giant hamster wheel, while at the same time Elizabeth and the other two pirated are screaming "sword" while running from CGI shark people. But the video is pretty good and you get my like
Yeah that was a great scene
I mean, by that logic he missed a few other dozen scenes then.
I like how you described Commodore Norington as “the British guy”
The only thing I hate about this fight scene is, when Elizabeth is fighting with one sword, then calls for a sword, she gets thrown a sword and now has 2 swords, the other dude screams sword, and Elizabeth throws her one of her swords and then continues fighting with one sword.
Triggers me every time
I agree with Felipe. He hardly "missed" it. It's not as if the Closer Look said he would literally list all scenes that have great action.
The "never use the same move twice" rule can go really, really wrong. Like in the case of Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness. Throughout the movie, the good guys almost never use the same magic or spell twice, and it makes absolutely no sense because it's clear that certain spells would work perfectly in a situation, yet they just pull out a random one from nowhere and often it doesn't even work.
Some of my fave fight scenes are in my fave action movie, the Old Guard. Not just the final fight where the main characters escape the lab and take out the bad guy, which are mostly awesome because you see just how well these characters work together and how Nile, now manages to fit into the group.
But even more so the scene in the church, where Andromache, as played by Charlize Theron, is fighting a bunch of mercenaries. Now normally there'd be no question that she'd win, cause she's an ancient immortal warrior who knows more about fighting than entire armies ever learn. But then in what's at first just a fun fight, we suddenly realize that spoiler, she's lost her immortality. And for the first time in over six thousand years, wounds actually matter, and if she gets a mortal wound, she might die. And even more than that, after the fight is over, we see Nile watch the aftermath and be horrified by it, and by what Andy's done, and the kind of person she is...
And all of it matters so much emotionally, and this keeps on through the entire movie. Every action scene, every fight scene in that movie matters for the characters emotional arcs. It's the one movie I can endlessly rewatch because of it.
The cut to Ainsley Harriet and the accompanying “ooh” is what elevates this channel from interesting to amazing!
For a video essay especially thats great cinematography
Time to up!! Oh boi
Dude this is advertisement mastery
Nord VPN really got their money’s worth with this ad
I already have Nord VPN. I sat through the AD anyway. Very well done.
I literally paused the video to let it buffer and almost closed and gave up.
@@pvrhye I am glad I did not😂
Usually I skip such ads but this was really entertaining
I legit thought my connection was down....
As someone who writes fiction I find having a background in martial arts helps write compelling fight scenes in stories (it also helps to have someone to throw about do you can see how they would react to the fight 😁)
This the only time anyone has ever gotten a subscription from me because of a clever ad. Well done sir.
Boring fights are usually the META in Games...^^
Gamers optimize themselves out of fun
It really depends what you play
I strongly recommend Detroit Become Human for gripping fight scenes
@@lfnreviews that's more or less a movie and not a game imo
@@rafaelsalzmann4075 ikr, no real fun gameplay, just walking and option selecting and listening to a mediocre story- but hey there's really good graphics and cinematography
6:00 I really thought rule 2 was something about tension and making the audience wait or something but it was all just a NordVPN ad
Haha same
same
🤣 same
probably the best transition to a sponsor I've seen
best sponsorship i've ever seen good job!!
6:00 jokes on you, my buffering symbol doesn’t look like that
"He's too dangerous to be kept alive!"
I’ll make you buffer in real life....
@@Roger_Waters_Broken_Balls I don't like where this is going.
You will...
I drunk and drove
Spider-man: “magic with a kick”.
Spider-man: “magic with a-“.
Thanos: “insect”.
one of the first fights in john wick chapter 3 is when he is in a museum about old weapons, and everybody starts throwing knives at eachother. this fight doesn't really affect the story, but it still is one of my favourite fight scenes ever
ok, this ad placement was genius
Hats off.
Batman be like “ I don’t kill, I just throw massive, wooden boxes at peoples heads really hard”
They’re just committing suicide by not moving out of the way
Not his problem they were caught lacking.
Yeah, that scene would fit really well in kick ass or watchmen, but since its batman i think that would be the first and last time batman shown as cold blooded vigilante, and the sequel proof it.
My understanding is the problem with the DCU is they are telling an alternate take on Batman/Superman but did a poor job setting it up. (Everything too rushed? Never!). This is supposed to be "what happens after batman fights crime for 30 years, accomplishes nothing, and things get worse?" That's not really fun to watch for me, but whatever. It would be fine if, say, we had an idealistic superman to CONTRAST with vicious bitter batman. But we don't. We have a superman whose father told him it is better to let people die than risk people not liking you. The moral is life sucks. People suck. Some people enjoy that, I don't.
Sorry, got distracted. The point is these are meant to be non traditional tales, but there's no good setup to set audience expectations. Exploring Batman's descent into just being the Punisher might be interesting. Or I could just go watch the Punisher. Sorry distracted again.
I am not sure how to make it interesting if both batman and superman are helpless to make the world a better place. At that point it's just a setting for fight scenes.
@@doomedwit1010 My interpretation was that Batman had become slightly unhinged and was consequently crossing the line. That was the whole point, and should have been explored more to properly build it up, and the ending where he elects not to brand Luther, like he did with the random thug at the beginning, is supposed to demonstrate that he's changed and he is returning to his old ways of no killing, even by negligence. It lacked set up, I agree, and doesn’t make up for the other silliness that went on in the film, but this is why him killing people doesn’t bother me in this film.
I've been a modmaker for Doom Eternal, and I find that a lot of your points here on making fight scenes also apply heavily to video games. Levels will suck if they have 0 plot significance and if people have no reason to care. Fights can get boring if they're too consistently easy or too consistently hard. And you should always give players multiple ways of defeating one encounter, making it always interesting.
As someone who plays a lot of old assassins creed and hitman, I feel like the multiple ways should be accentuated in action. Having a lot of ways to infiltrate a mansion and kill a Templar will never not be fun.
@@goroakechi6126 the templars have mansions?!
Actually a lot of film advice can at least apply in part to game design
@@sydssolanumsamsys they have palaces
@@irregular_banana that sounds substantially worse but seems the same in practice
This video holds the greatest sponsor segway of all time👏
OMG, your advert, deserves its own prize, that was hands down, the BEST way to do an ad. well done x1000
Jackie Chan has talked about this alot in how he does his fights.
Yup. And Chad Stahelski and Gareth Evans both reference him in regards to the Raid and John Wick.
That's genius!
And he does his fights much better than this shaky cam shit.
@@Shindai Shaky cam is most likely because the actor can't do the movements and can't use the body double.
@@mactony4 yup. The trick is to find what they can do and choreography around it. Nothing takes me out of a movie like shaky cam. If the actors can't do the moves, get actors that can, get a choreographer who can make a more grounded fight, or just film it better. There are angles and ways of cutting - again, look at Jackie Chan - that makes things look good while also make it look like actors are doing more than just moving. I'll take the silent zorro movie of 1920 where the fencing was just tapping swords, but you can see the characters, what's going on. Shaky cam has it's place but I've only seen one or two that knew that, and it's limited to found footage films where shakiness makes sense. Sorry for the rant but i grew up watching martial arts films with my dad, rest his soul, and it feels like even good directors have no idea how to film action anymore and it makes me really sad :(
I can't believe he didn't bring up the action scenes in Killer Bean, those are the best action scenes around. :(
Killer Bean and SMBZ are godlike, I'd love to see them analyzed
the ad got me... i knew it was so i waited but it was bit too long and i FELL FOR IT
Definitely enjoyed this and learned alot
I saw "The Closer Look" with Kingsman as the thumbnail and clicked as fast as I could
too bad he hardly even talked about that scene or the ones in kingsmen 2
Same reaction
I clicked to hear what he had to say about that scene and then waited for the whole video to hear more than ten seconds about that scene
In the book Ender's game, the little doctor shooting at a planet is totally foreshadowed, Ender legit just asks when he first hears about it if he can shoot it at a planet.
The Enders Game book series were actually really good
Still, for a movie-only viewer though, it was still a good sight.
@@Lord_Arcann I know I'm late but we both have Revan pfps I feel connected
@@Bloodtrial There is no time limit on kinship my brother
Is nobody going to discuss the masterful ad placement of nord vpn… brilliantly done
I honestly think you’re right about everything, really great video
6:18 when he said "this video has been blocked in your region" i instantly knew he was sponsored by a VPN
Yeah...
gamerx Moriarty I knew it was the goddamned king of VPNs Nord VPN
Getting to the point now that I would rather just move country than watch another advert for a VPN
Haha jokes on all of y’all nothing is blocked in America
I was like, and where’s Nord VPN?
The church scene still stands as being one of the best fight scenes I've seen in a film.
Free Bird blaring in the background, amazing choreography and cinematography, and just the all around feel and impact.
Just so good
What is the name of that movie?
@@YoshExclaimationPoint kingsman
free bird is overused
The very first "When the Free Bird solo kicks in" meme
@@sydssolanumsamsys For good reason
My research has got me to a wonderful video, how joyous.
I had forgotten about Upgrade.. thanks for mentioning it!
How to do a fight scene.?
Every Jackie Chan movie that he made before coming to Hollywood.
Fax just one shot of fighting makes it better than hollywood fight scene
Every Frame A Painting did a fantastic video essay about action comedy and how the legacy of Buster Keaton shines through in Chan's films.
In other words, every Jackie chan film. The others are holywood films with Jackie Chan in :)
And I do like some of them quite a lot - but there's a clear difference!
@@hz4720 Hello
@@thehz8613 ayy name twin
0:57 "feel the weight behind that crate crack that guys skull" *as it bounces off of him like a rubber ball*
Newton's 3rd Law: each action has an equal and opposite reaction.
The crate hit the guy so hard that it moved backwards.
@@thebcwonder4850 I haven't actually done the equations, but I'm fairly sure that the crate should have kept sailing forward and crushed the guy.
@@LastStar007 not with the same amount of force, but yeah.
Maybe it didn’t contain anything
Nice profile
Amen to that.
I'm a director specialized in action and I'm so glad someone analyzed that so well. :)
omg that add switch was GENIUS
Bruh, that "buffering" was funny. I like funny 4th wall breaks like that.
It’s not really a 4th wall break in this context
I agree with you for the most part but I'd like to add that fights in books can in my opinion have a different roll than in movies. Books can't describe easily the physical action taking place, with the exception of formats with visual aids like manga or comic books. I think the best fights in books can and do often give the protagonists inner monologue. Some of my favorite fights in books barely describe the combat. Books can focus more on what is important to the people in the fight working as a tool for further character development. Fights in books can for this reason still be compelling even if nothing else is achieved. 🤙🏻👌🏻
Oh of course. I like to think that internal thought is the major advantage novelists have over screenwriters. You can inject all of the character's thoughts in so seamlessly in a novel, good luck doing that with a film.
@@TheCloserLook did you watch HunterxHunter? because as crazy as it sounds this anime do internal thought in the chimera arc fight and it's my favorite arc period.
I agree with what you say. I would say the fight sequence in 'Lolita' at the end of the book is one that actually does all the things you mentioned. It is amazingly well written.
@@TheCloserLook I kinda felt like you said "blow by blow is always bad", but then said it's fine in movies if done well/used scarcely. So brandon sanderson was right in his statement that blow by blow in books is worse than in visual media.
Yes! Like Lan vs the seven men in wheel of time!
It is the best seamless transition to the sponsor... before it was just a
'like', now it is a solid "subscribed"
what makes a foundation for a good fight scene is the effort that runs into it. the choreography, the perfomance of the actors and to stay within the action all the time.
if something is missing then the only chance you have left is to cut it together and that never looks and fell good.
As a writer, I hate writing fight scenes... I never know how to make it engaging, so I just try and avoid fight scenes as much as possible... Fight scenes are hard to write ;-;
Same hat. uxu;
Especially if a fight has dialog. It's like all tension has been lost from a scene.
@@GamersInHellOnYt
Sure, you could go full 'Astartes' and not have anyone talk during the fight scenes, either shooting at eachother or having a short "downtime" to move to more adventageous positions.
But that doesn't mean you can't have someone shout "BEHIND YOU!" to his ally, which would give the otherwise silent fight a bit of tension as its status quo is broken.
@@GamersInHellOnYt you need to take a look at the video essay(s) comparing the fight scenes in the prequels Vs the original star wars trilogy - especially the fight between Luke and Vader. Those 2 fight with dialogue interspersed in between, which actually heighten the tension between the 2 characters with intent. It's so much more engaging and effective of a fight scene than the ones in the prequels
I'm a big proponent of fight scenes having more interruptions than not - dialogue being one of them. Otherwise your fight scene would just be 2 pages of people punching people with no intent or drama
if you dont fight how you gonna write it.
@Domagoj Čović why you gotta be like that
0:33
To this day I'm 100% convinced that *someone* on the Batman V Superman team has played the Arkham video games. It just makes sense to me.
many of the moves Batman uses in that film were taken directly from the Arkham games
I'd like to like this comment but its at a perfect moment
The choreographer said he always wanted to do a Batman fight scene and that the Arkham games were the perfect showcase of what Batman should move like.
@@alexman378 If that's what the choreographer thought, it didn't really translate over lol. Batman literally killing people doesn't happen in Arkham, even though there are some brutal moments.
@@Nezxmi It translated great, a lot of the moves in Arkham should essentially kill the guys you're fighting. The bad translation is how Batman himself was portrayed, not how he fights.
What always gets me into the fight is use of environments in a believable way for that setting is a good start. Also less cuts
you made me watch upgrade because of this and its so goood thankl you for suggesting it
I love how in this entire 20 minute video, the only spoiler warning you gave was for the film from 1977.
Yeah, the only problem of this channel for me are sudden spoilers -_-'
Henry: From this point on, Luke's alone in his story. He has to be independent and figure this Jedi stuff out without any help.
Yoda: Joke to you, am I?
Best comment
Yes.
you earned one more like from me just by the way you introduced the sponsor, did not see that coming
That has the be the best NordVPN endorsement I've ever seen. Very well done!
Green screen done right! Bravo
'The protagonist has an AI implanted in his brain.'
'That's something we've never really seen before.'
Me: What about Be More Chill...?
I still need to watch that- but thank you for saying this! :D
Hardcore Henry?
Same lol was looking for this comment
@Kyle Sutton i always watched Chuck as a kid/teen but once i grow up never heard about it anywere like i thought i was delusional bout that show
Bruh what about jackie chans the tuxedo. Is exactly what he describes lol
You should do "how to write an argument scene" 🙂
Was gonna like but it's at a nice number now. But I agree
YOU'RE TEARING ME APART, LISAAAA
Marriage story argument scenes
Daredevil and Punisher rooftop argument
@@charlieross6866 like it now :D
this was the must clever NordVPN and I've ever seen
I'm subscribing because of it
it expressed your expertise in movie stuff
That segway into your sponsor got me to subscribe. That was brilliant
I love how the NordVPN ads just get more and more out there as time goes on.
I am a simple man, I see The Closer Look together with Kingsman, I click.
That’s a lot of specific criteria to be deemed simple.
@@ge789 jeez, it almost seems like I was praising both things and not meant that it was seriously simple.
DJ Jeroen clickety click
R/oddlyspecific
DJ Jeroen
Good thing that we both love a good joke
This guy got me so good with that loading
Upgrade was a hidden gem. This was one of the best sci-if/action movie I’ve seen in a long, long time. The twists at the end were brilliant. I say “twists”, plural, which is not a typo, but because there are a few twists and surprises in the story.
One reason I don’t like a lot of films is because I can almost always predict where it’s going. Upgrade took some spins at the end I just didn’t see coming. I told my brother about it and he didn’t take it too serious, but when he finally took the time to watch it, he texted me right away telling me how great it was.
The way the protagonist was freaked out by the violence his body was delivering without his control was brilliant. I loved the way he kept telling the guy to please stay down so he didnt have to watch anymore of the brutality.
There is a bad guy with a shotgun built into his arm later in the movie. The way he is dispatched is my favorite move.
Upgrade had many really original things, not just the fight and action scenes, but in the story. It’s probably so good because it didn’t come from Hollywood, where the producers can’t keep their untalented hands out of the story and ruin everything by using the same boring, predictable and stupid formulas.
A movie like Upgrade can only come from the independent market. It very, very non-Hollywood.
I think Upgrade was a script that didn’t go through several rewrites, where so many different people with different vision put their thumbprint on the script, there isn’t a clear story written by one person’s vision, so that everything makes sense and works. That is the only way to get a good movie. Too many cooks do still spoil the broth….. and the movie.
Game Of Thrones is the most recent example of this crap. When they were following GRR Martin’s vision, the show was fabulous with great character depth and story beats. Then they ran out of material from Martin and the producers took over the writing in their own arrogance. HBO was writing blank checks at that time, so they could have found some really good writers willing to take over and finish the story and character arcs with class and style, at the least make it make sense?
Instead they made a complete mess out of it. We didn’t really get an ending to the story, because no real fan of GOT that I know accepts any of that nonsense as the climax to the story we waited 8 years for. We’ll all have to wait for George to finish his novels to get the real ending and I think he wanted it that way. That means we’ll never get an ending, because Martin will never live long enough to finish that story.
At least Upgrade has an ending.
"You can't help but feel the weight behind that crate" Oddly, one of my complaints about that exact sequence is that the crate seems bizarrely weightless. Like, what is it filled with, foam? How is Batman able to hurl it one-handed over his head and into the other man. It does not make Batman seem formidably strong. It makes the crate seem oddly lightweight. Now, even an empty crate will brain a man, but Batman's effortless tossing of the crate makes it seem weird. Like he is a superpowered man in this scene for no reason.
Batman is peak physical condition bordering superhuman shown by the force he punches with
An Olympian Athelete couldn't do it. It's just not sensible for a human, no matter how peak.
there seemed to be slack in the wire too from what I could tell.
@@castergilgamesh1778 his suit enhances his strength
@@CubanWriter Oops! Screenwriter!!
Rules:
1. You need variety in your action. Different styles, different moves. Never use the same move twice.
2. There needs to be rivalry between hero and villain. The audience should feel like either could win and either could loose.
3. Use normal everyday objects to your advantage.
4. The fight scene must serve the story. Maybe they make a crucial decision in the fight or something is revealed. If a fight ends, and nothing has changed in the story, your fight has failed.
I think that the third rule should be more like using your environment to not limit yourself on your ideas
Number 2 and 4 are not that necessary. Example: The Raid
@@budakbaongsiah nope the raid use 2 and 4 rule too. The bad guys try to kill the police to get the present and the police just try to survive, so that was a rivalry. Then Rama try to escape or help his injured friend or help his brother and the bad guys try to kill him, that serve the story
@@iwoso If anything, I'd just outright change the entire point to "be at least a bit innovative with your action yet fitting to your story/character".
I’d like to say #1 could be a little more lenient, more like they should fail if they repeatedly use it. The character has to change how they fight because they’re predictable now
You're so absolutely right..., Upgrade had these really bad a55 fight scenes, first time I saw it, I watched with my mouth open in awe...!!
Ok, that add-bit was amazing 😂 you made me actually laugh out loud 😂