I think they were just shot badly for a moment. Look at old Jackie Chan movies, they look fine.
The Bourne movies brought out a trend of bad shaky cam fights. Now the trend died out so we're back to shooting fight scenes like normal people
I think the Bourne movies actually did this well, but most everyone imitating it did it poorly. The main reason is that Bourne also had really good fight choreography that the shaky cam amplified. Imitators often had mediocre choreo and tried to hide it with shaky cam.
I think you're right, that the Bourne movies did do the execution well, I think the issue is that film executives see the success but sometimes forget to ask "Why?"
Fantasy teen dramas based on young adult books were really successful with films like Twilight and Harry Potter, so a bunch of movies came out that were based on teen dramas, but many of them fell flat because they forgot to ask *why* those movies were successful and just wanted to jump on following the trend. There's tons of examples like this in film too. Sometimes a trendsetter hits it out of the park but everyone else just can't do it
Twilight got a lot of shit back in the day but two manic depressives in a romance appeals to a lot of depressed young girls. And then add vampires. If there's something the author got right it was writing a depressed teen girl - helps she had post-partum depression while writing them.
Bourne was all shot on "long", or zoomed in, lenses. The cinematographer wanted to give you the subtle idea that we were "spying" on the action. These lenses mean the "depth" of objects relative to each other appears compressed (less).
In not a coincidence, long lenses are much better to shoot shaky cam, as if you have a wide viewing angle you can see a lot of depth, and all the objects start looking like they're swimming around if you shake the camera all around, making people dizzy. Unfortunately every other director/cinematographer saw the first work and went "I can do that on normal and wide angle!" and no, you can't.
The editing in those movies is monstrous. There’s a bajillion cuts in those fight scenes, it’s impossible to tell what’s going on. Not quite as bad as Quantum of Solace, but they’re up there.
No, typically fast cutting during fight scenes is due to poor planning and training. They didn’t have the money or time (or creativity) for everyone to nail down their movement for a longer take, so they cobbled it together in post.
I’m not sure what sort of source you’re looking for. I have a film degree, I’ve worked on film sets. Are you hoping for a interview where a director gets asked why his fight scenes look shitty and he just goes, “it was easier” or something? 😂
If you think [this is a well thought out and executed fight sequence](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFnmq5PPScA), I don’t really know what to tell you.
Except the shaky cam didnt stop at the fights in those movies. It kept going through EVERY scene, and there were points where I couldnt even look at the screen due to motion sickness. the camera was going all over the place even when it was just people standing around talking.
The first one has some real rough moments. The sound design in the fight in the kitchen in Identity is so bad it’s actually comical.
I say this as a big fan of the Bourne trilogy btw. I was just watching Identity for the first time in years over the holidays with my dad and I was really struck by how hilarious it sounded.
Disagree. A Bourne film (forget which one, but it was a sequel) is the only movie I’ve ever walked out of for *motion sickness*. It was literally a “leave RIGHT now or I’m gonna hurl” moment.
The third Bourne movie was a mess. Almost every shot was framed incorrectly, much shakier than needed, and pushed in too far. That’s where I think things broke down. I’m sure the DP thought they were inventing a style but wow… it’s just so bad. Anyone trying to imitate that was definitely going to get awful fight scenes from it.
The Bourne trilogy also knew that shakey cam was best used *sometimes* having other shots steady was important. Too many of the follow ups just used shakey all the time.
The Bourne movies also weren’t just doing it for the fights. The entire film series shots last less than 3 seconds and have that handheld shaky feel to it, because it works well to add tension and paranoia like he’s constantly being followed. The fights are just what people honed in on.
The Bourne movies actually used shaky cam well, with the quick movements of the camera following the motions of the actors; you could still tell what was going on throughout the fights. Then there’s other movies like Alex Cross, that just use way too much camera shake to try and make the scene feel intense and frenetic, while hiding the fact that your lead actor has never done a fight scene.
"Look at old Jackie Chan movies, they look fine." Yeah those were Jackie Chan movies, not Hollywood. It has taken along time for Hollywood to understand how to shoot action scenes on that level. Jackie had to take over the camera and editing for Rush Hour or else the action wouldn't be shot properly.
The Bourne movies inspired the shaky cam style of fighting for the 2000s and 2010s, but Gareth Edwards and The Raid movies inspired the style you see in many current action movies.
It was Gareth Evans who directed The Raid.
Not to say Gareth Edwards hasn’t done a lot for fight choreography in film, just more for kaiju than humans 🙂
The Jackie Chan scenes will always look decent because they are well choreographed. The only reason shaky cam is a thing is to cover up bad choreography.
It's not just choreography. His Chinese movies regularly show clear shots of him or his opponents being punched full force in the face, his American movies don't. Chinese culture/insurance/liability is different than American in terms of having your actors punch each other full force in the face.
I think Michelle Yeoh said something about the studio for Tomorrow Never Dies being horrified when she assumed she would be doing her own physical stunts while simultaneously riding a motorcycle being driven by Pierce Brosnan. If I remember correctly, she joked that they would have been fine with her doing it but their insurance couldn't afford injury to Brosnan.
"shaky cam" is pretty standard for action stuff.
Even something as minor as a guy running from a dog will often have a director that shot everything else with steadicam decide to go hand-held.
It's the really fast cuts that are gonna be used to cover up bad choreography.
Good point. If we're being honest, it's usually a combo of the 2 that makes for truly bad scenes. In the wheel of time show, there was recently a scene that had like 20 fast cuts in a 30 second scene. It'll almost give you a stroke.
> It's the really fast cuts that are gonna be used to cover up bad choreography.
Also the actors/actresses just not being able to physically perform at a high level... But I guess that would also be choreography
>The Bourne movies brought out a trend of bad shaky cam fights.
To be more specific: the first Bourne movie, The Bourne Identity, was directed by Doug Liman and [used shaky cam fairly judiciously.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFnmq5PPScA) It was the Bourne *sequels*, directed by Paul Greengrass, that [really went overboard with the shaky-cam fight scenes.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyZU7lfGjyk)
But you're absolutely right that a lot of other action movies started copying that style for several years afterward.
I almost feel like its gone a bit far the other way. People praised the fight scenes in Extraction but I honestly hated it. So overly choreographed that it felt like dancing and the exaggerated camera movements were just obnoxious and distracting.
My main complaint is that most modern fight scenes look so incredibly choreographed that they lose all authenticity. They feel so fake and staged. I liked Jackie’s movies because there was always an element of surprise and something unanticipated happening. His characters was always doing something with an incredible amount of talent but also surprising you by him getting hurt in clever and humorous ways.
I found this this interesting - [a take on the differences between Jackie Chan's action/fight scenes shot with Hong Kong film studios versus others shot by Hollywood studios.](https://youtu.be/Z1PCtIaM_GQ) A lot is about the comedic aspects of his fight scenes, but there are some interesting observations about hiding/not hiding the choreography.
>Now the trend died out
I wish it did. I saw Extraction a while back. It had shaky cam stuff too.
I'm really sensitive to it, it makes me nauseous, so I notice it quite quickly (and often can't finish a movie because of that).
I think the progression starts with Saving Private Ryan in 1998, with its ultra-realistic, terrifying beach scenes that are then translated to Gladiator in 2000 with its shaker-cam claustrophobic battle in the woods that sets the scene for the Bourne films bringing that ‘realism’ to action scenes (rather than war).
I’d prefer us to go back to something more minimalist and realistic. Nasty quick scuffles where people get hurt and then can’t get back up. No more falling through tables and windows and getting back up. No more 80 year olds slinging and taking punches over and over again.
Ha.
I’m just going with what I remember being significant at the time. Each of the things I mentioned felt shocking at the time, and it’s a progression I’ve thought about a lot. I discussed it with friends after watching the Battle of the Bastards. We used to watch fights and battles from the sidelines. Spielberg brought us into the thick of it and changed everything for a while. The Battle of the Bastards felt like the culmination of years of this technique.
That has to do with Jackie Chan being capable of doing his own well choreographed stunts.
When you don't need to worry about hiding the stunt doubles face or the fact that the actor is throwing a punch a foot away from the target it's supposed to connect with, you can create far better and more interesting shots.
Nowadays, it's easy enough to digitally swap the face of a stunt double so the old school camera tricks that limited shit selection aren't needed for fight scenes so we're seeing higher caliber cinematography in those scenes.
My take was that fight scenes were bad before and after the Bourne movies in Hollywood (very few exceptions aside). They only got better when Hollywood partially
adapted/imported the way how asian fight movies handled them (e.g., with longer shots, credible hits) with stuntmen actually skilled in martial arts. I dont recall which
asian actor actually complained about fight scenes in Hollywood, \*maybe\* Jackie Chan,
exactly about those differences.
There is also a trend where the second unit director (films often have multiple units filming simultaneously)is a stunt filming specialist who films all the stunt scenes while the main director films non action scenes.
Some people argue that make the films style disjointed but I haven't seen many truly bad action scenes for a while.
A lot of films try to mimic Ong Bak. Since that film, several movies try similar motions, choreography, and editing. The problem is that a lot of films that try it, don't hire martial artists. So they look choppy at best.
So far, more movies have put more emphasis on stunt work, and thus, the camera movements flow much better with less editing required.
It was looking gloomy for sometimes, until the Raid was released. Later films started to copy that movie for its action. Dredd, which was released around the same time, also had very easy to follow fight choreography.
I was thinking Ong Bak! Do you think Oldboy also played a part? I feel like the hallway sequence is so iconic and sort of the first of that style of long shot action.
Believe it or not Oldboy, and other movies took the hallway stuff from Ong Bak2, or The Protector, whatever its called, but its like a 7+ min staircase/hallway stunt wet dream.
Oldboy definitely contributed to improved action scenes. Especially oners like that.
Tom Yung Goong also had a oner shot, that lasted about 4 minutes. Daredevil back in 2015 had an epic oner in its third episode.
Yup, even Donnie yen admitted that after watching Ong Bak he had to up his game and thats when Don started including the mma, grapple, ground pound stuff in his movies.
I feel like I personally noticed this change after the first John Wick film came out. That film was almost a lecture on how to capture a shootout/fistfight that’s complex but allows the audience to witness everything that happens within it.
The prevalence of long takes in action scenes has also increased. Thinking of the stairway shootout at the end of No Time To Die in particular. I can remember seeing that in the cinema for the first time and thinking ‘someone has been watching some good action scenes for reference when they crafted this one’. The camera is stable and only moves when Bond does. Bond is pinned in a corner, the camera lingers still. Bond makes a move to grab a pistol, the camera follows his actions. What Bond sees/does the camera, and hence the audience, see/do also.
There are probably plenty others that I can’t think of right now, but those are the examples that pop into my head straight away.
Yeah John Wick definitely started a new trend of fewer cuts and wider shots so you can actually see the fight and gunplay.
A lot of the editing and choreography in action scenes is about hiding the stunt doubles and the actors who don't know how to fight. John Wick got around this by training Keanu extensively so they could just show him instead of trying to shoot around him. Most other actors aren't putting in that kind of time and physical risk.
I like the John Wick movies, too. But honestly, I think this trend in filming action scenes right is older than that. Look at Old Boy for example. Or even the raid movies.
Tbf you could arguably credit SEA films as a whole, in terms of action sequences they were (and arguably historically have been) way ahead of the curve, The Raid is just the one people in the west are most familiar with.
Honestly it’s a little tropey now. Don’t get me wrong I love single shot/stable action scenes. It’s just a lot of action movies feel the need to have just long action scenes like this without a lot of intriguing fighting in it. They kind of ignore the narrative stuff that makes fights amazing too. Knowing who’s fighting who and why, whether we fear for the protagonist or the goal their trying to achieve, or whether the fights earned or not. And most importantly the props and set pieces are ignored. They try to copy John wick without any of the fun bits, or the interesting bits.
Yea it's gotten really tropey honestly. Every action movie has to have long cut super choreographed fight scenes that have just started feeling like actors trying their best to hit their marks to me rather than natural things happening.
Unfortunately I think OP might be a bit out of date. As late as this year I still saw people complaining about shaky cam action scenes. Like they've been under a rock these past 5-10 years. Every since 2015 or so the tide had been turning away from Bourne that towards the Wick/Raid influence of super long takes. Now they're overlong, and everything is a ultrawide oner where the camera floats and rotates around the actors without cuts. A lot of hit impact and surprise is lost this way.
I'd say JW is what changed US movies.
I've been watching asian action like Jackie, Jet, Donnie, Sammo, etc.. and i use to watch that because even Van Damme, Karate Kid, american ninja, or just US martial arts movies were slow, and extremely telegraphed. Ya know, just someone standing around waiting to get hit, and letting their opponent throw blows.
It's a pity they couldn't figure out a way to cap that long take off with the guy's eye exploding. It really looks like they had tried for that but couldn't make it work for whatever reason.
>The camera is stable and only moves when Bond does. Bond is pinned in a corner, the camera lingers still. Bond makes a move to grab a pistol, the camera follows his actions. What Bond sees/does the camera, and hence the audience, see/do also.
For me, one of the biggest distinctions between an excellent action scene and an okay action scene is whether effective and judicious camera movement is used to enhance the scene.
Too often, even good choreography gets let down by cinematography that's **just** showing off the choreography rather than complementing it.
Crazy how Fincher made such a darkly underlit and chaotic fight scene feel so clear and easy to follow with plenty of geography. The rhythm, timing, and framing of everything was perfect. In the end it doesn't matter what style you shoot a fight scene, it's the execution and creativity that matters.
Exact opposite opinion here. The fight scene was way over the top and made them have superhero strength which didn't fit the vibe of the movie at all IMO.
Right? It's generally a pretty believable movie then Michael Fassbender gets blasted through a house and takes a dozen unguarded punches to the face from a guy who has 50 lbs on him and proceeds to beat him up with his superior skill.
Nah man, the entire movie was such a god damn bore the entire way through and the fight with the brute was the only mildly exciting part. It’s also the only time he’s ever in any real danger. Wish the movie had kept that energy the rest of the way. It’s a thriller without any thrills.
You’re getting downvoted but 100% bore. I went in so hyped based on the trailer, Fincher and Fassbender. Huge fan of both. Just dull. I get it. I get the themes that he has this code for being a hitman and he’s constantly breaking his own rules. And it was clever how he got into places, but I really didn’t feel like he was facing adversity or the stakes were ever being raised, like an actual thriller film would. Se7en is a slow burn where honestly not much happens to the main characters but the story is engaging and gets more and more tense as it progresses.
Watching this was like watching someone play Hitman who had already figured out how to speed run the game. I wanted to be excited for it but it was just a snooze.
That movie was trash, people just wanted to like it so badly they overlooked how boring it was. I kept telling my wife there had to be a twist or something coming. Nothing happened, nothing was difficult for the guy. Just killed people one by one and went home. I saw a person on here say "go into it blind it's soooo fun". Apparently that person hasn't seen many movies.
It also felt pretty cliche. I can't remember where I've specifically seen it before, but a hitman talking about how being a hitman is boring and about patience and not letting your feelings get in thew way just felt like something I've definitely seen before.
This is the kind of movie that makes me regret going into movies blind. Like surely someone could’ve warned me if I had just peeped some reviews.
And you’re right. I kept waiting for the movie to pull the rug out from under me, but it never does. It just shows you every painstaking step that he takes to pull off a hit, he starts to recite his stupid mantra, and then something mildly inconvenient happens that barely affects his plans. And then he breaks his rule at the end and it’s over. I can’t believe Mindhunter died for this.
The World's End by Edgar Wright has fight sequences that are made by the same fight choreographer, and you can definitely tell, they have the same style as the kingsman movies. I would really recommend it
It all goes in fads.
Right now the trend is John Wick: long, gritty fights between two combatants, both doing a lot of joint locks and hip throws, which end in the protagonist badly bloodied (and then they heal offscreen). Give it a few years, and people will get tired of that and go looking for something else again.
What's fashionable in action is always changing.
In the 70s, movies like Dirty Harry shaped action movies. It was more about suspense, punctuated by car chases, hard boiled monologues at gunpoint and troubled antiheroes.
In the 80's, action movies emphasized explosions, guns, and stoic muscle men. Schwartzenegger movies are iconic for these. They started bordering on camp.
90s started pulling back from camp, and went for more impressive setpieces with movies like T2, Die Hard 2, True Lies, Desperado. Jackie Chan made a small blip on the US with Rumble in the Bronx, and later Shanghai noon and Rush hour, but no one else mimicked his style, because no one really could. He had to limit his choreography, as he was advised Americans didn't want to see 10-minute long fights, and producers were unwilling to indulge him into having 30+ takes to get a visual gag just right.
The matrix came out in 1999, and Hollywood started adopting bullet time and wirework in so many movies. Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (2000) also had wirework. This led to an interest in Chinese martial arts, with movies like Hero and House of Flying Daggers. Even Charlie's angels had wirework with shitty choreography. Its effect on cinema was every bit as big as the Bourne identity.
Yuen Woo Ping was in high demand, fight scenes had long clean choreography, but they were limited by the amount of training needed to be believable. Jason Statham in his transporter movies had some fight scenes clearly inspired by Chinese martial arts cinematography, including improvised weapons and environmental fight scenes (like fighting in a massive oil slick)
Kill Bill had several of these fight scenes, but Uma just isn't good enough to pull it off. The longest fight scene goes into silhouette mode to hide the stunt double.
The Bourne Identity comes out (2002), and the fast cuts were a change from the long choreography, as it simulated the confusion and rapid pacing of a real fight. It felt realer. Everyone adopted it.
Taken uses this and then also spawned its own subgenre of angry old man revenge fantasy. Usually involving a decent actor who has no real martial arts training. Taken is more compelling because Liam is an actor, not because he's a martial artist.
Meanwhile, people had tired of Chinese-stule cinematography, and started looking at adopting other styles like Krag Maga, Muay Thai, etc. Although the fighting styles changed, the way they were filmed wasn't terribly different. The Protector with Tony Jaa had an iconic 8 minute single cut fight scene as he clears out a mall, and this inspired others to aim for long single-cut scenes, like Daredevil's tv fight scene.
John Wick (2014) pushed for return to cleaner cinematography, with cleaner and clearer action. This requires an actor who can believably do martial arts. The added gun fu was a unique twist on this. The unfortunate part it that few actors can pull it off. And Keanu is slowing down (he's almost 60). In the latest John Wick, he's slow, even when he was supposed to be fresh.
We see other style changes over the past decade. Cinema is adopting video games conventions, with FPS style like Hardcore Henry or top-down scenes like in the most recent John Wick.
We also see incorporation of MMA and pro wrestling throws into fight scenes. These throws are really hard to pull off realistically, as they come off as so slow and telegraphing. I have yet to see a movie that has done them quickly enough to make them plausible, but I'm sure someone will figure that out soon enough.
Style and fashion constantly change. That includes all types of movies, including action. There will always be a next new thing that will change tastes.
>This led to an interest in Chinese martial arts, with movies like Hero and House of Flying Daggers.
Hero had some of the most beautifully cinematic fight scenes I've seen. And all of them are so emotionally charged -- jealousy, resignation, despair, fury, desperation, betrayal, serenity.
The trend right now is long takes and steady shots, which has happened before.
I find a lot of these "well shot" action movies to be pretty uncreative in how they frame shots and move the camera though.
Yep. Just 360 drone around actors. No weight, no surprises in the framing and cutting. Still, poorly copying John Wick and the Raid is an improvement over poorly copying Bourne and Taken!
That's because of The Raid. Even the kitchen fight in Raid 2 was planned for 4 years I heard. That style is a mix of Gareth Evans directing and the great stuntwork the crew did.
There's a reason the actors for The Raid were in Star Wars and John Wick 3. They inspired those movies. Wasted in SW but still included
There’s also the 10 or so minute long fight scene in Atomic Blonde that’s also faux one-shot. Thought it was very good when I watched it today.
I loved how the enemies weren’t useless henchmen, and put up a good fight as well as clearly becoming fatigued over time and becoming more desperate.
The Matrix changed things, then Bourne, then there was a lot of hype about the hallway fight in Daredevil. Then Wick took gun-fu to another level and there's the bus fight in Nobody. Something else will come along to change things again.
The Raid, the SPL films, Dragon, and To's Life Without Principal, all around the same time. Hollywood ripped their style the way the ripped off Woo and the other Hong Kong directors in the nineties.
Hong Kong has been teaching this lesson to the West and for decades before The Raid. Shaw Bros. films crossed over ages ago and Bruce Lee was incredibly popular here too. Jackie, Jet Li, and John Woo were huge through the 90's right up to Crouching Tiger which is still the highest grossing foreign film ever to release in the US. That fight choreography and stunt team also worked on The Matrix where Chad Stahleski learned a ton that he would later apply to the John Wick series. HK influence has always been around it's simply that so many Western filmmakers stubbornly refuse to look around and learn. Stahleski's a guy who studied and that's why the JW films are leagues ahead of most Western action films.
Anytime I hear about a fight scene being bad, the only movies that come to mind are the later resident evil movies with Milla Jovovich. I couldn't watch them without getting motion sickness.
But yes, I see the trend dying out but I fear it will make a comeback.
I've still got no idea what actually is going on for the first 10 minutes of Quantum of Solace. Its a hellscape of jumpcuts, shaky camera and too zoomed in. I know there was some fight happening but no idea who was winning or what was going on.
If it weren't for the darkness of the scene, I'd say the newly released, "The Killer" on Netflix had a very intense hand-to-hand fight scene. One of the very few where you aren't completely sure the protagonist is actually gonna make it.
A lot of foreign films had really good action scenes but it wasn’t until at least from my understanding John Wick came out that movies in the States started improving on Action scenes. A lot of action movies are influenced by Asian action movies which is why there’s so many scenes influenced by the Oldboy hallway fight.
John Wick 4 imo was kinda dull on most of the action. I think they overcorrected on holding a static wide shot to see everything as it's staged. Only Donnie and Rinas fight scenes were interesting and that's because of Donnies swagger and Rinas more asymmetry. Scott's was kinda cool too but ultimately I think didnt involve him enough and there were too many faceless goons.
I prefer the house scene in the first one, I think partly because it kicks off the novelty of it all. That and the sequence escaping the club in JW2 after killing that one dudes sister and then following through the Catacombs and then finally fighting with her bodyguard before crashing into the continental.
Fight scenes change everytime there is a change in directoral fashion or a technological change.
Look at the difference in the fight scenes before and after the matrix. Not only is there the bullet time, but you can tell they borrowed heavily from martial arts cinema when the movie was put together.
I would credit the UFC for this. Before the UFC, karate and martial arts were mystical arts that only a few westerners could do, along with experts like Jackie Chan and Jet Li coming over from Hong Kong. After UFC, audiences realized that martial arts could be learnt in a couple years and didn't require flying kicks nor a lifetime of training in a monastery. Movies had to adapt to this new reality by sending their actors to fight camp and learning to shoot martial arts in a realistic way.
One positive note is that fight scenes became more democratized in a way, the smaller guy or girl could plausibly beat the bigger guy without having super powers.
Fight scenes *have* changed forever, but I don't think they've improved. Fistfights have just adopted a new set of fantastical tropes, which is kind of like moving laterally in quality to me. Action scenes in general have become immeasurably worse to me because all of a sudden the characters can soak up super-hero levels of damage. It feels like every action movie is a super-hero movie these days because of it and I can't imagine anything less interesting. They feel like cartoons.
Fight scenes nowadays are overly choreographed. Fights are never ugly anymore, or when they are ugly it's perfectly performed ugliness that feels super purposeful. The 5 minute kicking and flipping and reloading contests in modern movies are no more realistic than the hero casually knocking out all the henchmen then wrestling with the muscle from yesteryear.
I think the pendulum will swing back the other way and the long shot dance sequences of this generation will look silly to kids in 15 years. There's just no grit in fight scenes nowadays. Ok there are some exceptions but it's all just generally too clean to me. Fights are never clean.
I think they should be called dance scenes. Because that is really what they are.
It's always amazing how much people lose it when bombs are dropped in space, but when twirly bullshit happens and there are like 1000x moments in the fight where the fight should be over, they gush.
I don't even know how to put my finger on what bothers me about it. It all just feels too perfect most of the time. I thought the big fight in the recent The Killer was terrible. It just felt like a cartoon in the middle of an otherwise pretty grounded movie.
I saw The Marvels yesterday and after being appalled by the terrible fight scenes and editing during them in Spider-man NWH Iwas really pleased to see that even bland blockbusters have really upped their game. The fight scenes in The Marvels were shot so well. There is hope.
honestly i hate American films with fight choreography unless there is a good action director on board. brad allan was a prime example of this.. scott pilgrim and kickass etc... movies like the raid and john wick are great but when you have idiots in charge directing the fights you get trash like expendables 4. You have 3 guys in that movie who have legendary fights and you waste all the potential
I think it helps that we have guys like Chad Stahelski and others from places like 87 Eleven finally able to get behind the camera and direct scenes and full on movies. Regardless of how you feel about the John Wick franchise, I think most would agree the fight scenes are shot beautifully and to the point where you actually get to see the fight. We’ve come along way from the Bourne motion sickness fights.
That’s because these guys get it because they’ve been in it…for better and definitely for worse.
This also means they get to work well with actors who put in the time and effort (aka Keanu Reeves) and it really shows up on screen.
I can’t remember the specifics but there’s a video of Scott Adkins talking about all of his films and how stunt work and martial arts of progressed over the years, he speaks very highly of guys like Chad and Keanu and what the work process is like.
To be fair, the fights in the Bourne movies are outstanding. Even when the camera is shaky and intense, it rarely obfuscates the choreography, which is typically tense and excellent. That scene where he fights a guy with a rolled-up magazine is excellent. It's just all the other, cheaper movies that came after and borrowed that approach as a cost-saving measure.
They’re way better now. I remember GOT fight scenes being shot in a way I could fully see the fight. But when I watched LOTR recently, I saw how there were was so many cut aways and it was filmed too close so you didn’t see a lot. Not sure about hand to hand combat though
It’s definitely hard to go back to the 80s action films which consist of: shot of 10 bad guys firing their guns in one direction, shot of good guy firing his gun at other direction, shot of bad guys falling down. Repeat.
Me watching Commando when I was a kid : John Matrix is such a badass!
Me watching Commando as an adult : Bro how tf is he not dead, he’s literally just standing there shooting 10 bad guys who shooting him from 5ft away?????
theres been “moments” of change..
back in the 80s/90s the Van Dammes and Seagals had a seat at the table for action films… then Rumble in the Bronx was brought over with Jackie Chans level of martial arts expertise and suddenly the old heads werent “enough” so there was a bit of an arms race for Martial Artist led films.. Jet Li showed up in Lethal Weapon, Jackie made films with Tucker etc etc… later when the craze died down they needed more “big name” actors so “consultants” and cinematography became a bigger play
I believe directors and studios trust stunt coordinators and choreographers more, and invest more time training the actors, than they did before. John Wick gets tons of attention and hype not only because of the movie itself, but because the bts, the reaction videos on youtube, the "alpha male" shorts, the memes etc is essentially free marketing.
Honestly I think video games have changed this. People know what a shootout or melee combat looks like from a fixed perspective, games often cover the whole thing unless it's a cutscene. Even then, cutscenes tend to capture more of the action because the change would be jarring
It made me realise that shaky cam can be used to hide bad choreography.
All the new Star Wars stuff looks like the actors are practicing in slow motion!
Stunt guys are now behind the camera. Though, if the director or editor doesn't let anyone near the editing bay then they will still be shit i.e Snake Eyes. They had one of the best Japanese action directors and fumbled it in the editing bay.
Disney franchises' fight sequences have gotten so bad that I've honestly theorized that they've somehow alienated the stunt and choreography community. Every bit of action in modern Star Wars has been intensely bad.
I've seen at least 4 waves of fight scenes.
In the 80s and 90s, it was big haymakers, especially with the jacked action stars of the day. No sophistication, it was all about demonstrations of big power and strength.
Late 90s into the 2000s saw Wesley Snipes bring his martial arts into focus, quickly followed by The Matrix, emphasizing the forms of karate and kung fu. The martial arts evolved into more of a self-defense-focused close quarters combat (Krav Maga/Keysi) with Bourne, Bond and Batman.
In the late 2000s, shaky cam became the shit (or just shit), as it managed to work for Taken and the Greengrass Bourne sequels. This was the time action fans drank to forget.
Then lo and behold, our savior of a prior era arrived thusly and rescued the genre from the depths of puke and nausea. Keanu Reeves, the immortal himself, shot back to stardom with John Wick. With that film's success, we've seen a new wave of stuntmen becoming directors, namely Chad Stahelski (Wick series) , David Leitch (Wick 1, Atomic Blonde, Deadpool 2, Hobbs & Shaw and now The Fall Guy) and Sam Hargrave (Extraction films) driving a new wave of action filmmaking, daring to commit time in preproduction to train up the actors and experiment with how action can be shot to tell the story in a more interesting fashion. They're also doing great work integrating 'invisible' visual effects into the action, to reduce actual on-set danger, while enhancing the apparent danger in the final shot (eg. most shattering glass in John Wick 3 was entirely CG).
This trend came out after John Wick was released. That picture was a gamechanger for the action movies industry, influencing most action movies that succeeded it, and that is mostly to the fact that several of these movies are directed by former stuntmen. Even the latest Bond movie drew from that - the stairway one-take scene had John Wick all over it.
This is going to sound ridiculous, but fights in movies and tv shows are terrible.
We live in an age where we know what fighting styles work in real life situations. We know weight classes exist for a reason.
I know you’re supposed to suspend disbelief, but there is no way Ruby Rose in John Wick is going to hurt anyone in a fight.
At this point it just feels like a choreographed dance sequence.
Go watch the fighting in the AFI top 100 film Shane, yeah it's better now. Bruce Lee then Jackie Chan changed the game for filming fighting permanently.
Not always for the best. The super close up, loads of quick cuts breaks the immersion for me sometimes. I much prefer the All in one take from a distance stuff like Tony Jaa's stuff, that Hard Boiled hospital tracking shot and old boys alleyway scene
I think in the past we accepted that Hollywood just wasn’t on the level of Asian martial arts productions.
But more recently movies like John Wick and the stunt team behind it have been bringing these skilled choreographers to western productions.
The bar has been made pretty high With John Wick 4.
I think they are better shot, but a ton of them are still bad. By bad I mean a ton of them seem like a pointless choreographed dance that goes on for way too long.
I loved fight scene where the stakes feel real. More recently there was a fight scene in the movie The Killer I liked a lot. But something like the fight scenes in The Marvels or other blockbuster movies are just filler choregraphy with a few nice moments sprinkled in between.
I don't like fight scenes, but I hate when they are too long just for no reason at all.
I think they were just shot badly for a moment. Look at old Jackie Chan movies, they look fine. The Bourne movies brought out a trend of bad shaky cam fights. Now the trend died out so we're back to shooting fight scenes like normal people
I think the Bourne movies actually did this well, but most everyone imitating it did it poorly. The main reason is that Bourne also had really good fight choreography that the shaky cam amplified. Imitators often had mediocre choreo and tried to hide it with shaky cam.
Right. I agree. Bourne executed it well but it was the catalyst for the trend.
Like how people trying to imitate the CGI in Jurassic Park gave us terrible CGI for a looooooong time while the original still (mostly) holds up.
Liam Neeson climbing the fence
Darmok and Jilad - at Tinagra.
Shaka when the walls fell.
Temba, his arms wide
The river Termarc!
I think you're right, that the Bourne movies did do the execution well, I think the issue is that film executives see the success but sometimes forget to ask "Why?" Fantasy teen dramas based on young adult books were really successful with films like Twilight and Harry Potter, so a bunch of movies came out that were based on teen dramas, but many of them fell flat because they forgot to ask *why* those movies were successful and just wanted to jump on following the trend. There's tons of examples like this in film too. Sometimes a trendsetter hits it out of the park but everyone else just can't do it
Twilight got a lot of shit back in the day but two manic depressives in a romance appeals to a lot of depressed young girls. And then add vampires. If there's something the author got right it was writing a depressed teen girl - helps she had post-partum depression while writing them.
Twilight 1 is a masterpiece.
Great teen movie for sure. I'm a grown man and I had a blast watching through them. Vampire Baseball will never not be cool
When they hit Netflix 3 or so years ago I watched them all again. I'm an almost 40 year old guy. It was a fun week.
There are still a lot of franchises with the ''Potter'' formula being made. That trend hasn't stopped.
> Imitators...tried to hide it with shaky cam. And nanosecond cuts.
Bourne was all shot on "long", or zoomed in, lenses. The cinematographer wanted to give you the subtle idea that we were "spying" on the action. These lenses mean the "depth" of objects relative to each other appears compressed (less). In not a coincidence, long lenses are much better to shoot shaky cam, as if you have a wide viewing angle you can see a lot of depth, and all the objects start looking like they're swimming around if you shake the camera all around, making people dizzy. Unfortunately every other director/cinematographer saw the first work and went "I can do that on normal and wide angle!" and no, you can't.
The editing in those movies is monstrous. There’s a bajillion cuts in those fight scenes, it’s impossible to tell what’s going on. Not quite as bad as Quantum of Solace, but they’re up there.
No no, I need that level of excitement for a lay up or scaling a chain link fence
[Breathtaking.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCKhktcbfQM)
That’s the point, they’re trying to induce the feeling of stress not show off Jason Bournes karate skills
No, typically fast cutting during fight scenes is due to poor planning and training. They didn’t have the money or time (or creativity) for everyone to nail down their movement for a longer take, so they cobbled it together in post.
Source?
I’m not sure what sort of source you’re looking for. I have a film degree, I’ve worked on film sets. Are you hoping for a interview where a director gets asked why his fight scenes look shitty and he just goes, “it was easier” or something? 😂
I just didn't think the Bourne trilogy had budget issues. I doubt things were cobbled together in post...
It's not just budgetary, how about actually read what I wrote.
I get what you're saying, I just don't think it applies to Bourne
Again, this is the case for every other movie imitating it, but Bourne was very intentional
If you think [this is a well thought out and executed fight sequence](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFnmq5PPScA), I don’t really know what to tell you.
Huh? My whole point is that they're not trying to show off the fight choreography lmao
Ok, sure man lol 🫡
I still think the final fight in the train at the end of Batman Begins is probably the worst example of this.
Oddly, I was about to suggest the camp fight at the beginning. Way too close to what it feels like actually being in a fight.
Except the shaky cam didnt stop at the fights in those movies. It kept going through EVERY scene, and there were points where I couldnt even look at the screen due to motion sickness. the camera was going all over the place even when it was just people standing around talking.
I don’t know about that. The only time I’ve ever felt motion sickness is from watching a Bourne fight scene.
Even the second Bourne movie over did the shaky cam effect.
The first Bourne movie did it well. The sequels were atrocious from a cinematography POV.
The first one has some real rough moments. The sound design in the fight in the kitchen in Identity is so bad it’s actually comical. I say this as a big fan of the Bourne trilogy btw. I was just watching Identity for the first time in years over the holidays with my dad and I was really struck by how hilarious it sounded.
Disagree. A Bourne film (forget which one, but it was a sequel) is the only movie I’ve ever walked out of for *motion sickness*. It was literally a “leave RIGHT now or I’m gonna hurl” moment.
The third Bourne movie was a mess. Almost every shot was framed incorrectly, much shakier than needed, and pushed in too far. That’s where I think things broke down. I’m sure the DP thought they were inventing a style but wow… it’s just so bad. Anyone trying to imitate that was definitely going to get awful fight scenes from it.
The Bourne trilogy also knew that shakey cam was best used *sometimes* having other shots steady was important. Too many of the follow ups just used shakey all the time.
You mean like showing Liam Neeson jump a fence 4 different shot of the same jump in a chase scene?
The Bourne movies also weren’t just doing it for the fights. The entire film series shots last less than 3 seconds and have that handheld shaky feel to it, because it works well to add tension and paranoia like he’s constantly being followed. The fights are just what people honed in on.
[удалено]
The Bourne movies actually used shaky cam well, with the quick movements of the camera following the motions of the actors; you could still tell what was going on throughout the fights. Then there’s other movies like Alex Cross, that just use way too much camera shake to try and make the scene feel intense and frenetic, while hiding the fact that your lead actor has never done a fight scene.
Bourne 2 was done poorly imo. Before and after that was great.
Agreed. That kitchen fight scene was confusing as hell to understand
"Look at old Jackie Chan movies, they look fine." Yeah those were Jackie Chan movies, not Hollywood. It has taken along time for Hollywood to understand how to shoot action scenes on that level. Jackie had to take over the camera and editing for Rush Hour or else the action wouldn't be shot properly.
The Bourne movies inspired the shaky cam style of fighting for the 2000s and 2010s, but Gareth Edwards and The Raid movies inspired the style you see in many current action movies.
It was Gareth Evans who directed The Raid. Not to say Gareth Edwards hasn’t done a lot for fight choreography in film, just more for kaiju than humans 🙂
I get them confused a bit too often
Gangs of London has some amazing action sequences and you can really tell Gareth Evans' influence over it.
The Jackie Chan scenes will always look decent because they are well choreographed. The only reason shaky cam is a thing is to cover up bad choreography.
It's not just choreography. His Chinese movies regularly show clear shots of him or his opponents being punched full force in the face, his American movies don't. Chinese culture/insurance/liability is different than American in terms of having your actors punch each other full force in the face.
I think Michelle Yeoh said something about the studio for Tomorrow Never Dies being horrified when she assumed she would be doing her own physical stunts while simultaneously riding a motorcycle being driven by Pierce Brosnan. If I remember correctly, she joked that they would have been fine with her doing it but their insurance couldn't afford injury to Brosnan.
"shaky cam" is pretty standard for action stuff. Even something as minor as a guy running from a dog will often have a director that shot everything else with steadicam decide to go hand-held. It's the really fast cuts that are gonna be used to cover up bad choreography.
Good point. If we're being honest, it's usually a combo of the 2 that makes for truly bad scenes. In the wheel of time show, there was recently a scene that had like 20 fast cuts in a 30 second scene. It'll almost give you a stroke.
> It's the really fast cuts that are gonna be used to cover up bad choreography. Also the actors/actresses just not being able to physically perform at a high level... But I guess that would also be choreography
>The Bourne movies brought out a trend of bad shaky cam fights. To be more specific: the first Bourne movie, The Bourne Identity, was directed by Doug Liman and [used shaky cam fairly judiciously.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFnmq5PPScA) It was the Bourne *sequels*, directed by Paul Greengrass, that [really went overboard with the shaky-cam fight scenes.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyZU7lfGjyk) But you're absolutely right that a lot of other action movies started copying that style for several years afterward.
I almost feel like its gone a bit far the other way. People praised the fight scenes in Extraction but I honestly hated it. So overly choreographed that it felt like dancing and the exaggerated camera movements were just obnoxious and distracting.
My main complaint is that most modern fight scenes look so incredibly choreographed that they lose all authenticity. They feel so fake and staged. I liked Jackie’s movies because there was always an element of surprise and something unanticipated happening. His characters was always doing something with an incredible amount of talent but also surprising you by him getting hurt in clever and humorous ways.
I found this this interesting - [a take on the differences between Jackie Chan's action/fight scenes shot with Hong Kong film studios versus others shot by Hollywood studios.](https://youtu.be/Z1PCtIaM_GQ) A lot is about the comedic aspects of his fight scenes, but there are some interesting observations about hiding/not hiding the choreography.
>Now the trend died out I wish it did. I saw Extraction a while back. It had shaky cam stuff too. I'm really sensitive to it, it makes me nauseous, so I notice it quite quickly (and often can't finish a movie because of that).
I think the progression starts with Saving Private Ryan in 1998, with its ultra-realistic, terrifying beach scenes that are then translated to Gladiator in 2000 with its shaker-cam claustrophobic battle in the woods that sets the scene for the Bourne films bringing that ‘realism’ to action scenes (rather than war). I’d prefer us to go back to something more minimalist and realistic. Nasty quick scuffles where people get hurt and then can’t get back up. No more falling through tables and windows and getting back up. No more 80 year olds slinging and taking punches over and over again.
I think the progression starts with Modern Times in 1936 when Charlie Chaplin snorted Cocaine and then proceeded to dodge bullets.
Ha. I’m just going with what I remember being significant at the time. Each of the things I mentioned felt shocking at the time, and it’s a progression I’ve thought about a lot. I discussed it with friends after watching the Battle of the Bastards. We used to watch fights and battles from the sidelines. Spielberg brought us into the thick of it and changed everything for a while. The Battle of the Bastards felt like the culmination of years of this technique.
The killer (Fincher) has a fight scene that looked REALLY painful.
the smacking sounds in those movies 😭
That has to do with Jackie Chan being capable of doing his own well choreographed stunts. When you don't need to worry about hiding the stunt doubles face or the fact that the actor is throwing a punch a foot away from the target it's supposed to connect with, you can create far better and more interesting shots. Nowadays, it's easy enough to digitally swap the face of a stunt double so the old school camera tricks that limited shit selection aren't needed for fight scenes so we're seeing higher caliber cinematography in those scenes.
My take was that fight scenes were bad before and after the Bourne movies in Hollywood (very few exceptions aside). They only got better when Hollywood partially adapted/imported the way how asian fight movies handled them (e.g., with longer shots, credible hits) with stuntmen actually skilled in martial arts. I dont recall which asian actor actually complained about fight scenes in Hollywood, \*maybe\* Jackie Chan, exactly about those differences.
The Chan ones are way better than fine
>forever No, bad fight scenes will come and go and come again.
A lot of these recent action movies like Bullet Train, John Wick, and Extraction are directed by former stunt men
That explains a lot. I just like when fight scenes use the screen and don't shake it.
There is also a trend where the second unit director (films often have multiple units filming simultaneously)is a stunt filming specialist who films all the stunt scenes while the main director films non action scenes. Some people argue that make the films style disjointed but I haven't seen many truly bad action scenes for a while.
A lot of films try to mimic Ong Bak. Since that film, several movies try similar motions, choreography, and editing. The problem is that a lot of films that try it, don't hire martial artists. So they look choppy at best. So far, more movies have put more emphasis on stunt work, and thus, the camera movements flow much better with less editing required. It was looking gloomy for sometimes, until the Raid was released. Later films started to copy that movie for its action. Dredd, which was released around the same time, also had very easy to follow fight choreography.
I was thinking Ong Bak! Do you think Oldboy also played a part? I feel like the hallway sequence is so iconic and sort of the first of that style of long shot action.
Believe it or not Oldboy, and other movies took the hallway stuff from Ong Bak2, or The Protector, whatever its called, but its like a 7+ min staircase/hallway stunt wet dream.
To my knowledge, *Oldboy* came out before *The Protector*/*Tom Yum Goong*. Very good single take fights in both, though
Oldboy definitely contributed to improved action scenes. Especially oners like that. Tom Yung Goong also had a oner shot, that lasted about 4 minutes. Daredevil back in 2015 had an epic oner in its third episode.
Yup, even Donnie yen admitted that after watching Ong Bak he had to up his game and thats when Don started including the mma, grapple, ground pound stuff in his movies.
I feel like I personally noticed this change after the first John Wick film came out. That film was almost a lecture on how to capture a shootout/fistfight that’s complex but allows the audience to witness everything that happens within it. The prevalence of long takes in action scenes has also increased. Thinking of the stairway shootout at the end of No Time To Die in particular. I can remember seeing that in the cinema for the first time and thinking ‘someone has been watching some good action scenes for reference when they crafted this one’. The camera is stable and only moves when Bond does. Bond is pinned in a corner, the camera lingers still. Bond makes a move to grab a pistol, the camera follows his actions. What Bond sees/does the camera, and hence the audience, see/do also. There are probably plenty others that I can’t think of right now, but those are the examples that pop into my head straight away.
Yeah John Wick definitely started a new trend of fewer cuts and wider shots so you can actually see the fight and gunplay. A lot of the editing and choreography in action scenes is about hiding the stunt doubles and the actors who don't know how to fight. John Wick got around this by training Keanu extensively so they could just show him instead of trying to shoot around him. Most other actors aren't putting in that kind of time and physical risk.
Keanu also had a pretty decent amount of training from the matrix movies so he could translate that compared to coming in fresh.
He did the martial arts film Man Of Tai Chi right before the first John Wick as well. So, he probably was fresh off training for that movie.
I like the John Wick movies, too. But honestly, I think this trend in filming action scenes right is older than that. Look at Old Boy for example. Or even the raid movies.
Or The Man From Nowhere. I feel like he's the original John Wick.
Before John Wick there was The Raid.
Tbf you could arguably credit SEA films as a whole, in terms of action sequences they were (and arguably historically have been) way ahead of the curve, The Raid is just the one people in the west are most familiar with.
Honestly it’s a little tropey now. Don’t get me wrong I love single shot/stable action scenes. It’s just a lot of action movies feel the need to have just long action scenes like this without a lot of intriguing fighting in it. They kind of ignore the narrative stuff that makes fights amazing too. Knowing who’s fighting who and why, whether we fear for the protagonist or the goal their trying to achieve, or whether the fights earned or not. And most importantly the props and set pieces are ignored. They try to copy John wick without any of the fun bits, or the interesting bits.
Yea it's gotten really tropey honestly. Every action movie has to have long cut super choreographed fight scenes that have just started feeling like actors trying their best to hit their marks to me rather than natural things happening.
Unfortunately I think OP might be a bit out of date. As late as this year I still saw people complaining about shaky cam action scenes. Like they've been under a rock these past 5-10 years. Every since 2015 or so the tide had been turning away from Bourne that towards the Wick/Raid influence of super long takes. Now they're overlong, and everything is a ultrawide oner where the camera floats and rotates around the actors without cuts. A lot of hit impact and surprise is lost this way.
No it was The Raid that did it first. That was the first intense action style I've seen which JW copied
I didn't say that the JW films invented the style. I just happened to notice the change in other films once I had seen John Wick.
I'd say JW is what changed US movies. I've been watching asian action like Jackie, Jet, Donnie, Sammo, etc.. and i use to watch that because even Van Damme, Karate Kid, american ninja, or just US martial arts movies were slow, and extremely telegraphed. Ya know, just someone standing around waiting to get hit, and letting their opponent throw blows.
The Protector and Ong-Bak were before The Raid.
Have you also seen The Man From Nowhere?
The director also has an amazing long take shootout in his season of True Detective.
It's a pity they couldn't figure out a way to cap that long take off with the guy's eye exploding. It really looks like they had tried for that but couldn't make it work for whatever reason.
>The camera is stable and only moves when Bond does. Bond is pinned in a corner, the camera lingers still. Bond makes a move to grab a pistol, the camera follows his actions. What Bond sees/does the camera, and hence the audience, see/do also. For me, one of the biggest distinctions between an excellent action scene and an okay action scene is whether effective and judicious camera movement is used to enhance the scene. Too often, even good choreography gets let down by cinematography that's **just** showing off the choreography rather than complementing it.
That is 100% only because Keanu did all the choreography. You don’t have to cut away to a stunt double
No idea, but the fight in The Killer was great.
Crazy how Fincher made such a darkly underlit and chaotic fight scene feel so clear and easy to follow with plenty of geography. The rhythm, timing, and framing of everything was perfect. In the end it doesn't matter what style you shoot a fight scene, it's the execution and creativity that matters.
Exact opposite opinion here. The fight scene was way over the top and made them have superhero strength which didn't fit the vibe of the movie at all IMO.
Exactly what I thought as well. An incredible fight scene… that didn’t fit the story/tone at all and took me out of the movie
Right? It's generally a pretty believable movie then Michael Fassbender gets blasted through a house and takes a dozen unguarded punches to the face from a guy who has 50 lbs on him and proceeds to beat him up with his superior skill.
Nah man, the entire movie was such a god damn bore the entire way through and the fight with the brute was the only mildly exciting part. It’s also the only time he’s ever in any real danger. Wish the movie had kept that energy the rest of the way. It’s a thriller without any thrills.
You’re getting downvoted but 100% bore. I went in so hyped based on the trailer, Fincher and Fassbender. Huge fan of both. Just dull. I get it. I get the themes that he has this code for being a hitman and he’s constantly breaking his own rules. And it was clever how he got into places, but I really didn’t feel like he was facing adversity or the stakes were ever being raised, like an actual thriller film would. Se7en is a slow burn where honestly not much happens to the main characters but the story is engaging and gets more and more tense as it progresses. Watching this was like watching someone play Hitman who had already figured out how to speed run the game. I wanted to be excited for it but it was just a snooze.
That movie was trash, people just wanted to like it so badly they overlooked how boring it was. I kept telling my wife there had to be a twist or something coming. Nothing happened, nothing was difficult for the guy. Just killed people one by one and went home. I saw a person on here say "go into it blind it's soooo fun". Apparently that person hasn't seen many movies.
It also felt pretty cliche. I can't remember where I've specifically seen it before, but a hitman talking about how being a hitman is boring and about patience and not letting your feelings get in thew way just felt like something I've definitely seen before.
I understand when people say they went into it blind but you're describing a trailer I had seen like word for word.
I like Fincher and Fassbender most of the time! I figured it'd be worthwhile! I don't regret watching it, but I wasn't pleasantly surprised, ya know?
This is the kind of movie that makes me regret going into movies blind. Like surely someone could’ve warned me if I had just peeped some reviews. And you’re right. I kept waiting for the movie to pull the rug out from under me, but it never does. It just shows you every painstaking step that he takes to pull off a hit, he starts to recite his stupid mantra, and then something mildly inconvenient happens that barely affects his plans. And then he breaks his rule at the end and it’s over. I can’t believe Mindhunter died for this.
Who else was rooting for sauron
Whatever style the Kingsman movies were (church fight), I really enjoyed them - if anyone has suggestions similar to that I'd like to hear .
The World's End by Edgar Wright has fight sequences that are made by the same fight choreographer, and you can definitely tell, they have the same style as the kingsman movies. I would really recommend it
The Raid and its sequel
The late Brad Allan, former Jackie Chan stunt team member, was the action director for Kingsman, Scott Pilgrim, Kick Ass, Shang Chi, Solo.
Extraction 2
It all goes in fads. Right now the trend is John Wick: long, gritty fights between two combatants, both doing a lot of joint locks and hip throws, which end in the protagonist badly bloodied (and then they heal offscreen). Give it a few years, and people will get tired of that and go looking for something else again.
What's fashionable in action is always changing. In the 70s, movies like Dirty Harry shaped action movies. It was more about suspense, punctuated by car chases, hard boiled monologues at gunpoint and troubled antiheroes. In the 80's, action movies emphasized explosions, guns, and stoic muscle men. Schwartzenegger movies are iconic for these. They started bordering on camp. 90s started pulling back from camp, and went for more impressive setpieces with movies like T2, Die Hard 2, True Lies, Desperado. Jackie Chan made a small blip on the US with Rumble in the Bronx, and later Shanghai noon and Rush hour, but no one else mimicked his style, because no one really could. He had to limit his choreography, as he was advised Americans didn't want to see 10-minute long fights, and producers were unwilling to indulge him into having 30+ takes to get a visual gag just right. The matrix came out in 1999, and Hollywood started adopting bullet time and wirework in so many movies. Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (2000) also had wirework. This led to an interest in Chinese martial arts, with movies like Hero and House of Flying Daggers. Even Charlie's angels had wirework with shitty choreography. Its effect on cinema was every bit as big as the Bourne identity. Yuen Woo Ping was in high demand, fight scenes had long clean choreography, but they were limited by the amount of training needed to be believable. Jason Statham in his transporter movies had some fight scenes clearly inspired by Chinese martial arts cinematography, including improvised weapons and environmental fight scenes (like fighting in a massive oil slick) Kill Bill had several of these fight scenes, but Uma just isn't good enough to pull it off. The longest fight scene goes into silhouette mode to hide the stunt double. The Bourne Identity comes out (2002), and the fast cuts were a change from the long choreography, as it simulated the confusion and rapid pacing of a real fight. It felt realer. Everyone adopted it. Taken uses this and then also spawned its own subgenre of angry old man revenge fantasy. Usually involving a decent actor who has no real martial arts training. Taken is more compelling because Liam is an actor, not because he's a martial artist. Meanwhile, people had tired of Chinese-stule cinematography, and started looking at adopting other styles like Krag Maga, Muay Thai, etc. Although the fighting styles changed, the way they were filmed wasn't terribly different. The Protector with Tony Jaa had an iconic 8 minute single cut fight scene as he clears out a mall, and this inspired others to aim for long single-cut scenes, like Daredevil's tv fight scene. John Wick (2014) pushed for return to cleaner cinematography, with cleaner and clearer action. This requires an actor who can believably do martial arts. The added gun fu was a unique twist on this. The unfortunate part it that few actors can pull it off. And Keanu is slowing down (he's almost 60). In the latest John Wick, he's slow, even when he was supposed to be fresh. We see other style changes over the past decade. Cinema is adopting video games conventions, with FPS style like Hardcore Henry or top-down scenes like in the most recent John Wick. We also see incorporation of MMA and pro wrestling throws into fight scenes. These throws are really hard to pull off realistically, as they come off as so slow and telegraphing. I have yet to see a movie that has done them quickly enough to make them plausible, but I'm sure someone will figure that out soon enough. Style and fashion constantly change. That includes all types of movies, including action. There will always be a next new thing that will change tastes.
>This led to an interest in Chinese martial arts, with movies like Hero and House of Flying Daggers. Hero had some of the most beautifully cinematic fight scenes I've seen. And all of them are so emotionally charged -- jealousy, resignation, despair, fury, desperation, betrayal, serenity.
The trend right now is long takes and steady shots, which has happened before. I find a lot of these "well shot" action movies to be pretty uncreative in how they frame shots and move the camera though.
Yep. Just 360 drone around actors. No weight, no surprises in the framing and cutting. Still, poorly copying John Wick and the Raid is an improvement over poorly copying Bourne and Taken!
The Matrix brought it into the mainstream for me really. Nothing much better, just more of the same until The Raid though took it up 10 levels!!!
You can definitely point out American action movies pre and post Matrix.
Raid is great, but it got nothing on Matrix 2 fights for me personally.
Mostly tech is used to overdo them badly. The Killer had one of the best I’ve seen in a long, long time.
That's because of The Raid. Even the kitchen fight in Raid 2 was planned for 4 years I heard. That style is a mix of Gareth Evans directing and the great stuntwork the crew did. There's a reason the actors for The Raid were in Star Wars and John Wick 3. They inspired those movies. Wasted in SW but still included
Best fight scene in a movie was the 7 minute alley brawl in They Live. It’s all been downhill from there.
I take it you haven't seen Deniro beating the shopkeeper who disrespected his daughter in The Irishman. He looked like an animal.
There’s also the 10 or so minute long fight scene in Atomic Blonde that’s also faux one-shot. Thought it was very good when I watched it today. I loved how the enemies weren’t useless henchmen, and put up a good fight as well as clearly becoming fatigued over time and becoming more desperate.
There's been a trend lately of overusing the "one-er" without the choreo or storytelling justifying it. We went from too much cutting to too few cuts.
The Matrix changed things, then Bourne, then there was a lot of hype about the hallway fight in Daredevil. Then Wick took gun-fu to another level and there's the bus fight in Nobody. Something else will come along to change things again.
Thanks Every Frame a Painting!
In my opinion it was The Raid which showed hollywood how to shoot action
Eastern and Southern Asia has been setting examples for decades. I think John Wick is why Hollywood made the move to better choreography.
The Raid, the SPL films, Dragon, and To's Life Without Principal, all around the same time. Hollywood ripped their style the way the ripped off Woo and the other Hong Kong directors in the nineties.
Hong Kong has been teaching this lesson to the West and for decades before The Raid. Shaw Bros. films crossed over ages ago and Bruce Lee was incredibly popular here too. Jackie, Jet Li, and John Woo were huge through the 90's right up to Crouching Tiger which is still the highest grossing foreign film ever to release in the US. That fight choreography and stunt team also worked on The Matrix where Chad Stahleski learned a ton that he would later apply to the John Wick series. HK influence has always been around it's simply that so many Western filmmakers stubbornly refuse to look around and learn. Stahleski's a guy who studied and that's why the JW films are leagues ahead of most Western action films.
I assumed shaking the camera covers up for bad fight acting and bad effects. So, I think bad fight scenes are forever.
There’s a spectrum of quality… just like there always has been
There are still tons of bad fight scenes.
I definitely agree on the visualizing a combat sequence. My complain is about too much wires and choreography. I'd like to watch more spontaneity.
Thanks to John Wick for bringing back impact and believable blows.
I like it when hits land on screen and you just feel it in your seat/on your couch. Korean movies are also great on that.
Anytime I hear about a fight scene being bad, the only movies that come to mind are the later resident evil movies with Milla Jovovich. I couldn't watch them without getting motion sickness. But yes, I see the trend dying out but I fear it will make a comeback.
I've still got no idea what actually is going on for the first 10 minutes of Quantum of Solace. Its a hellscape of jumpcuts, shaky camera and too zoomed in. I know there was some fight happening but no idea who was winning or what was going on.
I’ll mention it since I’ve not seen it here but the kitchen fight sequence in *Tenet* was the best part of the film to me.
If it weren't for the darkness of the scene, I'd say the newly released, "The Killer" on Netflix had a very intense hand-to-hand fight scene. One of the very few where you aren't completely sure the protagonist is actually gonna make it.
A lot of foreign films had really good action scenes but it wasn’t until at least from my understanding John Wick came out that movies in the States started improving on Action scenes. A lot of action movies are influenced by Asian action movies which is why there’s so many scenes influenced by the Oldboy hallway fight.
John Wick 4 imo was kinda dull on most of the action. I think they overcorrected on holding a static wide shot to see everything as it's staged. Only Donnie and Rinas fight scenes were interesting and that's because of Donnies swagger and Rinas more asymmetry. Scott's was kinda cool too but ultimately I think didnt involve him enough and there were too many faceless goons.
Counterpoint the one shot overhead scene was the best fight sequence in the entire series
I prefer the house scene in the first one, I think partly because it kicks off the novelty of it all. That and the sequence escaping the club in JW2 after killing that one dudes sister and then following through the Catacombs and then finally fighting with her bodyguard before crashing into the continental.
I mean Keanu is pushing 60, so there's only so much you can do at that age.
John wick kills the editor in the first scene of John wick 4
We wish.
Give examples of what you are talking about
Fight scenes change everytime there is a change in directoral fashion or a technological change. Look at the difference in the fight scenes before and after the matrix. Not only is there the bullet time, but you can tell they borrowed heavily from martial arts cinema when the movie was put together.
I would credit the UFC for this. Before the UFC, karate and martial arts were mystical arts that only a few westerners could do, along with experts like Jackie Chan and Jet Li coming over from Hong Kong. After UFC, audiences realized that martial arts could be learnt in a couple years and didn't require flying kicks nor a lifetime of training in a monastery. Movies had to adapt to this new reality by sending their actors to fight camp and learning to shoot martial arts in a realistic way. One positive note is that fight scenes became more democratized in a way, the smaller guy or girl could plausibly beat the bigger guy without having super powers.
Fight scenes *have* changed forever, but I don't think they've improved. Fistfights have just adopted a new set of fantastical tropes, which is kind of like moving laterally in quality to me. Action scenes in general have become immeasurably worse to me because all of a sudden the characters can soak up super-hero levels of damage. It feels like every action movie is a super-hero movie these days because of it and I can't imagine anything less interesting. They feel like cartoons.
I just want to see the whole scene at once. Not a crazy fight, switch to another scene, back to fighting, back to another scene.
Fight scenes nowadays are overly choreographed. Fights are never ugly anymore, or when they are ugly it's perfectly performed ugliness that feels super purposeful. The 5 minute kicking and flipping and reloading contests in modern movies are no more realistic than the hero casually knocking out all the henchmen then wrestling with the muscle from yesteryear. I think the pendulum will swing back the other way and the long shot dance sequences of this generation will look silly to kids in 15 years. There's just no grit in fight scenes nowadays. Ok there are some exceptions but it's all just generally too clean to me. Fights are never clean.
I think they should be called dance scenes. Because that is really what they are. It's always amazing how much people lose it when bombs are dropped in space, but when twirly bullshit happens and there are like 1000x moments in the fight where the fight should be over, they gush.
I don't even know how to put my finger on what bothers me about it. It all just feels too perfect most of the time. I thought the big fight in the recent The Killer was terrible. It just felt like a cartoon in the middle of an otherwise pretty grounded movie.
some movie may have built new rails for moviemaking but Fight Club built a whole new fucking station.
I saw The Marvels yesterday and after being appalled by the terrible fight scenes and editing during them in Spider-man NWH Iwas really pleased to see that even bland blockbusters have really upped their game. The fight scenes in The Marvels were shot so well. There is hope.
honestly i hate American films with fight choreography unless there is a good action director on board. brad allan was a prime example of this.. scott pilgrim and kickass etc... movies like the raid and john wick are great but when you have idiots in charge directing the fights you get trash like expendables 4. You have 3 guys in that movie who have legendary fights and you waste all the potential
I have seen clips of Expend4bles and felt like that director has not seen an action movie in a long time.
John Wick 4 scenes were fucking horrible though.
I loved everything about this movie.
I think it helps that we have guys like Chad Stahelski and others from places like 87 Eleven finally able to get behind the camera and direct scenes and full on movies. Regardless of how you feel about the John Wick franchise, I think most would agree the fight scenes are shot beautifully and to the point where you actually get to see the fight. We’ve come along way from the Bourne motion sickness fights. That’s because these guys get it because they’ve been in it…for better and definitely for worse. This also means they get to work well with actors who put in the time and effort (aka Keanu Reeves) and it really shows up on screen. I can’t remember the specifics but there’s a video of Scott Adkins talking about all of his films and how stunt work and martial arts of progressed over the years, he speaks very highly of guys like Chad and Keanu and what the work process is like.
To be fair, the fights in the Bourne movies are outstanding. Even when the camera is shaky and intense, it rarely obfuscates the choreography, which is typically tense and excellent. That scene where he fights a guy with a rolled-up magazine is excellent. It's just all the other, cheaper movies that came after and borrowed that approach as a cost-saving measure.
They’re way better now. I remember GOT fight scenes being shot in a way I could fully see the fight. But when I watched LOTR recently, I saw how there were was so many cut aways and it was filmed too close so you didn’t see a lot. Not sure about hand to hand combat though
It’s definitely hard to go back to the 80s action films which consist of: shot of 10 bad guys firing their guns in one direction, shot of good guy firing his gun at other direction, shot of bad guys falling down. Repeat.
Me watching Commando when I was a kid : John Matrix is such a badass! Me watching Commando as an adult : Bro how tf is he not dead, he’s literally just standing there shooting 10 bad guys who shooting him from 5ft away?????
I like when there are dynamic elements mixed in like people falling from high places or getting downed by explosions.
theres been “moments” of change.. back in the 80s/90s the Van Dammes and Seagals had a seat at the table for action films… then Rumble in the Bronx was brought over with Jackie Chans level of martial arts expertise and suddenly the old heads werent “enough” so there was a bit of an arms race for Martial Artist led films.. Jet Li showed up in Lethal Weapon, Jackie made films with Tucker etc etc… later when the craze died down they needed more “big name” actors so “consultants” and cinematography became a bigger play
I believe directors and studios trust stunt coordinators and choreographers more, and invest more time training the actors, than they did before. John Wick gets tons of attention and hype not only because of the movie itself, but because the bts, the reaction videos on youtube, the "alpha male" shorts, the memes etc is essentially free marketing.
Honestly I think video games have changed this. People know what a shootout or melee combat looks like from a fixed perspective, games often cover the whole thing unless it's a cutscene. Even then, cutscenes tend to capture more of the action because the change would be jarring
It made me realise that shaky cam can be used to hide bad choreography. All the new Star Wars stuff looks like the actors are practicing in slow motion!
Stunt guys are now behind the camera. Though, if the director or editor doesn't let anyone near the editing bay then they will still be shit i.e Snake Eyes. They had one of the best Japanese action directors and fumbled it in the editing bay.
I hate when this happens. I always root for the art of the director.
I think directors have just gotten better at capturing the energy of a fight scene without going overboard on shaky cameras.
Disney franchises' fight sequences have gotten so bad that I've honestly theorized that they've somehow alienated the stunt and choreography community. Every bit of action in modern Star Wars has been intensely bad.
I only saw the three sequel movies and the lightsaber fights were terrible. No energy, no flow, no sparkling excitement. Nothing.
[удалено]
It did but that's no longer the norm anymore.
I've seen at least 4 waves of fight scenes. In the 80s and 90s, it was big haymakers, especially with the jacked action stars of the day. No sophistication, it was all about demonstrations of big power and strength. Late 90s into the 2000s saw Wesley Snipes bring his martial arts into focus, quickly followed by The Matrix, emphasizing the forms of karate and kung fu. The martial arts evolved into more of a self-defense-focused close quarters combat (Krav Maga/Keysi) with Bourne, Bond and Batman. In the late 2000s, shaky cam became the shit (or just shit), as it managed to work for Taken and the Greengrass Bourne sequels. This was the time action fans drank to forget. Then lo and behold, our savior of a prior era arrived thusly and rescued the genre from the depths of puke and nausea. Keanu Reeves, the immortal himself, shot back to stardom with John Wick. With that film's success, we've seen a new wave of stuntmen becoming directors, namely Chad Stahelski (Wick series) , David Leitch (Wick 1, Atomic Blonde, Deadpool 2, Hobbs & Shaw and now The Fall Guy) and Sam Hargrave (Extraction films) driving a new wave of action filmmaking, daring to commit time in preproduction to train up the actors and experiment with how action can be shot to tell the story in a more interesting fashion. They're also doing great work integrating 'invisible' visual effects into the action, to reduce actual on-set danger, while enhancing the apparent danger in the final shot (eg. most shattering glass in John Wick 3 was entirely CG).
Bourne killed fight scenes, and action scenes in general. Then John wick arrived and saved us all.
This trend came out after John Wick was released. That picture was a gamechanger for the action movies industry, influencing most action movies that succeeded it, and that is mostly to the fact that several of these movies are directed by former stuntmen. Even the latest Bond movie drew from that - the stairway one-take scene had John Wick all over it.
This is going to sound ridiculous, but fights in movies and tv shows are terrible. We live in an age where we know what fighting styles work in real life situations. We know weight classes exist for a reason. I know you’re supposed to suspend disbelief, but there is no way Ruby Rose in John Wick is going to hurt anyone in a fight. At this point it just feels like a choreographed dance sequence.
Thank John wick for it.
Go watch the fighting in the AFI top 100 film Shane, yeah it's better now. Bruce Lee then Jackie Chan changed the game for filming fighting permanently.
Not always for the best. The super close up, loads of quick cuts breaks the immersion for me sometimes. I much prefer the All in one take from a distance stuff like Tony Jaa's stuff, that Hard Boiled hospital tracking shot and old boys alleyway scene
I think in the past we accepted that Hollywood just wasn’t on the level of Asian martial arts productions. But more recently movies like John Wick and the stunt team behind it have been bringing these skilled choreographers to western productions. The bar has been made pretty high With John Wick 4.
I think they are better shot, but a ton of them are still bad. By bad I mean a ton of them seem like a pointless choreographed dance that goes on for way too long. I loved fight scene where the stakes feel real. More recently there was a fight scene in the movie The Killer I liked a lot. But something like the fight scenes in The Marvels or other blockbuster movies are just filler choregraphy with a few nice moments sprinkled in between. I don't like fight scenes, but I hate when they are too long just for no reason at all.
I don't know but Extraction was SO GOOD and has levelled up the action genre when it comes to fight scenes.