How To Do A Fight Scene

imo you should repeat moves but have them change, evolve, and fail if they do. My favorite fight scenes are when both sides are learning from and adapting to each others moves.

John wick 1 was awesome, Part 2, 3 and 4 was... more of the same. i found them really boring beside one or two szenes.

U should be hired as a director

What the fuck was this ad placement xd

I strongli disagree with blow by blow being bad, you let your personal bias in. I low blow by blow for example, and 70% people that love action that i know do too. Yea its better to have more moves, but blow by blow has its plus as well.

Holy shit I love this movie

My main reason for loving that single batman fight was because it was so. Unashamedly. Batman. Brutal, efficient, visceral and shows an amount of vengeance that was palpable. Almost as though I could feel the rage behind every blow Batman dishes out. Almost as though Batman is one step away from going too far.

Batman doesn't kill
The guy who got hit by the crate: Gonna have to disagree with you on that, bud.

Personally I thought the John wick 3 scene worked quite well, I mean of the whole movie that's one of the few scenes I remember just because I remember thinking, "that's actually kinda smart in a combat scenario, poor puppies, but smart." Amd I kinda think that's the point of John wick. Though 3 movies of straight fistfight/gunfight action will of course lead to fatigue. Sooooòoo, ye. Of course I may be the exception.

Mmmm ravioli.

i predicted the nordvpn i swear

This is basically just his opinion

show the star wars coreographers this

I would say Vader Obi Wan is not really a fight scene. I guess OP said that too.

I would also argue the choreography and editing makes a huge difference. Punches and strikes need to feel weighty like they are actually doing something, and the editing needs to be coherent so I as the viewer knows what the hell is going on.
So many movies are just jump cuts, and changing environments, changing enemies, all in the span of a few seconds so you become completely discombobulated about what is happening, who is being fought and where it is taking place. It just ruins the experience for me when I don't know what the hell is going on. How am I supposed to be invested when I don't even understand who is fighting who anymore and who is winning or losing at that moment.

You know, I write action almost precisely like your proposed Jackie Chan "novilization". I might give it a shot as a writing exercise. To date, my fan's favorite fight I've done is a bar brawl with three people trying to escape a group of goons. It's almost a Jackie fight, albeit with one of the heroes being a wizard who at one point animates the floorboards into grabbing "tentacles." But most of the fight is a dude punching, shooting, and furniture throwing his way out of a bad situation.

It’s so much fun to comeback to this video to see horrible aged the advice of

“Blow by blow never works.”

Is. I mean, 2023 has given us Guardians 3 and the hallway fight, and John Wick 4 gave us… Everything in that movie.

LMFAO

for drama absolutely, for action, and action comedy not so much, the only genre where good long fights are in animated movies/anime and games, games are the best for action cause you control a character and depending on the game, theres a lot, that can go wrong, and there is a challenge for the player or really fun gameplay, or theres good dialog, or the story has done the setup for you to hate the character your fighting, witch can be done in multiple ways difficulty, the character is really douche or even EVIL, im aware that this is known by many i just feel like its a worthy mention on this topic

The terryfing part is that during the ad bit he actually clicked on my region to unlock it

WHAT
Commando was good what you mean
I mean sure you KNOW he's gonna win but it's fun to watch anyway

A few comments. First off, tension isn't always needed, if the fight serves another purpose (such as the kingsman bar fight scene, where the purpose is to show off the mentor figure as a badass). Although even then, having moments of tension still helps. Secondly, repeating the same move can work, if (not to be repetitive) it serves a another purpose (can't think of a good example off my head, but lets say in the batman fight he first did the move from the movie, then did the same move except this time he smashed it into the wall above them to distract a group of people so he could get close. Same move, new purpose. Then as long as its not shot the same way, then it can work. Another way it can work is if it fails. Either by having the hero try to do a move and fail, before succeeding later, thereby showing that they aren't perfect but are getting there, or by having it work and then fail in order to show the hero starting to fail. Or some other purpose other than for it to be just "the same move again"). And lastly, just yeah, the most important thing is the story. To nail home that point, I'd like to point out how choreography tests, where the stuntmen just plan out fights before all the story beats have been planed out, will still (if they're good) imagine some "reason" for the fight to happen. Because no matter how good the fight is, if it doesn't serve a purpose, then it doesn't work (sometimes that purpose is "to show what "character" can do", but that has a very limited use). And if it serves a purpose, then the choreography isn't as important.

In case you dont actually know why John Oliver is banned in the UK, it's because he consistently makes fun of parliament and apparently the UK doesnt like that. It isnt Last Week Tonight actually blocking stuff but rather the english govt being whiny bitches

Well the easy answer is, choreography(stunts)+camera work+sound design+long takes for bonus points

I would say that I think a lot of this can be narrowed down to organised chaos

Batman fight is not even a good fight. Hes not a superhuman! If a human cant pick up and throw a crate twice his size with a single hand, then doing it one handed with a string attached does not make it easier.

Man jock wick 1 was great, 2 was incredible and captivating, but 3 was… for lack of a better word, bland. I get that it’s the brutal and fast based action what we’ve come to love the series for but the pacing of the film was awful. At least with 1 we had a great balance of melee and gun combat, 2 had brilliant locations each with a different tone and though there was a lot more gun combat, it was great for its world building, story telling, character development and phenomenal cinematography. This is where 3 felt so terrible. It was just shooting, more shooting and then less than a minute later more and more shooting. The glass room melee fight was good but there was no buildup or break in the action that let u get excited for the next fight. I didn’t get the chance to see 4 in theatres and due to the way 3 was done, I haven’t felt the urge to watch it yet.

One punch man always wins yet his fight are some of the best ive ever seen.

I think repetetive fight moves can be interesting, if the circumstances or results are different.
By this I don't mean "oh, the second box Batman threw hit two people instead of one", but rather "okay, the target of the second box blocked the box and proves that thereby proves he's stronger than the first guy" - to further prove this point it might also happen after the third trow, although it shouldn't happen immediately one after another.

totally disagree with the Jackie Chan figthing scenes. You cannot translate them to writing because it will be exhausted for someone to read, but on screen they are enjoyable because he can go on hitting 7 enemies with the ladder in different ways.This is what is enjoyable. In writing no matter what you do you cannot describe his fighting scenes properly because they are based on movement and physicality that only a visual media can show. You can describe it in writing but it will loose its essence

yeah the avengers movie was not very high stakes for me. It's Disney they don't kill off big names and if they do they just come back.

you nailed it

best ad I hve seen in a while

So, let’s break this down even further. This video is a video telling you to not repeat yourself to the point of monotony, while repeating itself to the point of monotony.

Equilibrium had multiple better fight scenes than that batman one. Wasn't even the best batman fight for me (Bale better again)

First rule for wrecking an otherwise great fight is to have close-up shaky-cam and fast cuts.

The kind of fight that always annoys the hell out of me, exactly because it doesn't serve the story, is the DMC (d**k measurement contest), a type of scene common only in American films. That's when two protagonists have an endless choreographed fight over a minor disagreement, end up not hurting each other in the slightest, and just stop when the idea that their powers/skills are equally matched has been spoon-fed enough. It's needless, boring, forced, and a general offence to the intelligence of the viewer.

Video was going great until that disgusting ad break. I have nothing against ads but this was not the way to promote in my opinion.

Eggsy doesn't have to figure everything out himself after Harry's death, he still had Merlin

the way he talked about unnecessary dialogue made me kinda think of pulp fiction. I don’t know why but i absolutely loved the random, unnecessary dialogue that vincent and jules had despite not advancing the story at all

That batman fight scene is freaking stupid. Cables don't work like that.

I'm SO GLAD Ender's Game was mentioned here. The whole "never use the same trick twice" thing was an actual plot point in the book, which I think makes it even better. To anyone who's only seen the movie, I highly recommend you read the book. It's the best piece of paper I've ever picked up.

Bro, breathe!

in my opinion a fight scene shouldnt last more then 5 to ten minutes, it depends on the context or the scene but realistically a REAL fight shouldnt be drawn out for too long unless its like a sport or smething

You are correct.