My problem with superhero fight scenes in movies

[ebarde]

I'm not really trying to make some revolutionary hot take here, just rambling about something I'm sure has been articulated better by people smarter than me. But I kinda wanna get into my main reason why I don't particularly like most fight scenes in modern superhero movies, a problem that is usually more common in big third act fights with tons of characters, but it's also fairly noticeable in smaller instances. And that is that the fights lack a lot of continuity, in the sense that a lot of times you could change the order of a lot of the beats in a fight scene without things changing too much.

What I mean by that, is that generally in action scenes, one attack leads to another. Maybe the bad guy get's a cheap stab in with his dagger, now the good guy has to fight at a handicap for the rest of the fight! This is a case of continuity, cause the stabbing scene had to take place at that moment, to justify why our hero would be fighting with a handicap later. Maybe now he needs to constantly apply pressure to his wound, which is good storytelling cause the stakes of the fight are being raised as one person is clearly winning.

Another example of this is scenario changes, which are extremely common in classical swashbuckler movies. When a fighting becomes too intense, the combatants often end up moving it somewhere else, and this new location leads to a new set-up and tactics. I feel like this natural escalation is very welcome, cause otherwise the audience feels like the characters are at a perfect standstill until someone arbitrarily wins. To illustrate that let's take the Zod vs Superman fight for example:

Now to be fair, I do think this fight starts actually really great. Zod not being able to control his powers is some pretty good payoff, and initially there's really nice contrast between his fighting style as a pragmatic general that has powers he can't even control. And Superman, which trained to adapt to his powers ever since he was a child, and as such moves a lot more gracefuly than Zod, utilizing his flight a whole lot more, while Zod defaults to smashing through things.

But then Zod learns to control his powers, and the fight just get's pretty boring. While they do change enviroments a lot, fighting in the sky, inside buildings in space...those changes in scenary don't really matter. Cause if Superman sends Zod flying a ridiculous distance, that new element isn't something that is particularly hard to overcome, he can just fly really fast and instantly get back into the fray as if the previous exchange didn't happened. The most creative use of enviroment was when Zod used the buildings as cover to land a sneak attack on Superman(I suppose the DCEU version needs to focus to use the X-ray vision), because simply smashing the opponent into a building doesn't really matter when concrete is equivalent to cardboard to them.

And then Superman sends Zod crashing down, and does his finishing move on him. Which ended the fight yes, but it's a weird escalation cause up to that point none of their attacks seemed to be doing any significant lasting damage on them, and the fight seemed to be going at a relative standstill. Yeah whenever they got hit they grunted and looked a bit stunned, but then they got right back to fighting as if nothing happened. Although to be fair, rewatching the scene I think this might be a case of something being cut? Cause when Zod and Superman are fighting as they crash from space, Zod is clearly on top of him, but after they cut back to them after the reaction shot, is Superman that is on top and suddenly Zod is on the receiving end?

Am I just nitpicking? Also I just like to say that Man of Steel's battle of Metropolis is far from the worst example of this, I just picked this one cause it was easier to breakdown and also so I wouldn't feel too mean since I had a few good things to say at least.

[Xyril]

What I mean by that, is that generally in action scenes, one attack leads to another. Maybe the bad guy get's a cheap stab in with his dagger, now the good guy has to fight at a handicap for the rest of the fight! This is a case of continuity, cause the stabbing scene had to take place at that moment, to justify why our hero would be fighting with a handicap later. Maybe now he needs to constantly apply pressure to his wound, which is good storytelling cause the stakes of the fight are being raised as one person is clearly winning.

Isn't that a lot like what you describe here?

To illustrate that let's take the Zod vs Superman fight for example:

Now to be fair, I do think this fight starts actually really great. Zod not being able to control his powers is some pretty good payoff, and initially there's really nice contrast between his fighting style as a pragmatic general that has powers he can't even control. And Superman, which trained to adapt to his powers ever since he was a child, and as such moves a lot more gracefuly than Zod, utilizing his flight a whole lot more, while Zod defaults to smashing through things.

But then Zod learns to control his powers, and the fight just get's pretty boring.

Isn't that pretty much the equivalent of that first stab you're talking about--the thing that has to happen fairly close to the beginning because it leads to a sustained change?

While I understand your point, I don't know if you've chosen the best example to illustrate the contrast. Man of Steel's climactic fight had more progression than you're giving it credit for... it's also arguably guilty of a couple of bad edits and some filler, as you say, but that's also true of most of the swashbuckling movie examples I can recall from around or after the age of Errol Flynn (let's be honest, considering that one guy is dealing with a bleeding, life-threatening wounds,

I think Man of Steel had some pretty solid progression: Once Zod figured out his powers a bit better, things became very evenly matched, which I believe is what the movie was deliberately trying to convey. Zod had the advantage of a lifetime training to be a warrior at a disadvantage (or rather, without the inherent advantage that Clark had.) Clark had the advantage of a lifetime learning to use the particular weapon they were using in that particular fight, which balanced out the disadvantage of missing the growth that comes from having ever faced an evenly matched opponent (in a physical fight.) To me, the fight seemed deliberately structured to show that in this iteration, Kryptonian durability outstripped Kryptonian strength and damage output (and also give some fan service spectacle, of course.) In other words, both had very high hp, con, and armor compared to their strength and damage, and fighting a battle of attrition would have taken ages, if it even resolved the fight at all.

You alluded to the progression that occurred during all that filler spectacle, but I think you overlooked it's significance: As Zod and Superman kept trying to pound each other into submission with no visible progress, Zod began to realize that Superman was significantly concerned about all of the collateral damage they were causing. As the fight progress, he seemed more focused on endangering bystanders, maybe thinking it would distract Superman and give him the advantage. The end of the fight is of course open to interpretation. My first reaction was that Zod was trying to force Superman to stop subduing him in order to save those bystanders, thus allowing him to escape or recover for another attack. My friends thought that Zod realized he was losing either way, and wanted to get his revenge on Superman by forcing him to deliberately kill. I personally don't think the movie showed that Zod understood Superman well enough to realize that killing was so antithetical to his beliefs, but either way, that was the payoff for the last bit of narrative progression: After all of their inconclusive fighting and the mounting collateral damage, Superman realized that he wasn't going to subdue Zod or force him to surrender, and it would be far too drawn out and destructive to try to knock him out or to fight him to the point of exhaustion.

I think that you make a very good point about what distinguishes good and bad fight scenes in general, but I'm not sure it's entirely accurately--at least, right now--to assert that it's a distinction that's particular to "superhero" fights versus others. There are a ton of non-genre action movies that are basically just fight porn (if you want examples, just go to Jason Statham's imdb page and contrast his worst movies with his best ones.) The superhero genre's gotten pretty diverse, too. Take Captain America: Civil War for example. Most of the fights are a bit drawn out so that the entire ensemble cast gets a chance to show off, but they largely follow a pretty logical progression. Both sides are/were friends, so everyone is really holding back: Obviously nobody is trying to use lethal force, but they're also going well out of their way to avoid the risk of serious injury. Maybe somebody pulls out a Pokeball and sends out Spider-man at some point, hoping that will be enough for a decisive victory with nobody getting hurt. Within each fight, both sides gradually stop holding back so much as they realize they're too evenly matched. Then, when you consider the fights as a sequence, there's also a similar progression. In the first major fight, even as everyone starts taking the fight more seriously, they're still not trying to hurt each other, and even at its peak everyone is horrified when somebody is seriously injured. In the climactic battle, even at the beginning Tony is basically out for blood, while Bucky had less reservations about killing in general and no past friendship with Tony to prompt him to hold back. The escalation within the battle comes from Steve gradually realizing that his friends are pretty much trying to kill each other, and that in order to have any influence on the outcome he would have to employ a similar level of force. The logistics of the fight also mirror this progression: As Steve and Bucky get tired and injured and damage gradually disables the various capabilities of the Iron Man suit, both sides realize that they no longer have the ability to achieve their victory condition (in Tony's case, kill Bucky or at least arrest him without Steve's interference, and in Steve/Bucky's case, to escape after delaying or destroying Tony's ability to pursue) without causing serious injury.

[ebarde]

I mostly chose Man of Steel cause it feels kinda cheap to just pick like a blatantly bad example of a fight scene, ya know? So I feel like the battle of Metropolis was interesting cause at the start they did do a nice pay off, it's just that then the rest of it was mostly filler until things escalated pretty quickly as you said. I do think your analysis of the fight is interesting, although I feel that when you wanna communicate that a hero and a villain are attempting to do opposite things in a fight, it's a tad counter-intuitive to have a good chunk of the fight be them doing essentially the same thing to each other if that makes sense?

I suppose that's a bit of a problem with matching up characters with the exact same power set, cause a character's capabilities are a big part of what makes them unique, especially in the superhero genre. So the only thing left is how they use those abilities, which had some pretty nice contrast at the start of the fight, but as soon as Zod figured out his powers, he defaulted into just ramming into Superman blindly while Superman does the same. I think maybe if they pushed Superman being creative with his powerset while Zod is pragmatic, and add a bit more clues to Zod catching onto Superman's morals the fight would have been perfectly fine.

As for Civil War, I think that the main problem there was motivation, at least in the airport fight. Like, it's weird cause at the same time the scene sorta lampshades how forced it is to have the characters just fight each other, with characters either barely knowing what the conflict even is or treating the whole thing as if it was just a practice session, all the while there were some combatants that were absolutely doing things that could easily get their teammates killed or seriously hurt but did so with little to no motivating factor(Vision is a pacifist, yet he shot Falcon, who is mostly unarmored with a beam powerful enough to down War Machine?).

But yeah, you're right, superhero movies aren't really the sole place where this problems show up. Heck, I'd argue that due to their setting, at the very least they get a lag up due to not being just main brooding man shoots at bad guys allergic to cover, all the while never getting shot.

[Xyril]

I mostly chose Man of Steel cause it feels kinda cheap to just pick like a blatantly bad example of a fight scene, ya know? So I feel like the battle of Metropolis was interesting cause at the start they did do a nice pay off, it's just that then the rest of it was mostly filler until things escalated pretty quickly as you said. I do think your analysis of the fight is interesting, although I feel that when you wanna communicate that a hero and a villain are attempting to do opposite things in a fight, it's a tad counter-intuitive to have a good chunk of the fight be them doing essentially the same thing to each other if that makes sense?

Err, when you say "trying to do opposite things," do you mean when I said Superman cares about collateral damage, while Zod not only doesn't care, but is willing to use them to put Superman at a disadvantage? In terms of immediate goals, I don't think they were trying to do opposite things: They're both trying to beat the other into submission.

It's been a while since I've seen the movie, so I might be mixing in a lot from other versions of Zod, but generally he's only "evil" in the sense that he's an authoritarian who wants to rule Kryptonians, and he has no qualms about killing off humanity to bring Krypton back in some form. In some adaptations, he specifically has history with the House of El. So his primary goal isn't to kill Kal-El--he wants him varying to join him, or to submit and acknowledge Zod's supremacy. At a minimum, Superman ceasing to attempt to stop Zod is the general goal, and killing him usually doesn't seem like the most desired means to that end.

In the immediate sense, especially in the beginning of the fight, they really didn't have opposite goals. Zod wants to wipe out humanity out of spite, and Superman wants to stop him, but for both of them, the way to achieve their goal is to fight other guy until the other guy loses the ability or the will to keep fighting. Killing for its own sake is never Superman's goal, and for the reasons I mentioned, I don't think Zod particularly wanted to kill Superman if it would have been at all possible to neutralize him without doing so.

I suppose that's a bit of a problem with matching up characters with the exact same power set, cause a character's capabilities are a big part of what makes them unique, especially in the superhero genre. So the only thing left is how they use those abilities, which had some pretty nice contrast at the start of the fight, but as soon as Zod figured out his powers, he defaulted into just ramming into Superman blindly while Superman does the same. I think maybe if they pushed Superman being creative with his powerset while Zod is pragmatic, and add a bit more clues to Zod catching onto Superman's morals the fight would have been perfectly fine.

You're probably right on that. A lot of Zod not caring about about causing collateral damage pretty much presents the same as Zod not having enough control to focus his energy on his intended target. What made me see things the way I did was what happened at the very end: In terms of getting his revenge on the Earth, Zod has probably killed thousands, if not millions of people as a result of his terraformers or the fighting that happened before they banished the other Kryptonians, and that fight with Superman probably killed hundreds of random people off screen. So targeting a random family didn't really strike me as a last ditch effort to meaningfully add to his revenge. So what makes more sense to me would be:
1) Zod thinks Superman will realize he can't stop him from incinerating that family while trying to subdue him, forcing him to move in front of the blast, or carry the family away, or something else that involves releasing Zod long enough for him to escape or attack again
2) Same reasoning, but he expects Superman to conclude that both in the immediate moment, and in the long term, killing Zod is the only way to prevent future deaths.
3) Killing that family before his defeat actually is the goal. But like I said, this doesn't meaningfully contribute to his revenge against humanity. So this also relates to him starting to understand Superman: Killing a few more people doesn't change anything for the humans who resisted him, but doing so in front of Superman, when he should have been able to save them, would be a pretty good final act of spite against him.

[ebarde]

When the fight started they already were past the join me stage, especially cause he had taken out all of Zod's crew already and aprehended them.

[Saintheart]

As for Civil War, I think that the main problem there was motivation, at least in the airport fight. Like, it's weird cause at the same time the scene sorta lampshades how forced it is to have the characters just fight each other, with characters either barely knowing what the conflict even is or treating the whole thing as if it was just a practice session, all the while there were some combatants that were absolutely doing things that could easily get their teammates killed or seriously hurt but did so with little to no motivating factor(Vision is a pacifist, yet he shot Falcon, who is mostly unarmored with a beam powerful enough to down War Machine?).

Nitpicking and taking refuge in throwaway lines, but it's worth remembering Vision wasn't shooting to kill. The line right before the shot is from War Machine, who says to Vision "Target his thruster, turn him into a glider." The idea was to take out the specific part of Falcon's backpack allowing him to gain altitude. Vision's a machine and thus presumed to be hyper-accurate, Rhodey didn't want to kill Sam any more than Vision did.

The issue with that airport fight scene is that it deliberately contained humour beats. I think they were in there to moderate the intensity of the scene. That's what fuels Ant-Man's hijinks, just about every shot of Spiderman, and Hawkeye/Black Widow's exchange about their friendship being dependent on how hard she hits him. They didn't want the level and intensity of the fight to be escalated to the level that we got in the last fight of the film. (Which was one of the best sequences a comic book movie has ever pulled off, even if it owed a hell of a lot to Zack Snyder's Watchmen adaptation and Daniel Bruhl stealing the scene if not the whole damn movie in the last five minutes. Until Thanos came along, no villain in the MCU was anywhere near as compelling or as frightening as Helmut Zemo, for the single reason that he'd managed to tear the Avengers apart using nothing but the heroes' own obsessions against them.)

If I remember right there's not one drop of blood shed on screen in the airport fight scene. The first bit we see is where Tony rips off Rhodes' faceplate and sees him unconscious and bleeding from the nose. That was deliberate; they wanted to raise the stakes for all characters and drive it home to the audience: yeah, you had your hijinks and Paul Rudd overacting, and your snappy fight humour, but this **** just got real, yo. And that's also why there's big purple bruises and red sauce all over Tony and Steve's final bout - both because they are quite close to trying to kill each other, but also because the writers wanted the intensity of the scene to be greater.

[Aedilred]

If I remember right there's not one drop of blood shed on screen in the airport fight scene. The first bit we see is where Tony rips off Rhodes' faceplate and sees him unconscious and bleeding from the nose. That was deliberate; they wanted to raise the stakes for all characters and drive it home to the audience: yeah, you had your hijinks and Paul Rudd overacting, and your snappy fight humour, but this **** just got real, yo. And that's also why there's big purple bruises and red sauce all over Tony and Steve's final bout - both because they are quite close to trying to kill each other, but also because the writers wanted the intensity of the scene to be greater.

Yeah, I think this is one of the reasons that Civil War is one of the MCU films I keep coming back to, because that escalation of stakes was well-handled. We go from essentially sparring to actually fighting in anger, with someone getting seriously hurt and everyone taking a step back - and then rejoining that fight with more intensity, the film's having made it clear by that point that it is on some level playing for keeps. In that final fight scene it does seem like someone could die. And even if no characters do ultimately cop it, it does feel like Tony and Cap's relationship has been fatally wounded, thereby killing the Avengers as we know them.

My criticism would really be over how things were subsequently handled, because most of it's off-screen. Yeah, we get the phone message at the end of Civil War but the next time we see Bucky he's all better and has a new arm. In Infinity War Tony is reluctant to call Cap, then gets overtaken by events, and when they see each other in Endgame Tony snaps at him - not about his parents but about Ultron of all things - then fast forward to a point where they're basically friends again. Rebuilding that relationship could have done with a bit more screen time, although I understand that space for it was at a premium in those movies.

Albeit there is a throwaway line in Homecoming that I like to hang more significance on than perhaps it merits: it's mentioned that one of the items being moved upstate is a prototype for Cap's new shield. This could be a continuity error but the film isn't exactly shy about reminding us it takes place after Civil War with consequences for Cap#s status. That Tony's still working on a new shield for Cap despite that suggests that he has forgiven him, even if he can't quite admit it yet.

[Brother Oni]

But yeah, you're right, superhero movies aren't really the sole place where this problems show up. Heck, I'd argue that due to their setting, at the very least they get a lag up due to not being just main brooding man shoots at bad guys allergic to cover, all the while never getting shot.

There was a playgrounder who was a sword fight coordinator who listed his top movies for fight scenes; however he didn't list them on technical merit alone, but whether they also told a story, otherwise it was just actors performing pretty acrobatics (e.g. most of the fights in Revenge of the Sith, quite a few martial arts films).

Some of the films on his list:

Prince Caspian: Peter vs Miraz. Excellent example of how armoured knights actually fight, including how after the helmets came off, nearly every blow was aimed at the head.

The Phantom Menance: Maul vs Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan. Tells a clear story, along with an excellent breather moment where Maul and Qui-Gon demonstrate their different philosophies; Maul is just pacing back and forth like a tiger, just waiting for his prey, while Qui-Gon is meditating to calm himself.

Troy: Achilles vs Hector. Tells a clear story with rises, falls and a climax, leading to a desperate fight by Hector as he knows his end is coming but still trying his hardest to win. It also shows off their different fighting styles - Hector is a very linear back and forth, while Achilles is circular with most of his attacks going around Hector's shield.

Old Boy (2013): Oh Dae-su vs everybody. A lot of back and forth with clear moments of Dae-Su's willpower, determination and sheer bloody-mindedness coming through. Incidentally, I had the misfortune to watch the American remake and there's none of that emotion or story-telling in the equivalent corridor fight scene with Josh Brolin.

Wheels on Meals: Jackie Chan vs Benny Urquidez. One of favourite fights, again with clear story telling as the fight progresses.


One of my own:

Hard Boiled: Alan vs Mad Dog. It's essentially another superhero fight, only with guns instead of superpowers. I love the part in the middle where they both mutually lay down their weapons in order to let the nurse and her patients escape, highlighting their mutual moral code of not harming innocents.

[Tyndmyr]

What I mean by that, is that generally in action scenes, one attack leads to another. Maybe the bad guy get's a cheap stab in with his dagger, now the good guy has to fight at a handicap for the rest of the fight! This is a case of continuity, cause the stabbing scene had to take place at that moment, to justify why our hero would be fighting with a handicap later. Maybe now he needs to constantly apply pressure to his wound, which is good storytelling cause the stakes of the fight are being raised as one person is clearly winning.

I would agree that a good fight scene tells a story, and like all stories, benefits from a certain degree of plausibility, etc.

However, I don't think this is inherent to superheros, which often do manage this. Consider many of the fight scenes in say, Umbrella Academy. Shuffling the order around might well make many of those fights into an incoherent mess, given that actions tend to be direct counterplays.

Some, like your aforementioned Superman example, do not. What's the difference?

Well, bluntly, Superman vs Zod isn't an interesting matchup. It's a mirror matchup. If I pit a person who can run hyperfast vs a person who can hurl objects, both are attempting to play to their strengths against the weaknesses of the other. This builds a play/counterplay reaction cycle.

If the superpower of both is "I hit things gud", then yeah, you're gonna have a lot of punches, the order rarely matters, and it's going to be kind of rough, even in an otherwise good film. Black Panther has both kinds of fight scene. Odds are you barely remember or care about the mirror match on the train tracks, but you probably enjoyed BP in Korea.

So, to have an interesting matchup, you need to develop the characters involved as distinct individuals with their own strengths and weaknesses.

[hungrycrow]

I would agree that a good fight scene tells a story, and like all stories, benefits from a certain degree of plausibility, etc.

However, I don't think this is inherent to superheros, which often do manage this. Consider many of the fight scenes in say, Umbrella Academy. Shuffling the order around might well make many of those fights into an incoherent mess, given that actions tend to be direct counterplays.

Some, like your aforementioned Superman example, do not. What's the difference?

Well, bluntly, Superman vs Zod isn't an interesting matchup. It's a mirror matchup. If I pit a person who can run hyperfast vs a person who can hurl objects, both are attempting to play to their strengths against the weaknesses of the other. This builds a play/counterplay reaction cycle.

If the superpower of both is "I hit things gud", then yeah, you're gonna have a lot of punches, the order rarely matters, and it's going to be kind of rough, even in an otherwise good film. Black Panther has both kinds of fight scene. Odds are you barely remember or care about the mirror match on the train tracks, but you probably enjoyed BP in Korea.

So, to have an interesting matchup, you need to develop the characters involved as distinct individuals with their own strengths and weaknesses.

I'd note that any realistic fight scene between regular humans would technically be a mirror match. Yet non-superhero action films make good fight scenes all the time. I think you definitely could have a superfight with the same powers as long as you were clear on the individual characters' strategy.

[Xyril]

I'd note that any realistic fight scene between regular humans would technically be a mirror match. Yet non-superhero action films make good fight scenes all the time. I think you definitely could have a superfight with the same powers as long as you were clear on the individual characters' strategy.

Plus, like we were discussing, Superman vs. Zod doesn't have to be boring and repetitive. Different strategies, different skills, different moral constraints all shape a fight, and even in the absence of those differences, a fight can still have a sense of progression (although that can be a bit more of a challenge when you specifically share the superpowers of extreme endurance and durability, and fast regeneration.)

You might want to check out Superman vs. the Elite (or whatever the other version of it is called.) Although the power sets are completely different, what makes the battles progress interestingly has little to anything to do with the fact that everyone has completely different powers. The strategic goal of the Elite is to prove to Superman and the world that his philosophy of restraint is ultimately flawed. They explore multiple means of doing so, such as showing that their methods of neutralizing villains are more effective than Superman's, or eventually being the bad guys who Superman can't stop from causing collateral damage without betraying his principles. For Superman, the goal is the same as always--save lives and stop the villains without stepping down the path that that leads to him becoming judge, jury, and executioner.

The battles have an interesting progression, one that has less to do with powers learning to counter different powers or injuries leading to a certain necessary progression of tactics, and more to do with the events forcing the acknowledgment of the limitations or failures of certain tactics and the adoption of new ones. The first fights between Superman and the Elite aren't actually direct fights--rather, it's a battle for public opinion as Superman keeps the gloves on while stopping villains, while the Elite take adopt more ruthless and permanent methods. While most of the story eventually moves to direct fights between the two sides, ultimately the resolution of the conflict has nothing to do with the interesting combinations of one power set tangling with four different ones, instead hinging on Superman understanding the psychology of his opponents and employing his resources outside of his powers.

[Lagtime]

I think my big problem with the super hero fight scenes is the subjective reality.

You watch as say the hero just has bullets bounce off them......then a bag guy throws a trash can lid that knocks the hero 500 feet across a field and into a building.

A piano falling just bounces off the hero.....but when the bad guy grabs a street light it knocks the hero into the river.

A speeding car his the hero and is smashed like hitting a wall...but when the bag guy tosses are car at the hero they are knocked down.

Or the bad guy has a heat ray vision that can melt titanium...but the hero deflects it with a review mirror torn off a car.

[Saintheart]

There was a playgrounder who was a sword fight coordinator who listed his top movies for fight scenes; however he didn't list them on technical merit alone, but whether they also told a story, otherwise it was just actors performing pretty acrobatics (e.g. most of the fights in Revenge of the Sith, quite a few martial arts films).

Some of the films on his list:

Prince Caspian: Peter vs Miraz. Excellent example of how armoured knights actually fight, including how after the helmets came off, nearly every blow was aimed at the head.

The Phantom Menance: Maul vs Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan. Tells a clear story, along with an excellent breather moment where Maul and Qui-Gon demonstrate their different philosophies; Maul is just pacing back and forth like a tiger, just waiting for his prey, while Qui-Gon is meditating to calm himself.

Troy: Achilles vs Hector. Tells a clear story with rises, falls and a climax, leading to a desperate fight by Hector as he knows his end is coming but still trying his hardest to win. It also shows off their different fighting styles - Hector is a very linear back and forth, while Achilles is circular with most of his attacks going around Hector's shield.

Old Boy (2013): Oh Dae-su vs everybody. A lot of back and forth with clear moments of Dae-Su's willpower, determination and sheer bloody-mindedness coming through. Incidentally, I had the misfortune to watch the American remake and there's none of that emotion or story-telling in the equivalent corridor fight scene with Josh Brolin.

Wheels on Meals: Jackie Chan vs Benny Urquidez. One of favourite fights, again with clear story telling as the fight progresses.


One of my own:

Hard Boiled: Alan vs Mad Dog. It's essentially another superhero fight, only with guns instead of superpowers. I love the part in the middle where they both mutually lay down their weapons in order to let the nurse and her patients escape, highlighting their mutual moral code of not harming innocents.

The final fight in Rob Roy (1995) makes for a good story I thought. Its ending is beautifully clever and foreshadowed from early in the film. Loevely contrast of fighting styles, too: Neeson fights with a big basket-hilt broadsword and chops his way around the duelling ground, Roth has a lethally sharp rapier and is quick like a snake. William Hobbs choreographed that fight, he'd done a lot of good stuff by that point.

Another film with lots more realistic, historically accurate, and therefore more boring, fights is The Duellists (1977), Ridley Scott's debut film, based off a Joseph Conrad (Heart of Darkness) short story. It tends to be a bit overlooked these days. William Hobbs choreographed again, and the film was lauded for its pretty historical representation of 19th century duelling techniques. In the film there's nowhere near as much jumping around as you'd think, men get tired quickly, one or two wounds is enough to end the entire fight, but most people just couldn't get over Harvey Keitel as a French hussar.

[Tyndmyr]

I'd note that any realistic fight scene between regular humans would technically be a mirror match. Yet non-superhero action films make good fight scenes all the time. I think you definitely could have a superfight with the same powers as long as you were clear on the individual characters' strategy.

Nah. This guy uses knives, this guy is a sniper, normal humans most definitely have differentiation in capability. Maybe everyone in The Matrix uses guns, but they most certainly have different capabilities, and this matters quite a lot to the fights. Incidentally, The Matrix is notable for having some of the best fight scenes of the era.

To be clear, I don't think you HAVE to have the powers of everyone be different to develop them interestingly, but it helps a great deal if characters are at least a little bit unique. Mirror matchups make this a good deal harder.

By all means, think of the best fight scenes you can remember between humans, and see if you can recall any where they were both regular people fighting the same way.

[Brother Oni]

Another film with lots more realistic, historically accurate, and therefore more boring, fights is The Duellists (1977), Ridley Scott's debut film, based off a Joseph Conrad (Heart of Darkness) short story. It tends to be a bit overlooked these days. William Hobbs choreographed again, and the film was lauded for its pretty historical representation of 19th century duelling techniques. In the film there's nowhere near as much jumping around as you'd think, men get tired quickly, one or two wounds is enough to end the entire fight, but most people just couldn't get over Harvey Keitel as a French hussar.

I think whether you'd regard it as boring is dependent on what you're used to. I had a look at the first fight of The Duellists and I saw plenty of tension in the fight, simply because neither wants to over-commit and die.
That said, Keitel's character was much calmer and relaxed than the other - I'm not sure whether it was intentional but I got the impression that the other fighter looked incredibly nervous throughout.

For a more Hollywood style but still realistic sword duel, there's this Adorea longsword duel that I like.

[Prime32]

Relevant video

[ebarde]

I think super endurance and super speed+flight are the hardest powers to deal with in a fight scene, cause if not done correctly they can just deflate any sort of consequences a fight normally has. Those being taking damage, or having to overcome some sort of enviromental disadvantage. Like in Endgame there's this scene in the final battle where Captain Marvel has to move the infinity gauntlet to a specific place in the battlefield. The whole scene is set-up as if going from point A to B is something she has a hard time doing, and that she needs the help of a bunch of other heroes to do so.

The problem here is that is definetly not the case, as she is by far the fastest combatant in the entire battlefield, even more so when compared to Thanos' forces that are mostly extremely sluggish or just completely bound to the ground, while Captain Marvel is clearly shown to be able to fly interplanetary distances. It wouldn't be that bad of a problem if the fight didn't had started with her showing she's able to cross way larger distances than a small battlefield in an instant.

[Xyril]

By all means, think of the best fight scenes you can remember between humans, and see if you can recall any where they were both regular people fighting the same way.

If you take the "regular people" bit to mean "have no superpowers," I would say Inigo Montoya vs. the man in black. Similar size and build, same weapons, apparently similar training/styles, and despite having very different ultimate goals and immediate motivations for being in that fight to begin with, both essentially share a sense of fair play and a moral code that dictates how they conduct a fight.

Also, any movie with a good sniper vs. sniper duel. I can't speak of any specific title off hand, but I do recall seeing that both technically accurate and magic-of-Hollywood style depictions can be done well, dramatically speaking.

[ebarde]

If you take the "regular people" bit to mean "have no superpowers," I would say Inigo Montoya vs. the man in black. Similar size and build, same weapons, apparently similar training/styles, and despite having very different ultimate goals and immediate motivations for being in that fight to begin with, both essentially share a sense of fair play and a moral code that dictates how they conduct a fight.

Also, any movie with a good sniper vs. sniper duel. I can't speak of any specific title off hand, but I do recall seeing that both technically accurate and magic-of-Hollywood style depictions can be done well, dramatically speaking.

To be fair, I think there is a bit of difference between Westley and Inigo in that fight. Westley fights a lot more carefuly, and is quite a tad more acrobatic and better at using the enviroment than Inigo. This is cause Inigo really only has fencing going for him, that's the one thing he trained his whole life to do, he isn't particularly clever and is quite reckless. While the Man in Black's thing is that his training granted him a variety of different abilities, being able to match anyone in both brawn and brains. You could also argue that training in a pirate ship would make you quite good at acrobatics and fighting in odd terrain.

Also, Inigo starts lashing out wildly when he sees he's about to lose, showing his reckless and somewhat child-like nature. The Man in Black on the other hand stays equally confident all through the fight, even if they both have a tendancy to be flashy and a bit full of themselves.

[Radar]

I think super endurance and super speed+flight are the hardest powers to deal with in a fight scene, cause if not done correctly they can just deflate any sort of consequences a fight normally has. Those being taking damage, or having to overcome some sort of enviromental disadvantage. Like in Endgame there's this scene in the final battle where Captain Marvel has to move the infinity gauntlet to a specific place in the battlefield. The whole scene is set-up as if going from point A to B is something she has a hard time doing, and that she needs the help of a bunch of other heroes to do so.

Super speed can still work fairly well but endurance and flight are often a serious problem as the first deflates the tension of a fight - those few examples of accurate duels in this thread show how the emotions including the fear of dying drive the conflict. Flight on the other hand takes away the momentum from the moves and as we lack any realistic examples to fall back on, it is not easy to build believable flying fight choreography that conveys the weight behind the punches.

Many anime also have the problem with how to show the momentum of a strike and sword fights often look as if people were bashing themselves with nerf bats.

I also found a great analysis of what makes a great fight sequence here using Grimgar as an example (which is a great short series by the way).

As another great and accurate mundane duel, I wanted to link this - this is the best quality version I could find unfortunately with a commentary on top and without english subtitles, but the duel speaks for itself. It also shows that a fight in fiction is all about the emotions: someone desperately trying to stay alive, or lashing out in anger, or something else. And those emotions change during the course of the battle due to specific developments. Cool choreography is hard enough to pull off, but we will not care unless there is some narrative.

[Tyndmyr]

I think super endurance and super speed+flight are the hardest powers to deal with in a fight scene, cause if not done correctly they can just deflate any sort of consequences a fight normally has. Those being taking damage, or having to overcome some sort of enviromental disadvantage. Like in Endgame there's this scene in the final battle where Captain Marvel has to move the infinity gauntlet to a specific place in the battlefield. The whole scene is set-up as if going from point A to B is something she has a hard time doing, and that she needs the help of a bunch of other heroes to do so.

The problem here is that is definetly not the case, as she is by far the fastest combatant in the entire battlefield, even more so when compared to Thanos' forces that are mostly extremely sluggish or just completely bound to the ground, while Captain Marvel is clearly shown to be able to fly interplanetary distances. It wouldn't be that bad of a problem if the fight didn't had started with her showing she's able to cross way larger distances than a small battlefield in an instant.

That particular scene was pretty awful.

Leaving aside the convenience leaned on in order to get a specific poster-style shot, uh...you fly, Thanos does not. Literally nobody else is a threat to you. So, uh, don't fly within punching range of the one guy who is a problem. Just go up.

The writers do a better job with Thor in terms of giving him obstacles suited to his power tier. The guy's punching it out with literal gods and monsters on the regular. This is particularly true in Ragnarok, which I certainly consider both the best Thor film, and definitely to have the best fight scenes.

Super speed can work, but it's a fairly potent power, and needs to be balanced as such with meaningful challenges. The person who literally crosses galaxies needs a bigger problem than "how to move that thing a hundred feet over there." It's probably best if the difficulties are not always "another person with super speed" like the frigging Flash, but they need something that poses a genuine challenge. Starlight vs A-train is an asymmetic matchup vs a speedster that ends up a little more even, for instance.

If you take the "regular people" bit to mean "have no superpowers," I would say Inigo Montoya vs. the man in black. Similar size and build, same weapons, apparently similar training/styles, and despite having very different ultimate goals and immediate motivations for being in that fight to begin with, both essentially share a sense of fair play and a moral code that dictates how they conduct a fight.

Love the movie, but I wouldn't say the fight itself was the interesting bit. The conversation between them is fascinating, and the fight only matters in that it furthers the conversation a bit. If they had fought with spears instead of swords, literally nothing about the film would have changed. On the other hand, if you removed all the dialogue, the fight would be mere filler instead of what it is. It isn't primary a fight scene, it's primarily dialogue.

I'd argue that the two men are also not identical, but the focus here isn't on that, it's on the verbal repartee.

Also, any movie with a good sniper vs. sniper duel. I can't speak of any specific title off hand, but I do recall seeing that both technically accurate and magic-of-Hollywood style depictions can be done well, dramatically speaking.

I pretty much hate all of those. They're hackneyed, rote thngs that probably end with one sniper shooting the other through his scope. They're the gunfight equivalent of the poker hand where the winner slow rolls his improbable royal flush.

If you can't remember the title of any movie with a good one, and they all blur together, I submit that they are not good fight scenes at all.

[Brother Oni]

I also found a great analysis of what makes a great fight sequence here using Grimgar as an example (which is a great short series by the way).

Is that the series where the first goblin they fight, it takes a knife straight through the neck and still doesn't die until someone cleaves its skull open with a typical anime oversized sword?

The problem I found is that it goes too far the other way of your standard isekai protagonist(s) being overpowered and makes them borderline unrealistically weak. The fights adds the weight and momentum, but kept the standard anime trope of injuries not being incapacitating unless required for the plot - that goblin didn't seem to be hampered at all by the punctured lung and other significant damage from having a sword through its back and out the front of its upper pec.

[Psyren]

I'm not sure picking one of the worst fight scenes in a modern superhero movie and making that emblematic of "superhero fight scenes in movies" is a particularly useful take. A good fight scene is kinetic, exciting, well-shot, narratively justified, and above all, teaches you something about the personality and motivations of the characters involved; Man of Steel's third-act blowout accomplishes none of these things, and in fact actively detracts from Clark's character due to his uncharacteristic willingness to have an empty DBZ slapfight in the midst of a crowded metropolis (literally) with barely a thought spared for innocent bystanders. That's bad for any superhero (that isn't a deconstruction or parody of some kind), but is particularly out of place with Superman, the living embodiment of the superhero ideal.

[ebarde]

I'm not sure picking one of the worst fight scenes in a modern superhero movie and making that emblematic of "superhero fight scenes in movies" is a particularly useful take. A good fight scene is kinetic, exciting, well-shot, narratively justified, and above all, teaches you something about the personality and motivations of the characters involved; Man of Steel's third-act blowout accomplishes none of these things, and in fact actively detracts from Clark's character due to his uncharacteristic willingness to have an empty DBZ slapfight in the midst of a crowded metropolis (literally) with barely a thought spared for innocent bystanders. That's bad for any superhero (that isn't a deconstruction or parody of some kind), but is particularly out of place with Superman, the living embodiment of the superhero ideal.

I mean, I think I can make largely the same argument about so many other fight scenes in superhero movies, that the Man of Steel fight is a good enough example.

[Psyren]

I mean, I think I can make largely the same argument about so many other fight scenes in superhero movies, that the Man of Steel fight is a good enough example.

While none of them are perfect, you still picked one of the worst ones imaginable. It's like saying fight scenes don't work in martial arts movies because of Last Airbender.

[ebarde]

While none of them are perfect, you still picked one of the worst ones imaginable. It's like saying fight scenes don't work in martial arts movies because of Last Airbender.

I mean, those aren't even remotely the same thing though. It's fairly hard to argue Last Airbender is even in the martial arts movie genre, which is also a way broader classification than superhero movies. Also, while opinions on Man of Steel are somewhat split, and even people that dislike the movie usually have bigger problems with it than the choreography, Last Airbender is universaly hated in pretty much all aspects of it's production. I had quite a few good things to say about Man of Steel's fight scene in my first post, I'd be hard pressed to find literally any positives in any of the fights in Last Airbender.

[Psyren]

Then the answer to your question ("Am I just nitpicking?") is no - Man of Steel is really that bad. HTH.

[Radar]

Is that the series where the first goblin they fight, it takes a knife straight through the neck and still doesn't die until someone cleaves its skull open with a typical anime oversized sword?

The problem I found is that it goes too far the other way of your standard isekai protagonist(s) being overpowered and makes them borderline unrealistically weak. The fights adds the weight and momentum, but kept the standard anime trope of injuries not being incapacitating unless required for the plot - that goblin didn't seem to be hampered at all by the punctured lung and other significant damage from having a sword through its back and out the front of its upper pec.

I could make an argument about alien biology or headless chickens still running, but let's look at it in detail. The sword stab in the chest could have been lucky for the goblin as a vertical stab most likely slided on the ribcage and it is very much to the side of the chest, but he should have severe problems with the right arm though. The dagger in the throat should put him down and it might have actually been fatal as the goblin stops chocking Haruhiro and probably was about to fall, so the sword to the head was pretty much overkill.

I would not say they were unrealistically weak to be honest - their emotions were pretty much what you would expect from people in a kill or be killed situation for the first time in their lives and that affects their abilities in a justifiable way. The whole point of the first fight was to show just how crazy it is to make random teenagers fight monsters and that in every battle lives are actually at stake. Those are not heroes going into battle with a lighthearted song - those are regular people trying to survive.

In their later fights they are more composed and competent as they gained some experience (in the mundane sense) and accustomed to battlefield conditions.

[Tyndmyr]

Then the answer to your question ("Am I just nitpicking?") is no - Man of Steel is really that bad. HTH.

I would agree that Man of Steel is really that bad. If I were looking at superhero movies released since Iron Man came out, it would be near the bottom, hanging out with Suicide Squad and Fan4stic.

It makes a fine example of a bad fight scene. It doesn't make a strong case for that there can be no good fight scenes with superheroes. If we accept that it has problems, but that good ones also exist, we can chat about what the difference is, but I can think of a lot of fight scenes that are genuinely fun.

Consider, for instance, Wonder Woman's montage of attacking the soldiers in her titular film. Great fun, and, not surprisingly, in a decent film.

Or, basically any part of Avengers. Go back and rewatch it, the fights are amazing. Look at Black Widow vs Hulk on the helicarrier, the intensity there is fantastic. Black Widow's Chair fight. The entire end fight scene in New York....Fight scenes can be amazing, entertaining, and contribute to the story.

[ebarde]

I would agree that Man of Steel is really that bad. If I were looking at superhero movies released since Iron Man came out, it would be near the bottom, hanging out with Suicide Squad and Fan4stic.

It makes a fine example of a bad fight scene. It doesn't make a strong case for that there can be no good fight scenes with superheroes. If we accept that it has problems, but that good ones also exist, we can chat about what the difference is, but I can think of a lot of fight scenes that are genuinely fun.

Consider, for instance, Wonder Woman's montage of attacking the soldiers in her titular film. Great fun, and, not surprisingly, in a decent film.

Or, basically any part of Avengers. Go back and rewatch it, the fights are amazing. Look at Black Widow vs Hulk on the helicarrier, the intensity there is fantastic. Black Widow's Chair fight. The entire end fight scene in New York....Fight scenes can be amazing, entertaining, and contribute to the story.

No one afaik ever claimed there can be no good fight scenes in superhero movies though, only that there are problematic trends in superhero fights scenes. Also, I wouldn't put Man of Steel anywhere near Suicide Squad's final action scene, mostly cause at least every combatant in the Man of Steel fight is moving about and doing things. Also better set-up and pay off, while the Suicide Squad scene is mostly just 2 fiery dudes exchanging punches in the same place, while the rest of the team watches. And then they all do a team attack on the final boss ig.