Also, combat in general is incredibly boring in modern films. Punch, punch, grunt, grimace - without any consequence. Maybe someone has a cut lip which is gone in the next scene. Superhero movies are the worst for this, where characters routinely throw each other through walls and none of it matters because they are as good as invincible.
Many movies these days are simply a formula that as a middle aged person I've seen so many times I just can't watch action or superhero movies, I have zero interest. I am not the target audience though. Even movies aimed at my demographic are laden with tropes, little interesting or creative storyline.
Long form TV is generally much more creative story based and does not reboot old TV so much (Bell Air is more of an exception than a rule).
Agree with the rest, but I'm afraid that i find 99.95% of the current TV series as boring as superhero movies. At least a movie finishes in (up to) 3 hours...
Re: Bel Air reboot, "dark reboot of light comedy series" is such a ridiculous cliche that I can't believe they've actually done it. Very 2020s.
I'd add Theater of Blood (Vincent Price thespian camp horror with a large number of cameos from British character actors of the 1970s), Tomorrow I’ll Wake Up And Scald Myself With Tea (Soviet time-travel twin-swap comedy), and White Sun Of The Desert, which is traditionally watched by astronauts in their last night of pre-launch quarantine at Baikonur. https://24htech.asia/i-was-bored-so-i-watched-the-movie-that... ; that has some legitimately great shots in it.
To the original question, if you like technicolor you owe it to yourself to see Singin' In The Rain, not just for the title dance sequence but several other big numbers.
Agree in general. Atomic Blonde is one of the rare films that doesn't fall into this trap. The lead character gets cuts and bruises that persist between scenes and even changes her hair style at one point to hide a black eye picked up in a fight.
Throwing huge punches is bad. Firing arbitrary laser blasts is even worse. Especially when the consequences of being hit seem so trivial. But it can be done well. I think Thor Ragnarok is a good example of this.
This is the first movie in which both Thor and Hulk were actually shown as extremely strong with little more than just physical blows. What’s noteworthy is that most of the fights they’re in are very easy for them, and frankly it’s much more fun to watch them stylishly stomp 100 goons and look strong rather than incomprehensibly struggle to fend off 10 nobodies. Filmmakers tend to be afraid of having a fight scene without tension.
Avengers infinity war fight v. Thanos also comes to mind as a quick little highlight reel of each of a dozen characters special contributions. It comes across as competent and unique.
Off the top of my head, black panther, iron man 1,2,3, guardians of the galaxy 1,2, Shang chi, wandavision, earlier avengers, all felt particularly bad at this.
There’s a big difference in movies though. Jackie is basically always a human fighting humans. He is always either fighting an extremely competent opponent and it will be fairly serious martial arts; or it will be him comedically fighting a ton of goons which you know are way weaker than him but he’s got some sort of hilarious disadvantage. But it’s always somewhat grounded.
Superhero movies tend to have weird matchups where the balance is already heavily skewed.
Shitty movies do this dance where the bad guy is slightly stronger and does irrelevant damage to the protagonist before being one shotted by a dumb trick, which is probably a call back to something earlier in the film.
Better films actually have this implication that in a fight, if an opponent does their thing, you’re going to die.
Marvel is starting to do more of the latter. It’s just much more rewarding when protagonists win by virtue of competence and their own abilities.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sFFwvr6l2mM
This fight contains no particularly good martial arts, has a lot of cuts, and has a lot of big blasty attacks but they’re all very juicy and you do believe the threat is real. It’s especially good because everything both characters are doing are somewhat novel to them. It’s on the fly improv and physical character development.
Very different from Jackie’s stuff but I think very good.
Compared to Sam Raimi's Spiderman films, which has a lot of less CGI and smaller set pieces in general but the fight scenes look more impactful because of it.
I actually hate Attack on Titan as a show, but damn the action scenes actually have weight and logic to them, far superior to the Marvel stuff despite being 100% cartoon.
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That being said: Marvel seems to be going with more of a "Dragonball Z" or "RWBY" approach to combat. Which is fine as long as the writing is good enough. Its a different style for sure...
Except ya know. Dragonball Z / RWBY largely does it better.
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Its less about action shots and more about demonstrating superpowers. Everyone knows Goku will try to end the fight with a Kamehameha wave. At some point, Goku will go Super Saiyan or beyond, etc. etc.
Similarly: Capt. America will throw his shield, Iron Man shoots some lasers, Hulk will grab, punch, and grapple something.
I also happen to think that the best Spider-Man fight scenes were by far the Andrew Garfield ones. Those scenes were incredibly juicy, especially the second, for all its terrible writing and worldbuilding.
Shang Chi had some good long-shot Wuxia-style scenes.
It wasn't as good as "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" but unlike the rest of the Marvel films, Shang Chi actually had proper fight scenes in them.
But you're right in that most Marvel scenes make no damn sense from an action perspective. I'm constantly annoyed by their cuts personally. I'm just surprised that you threw Shang Chi into the same boat, because Shang Chi had more proper action shots than I can remember.
I'm not talking about the CGI-dragon fight at the end (which went back into the Marvel mold of CGI + jump cuts). I'm talking about like, the first scene between Ying Li and Weng Wu (Shang-Chi's mother and father). Or the Bus-fight, which was pretty good IMO. At least, good by Marvel standards (which are pretty bad).
It doesn't hold a candle compared to a good Jackie Chan scene, but at least they kept the camera still _SOMETIMES_ in Shang-Chi, rather than never keeping the damn camera still.
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That being said, I enjoy Marvel films. I just wish they shot the action better.
Marvel’s best raw martial arts fights were probably on the likes of Daredevil (Netflix), Winter Soldier, and the Falcon Series. But I don’t feel they’ve gotten Kung fu or traditional Chinese stuff down well ever.
> Marvel’s best raw martial arts fights were probably on the likes of Daredevil (Netflix), Winter Soldier, and the Falcon Series.
That's called "Street Level" superheroes. There are superpowers, but they're much toned down. Its a different genre.
I saw it, it was all people swinging around on wires with the wires painted out. By the arc of their movement, I knew where the wires were, anyway. The whole thing just looked silly.
EDIT: I distinctly remember some of the "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" weapon-scenes to be incredible katas that formed a cohesive story. Its an element of dance and martial arts, less practical and less pragmatic but beautiful nonetheless. A lot of them didn't involve wires at all.
I'm not necessarily saying you should like Wuxia, but perhaps you should try to understand it? Its definitely not about being believable, any more so than Odysseus's voyage was believable. (Or perhaps: an opera about a princess who falls asleep because of a sewing needle, and a prince who fights a dragon so that he could wake her up by kissing her).
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Shang-Chi had an element of Wuxia in it. Not a lot, but enough for me to get what they were going for.
The Matrix had no kata that was anywhere near as good as this duel from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
Like, Keanu Reeves studied Kung Fu. These actresses are king Fu, and the difference is huge.
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Matrix 2 had a weapons kata demonstration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXGE0vuuaDo
Its not quite as good.
I agree with the boring nature of most "superhuman" fight scenes (of both "declared" kind, superheeoes, and the "undeclared" kind, regular mortals who just happen to be over the top for cheap awe effects).
But there have also been some recent examples (ca this century) that I found quite impressive, usually characterized by a short violent burst of crazyness and then everybody is dead, heavily inured or routing, and maybe slowly beginning to consider that perhaps they haven't actually lost.
At least the manga it's still respecting the original artwork.
I enjoyed the fighting scenes in the animated show _Invincible_ much more than any fight scenes I've seen in a Marvel film for this reason.
Explosive and (usually) consequential.
"Being there" is an excuse Hollywood has used for ages for not training actors properly, not doing any fight choreography etc.
Marvel now spends millions of dollars on boring CGI fights because they couldn't be bothered to spend the same (or actually less) money on filming actual fights. Just look at what John Wick did with a 54-57-year old actor and Nobody did with a 57-year old actor for the fraction of the price of most modern action movies.
I mean this kind of stuff has been around forever. The A-Team pioneered “punch punch grimace, get up and walk away” to the point where it was comical.
So much so that I was actually shocked to see characters actually dying in the most recent film.