# Do the battles in fiction bore anyone else? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [October 20, 2014, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-the-battles-in-fiction-bore-anyone-else/701939 "2014-10-20T18:29:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![grude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47774/32.png) [@grude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grude)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2014, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-the-battles-in-fiction-bore-anyone-else/701939/1 "2014-10-20T18:29:05Z")
The wizard Grandolph is leading a force of 20,000 to battle the army of evil of 40,000 evil infused dark soldiers… And then I fall asleep. The most boring part of most epic fantasy fiction to me is large scale battles between anonymous enormous numbers of good soldiers and anonymous enormous numbers of evil soldiers, all lacking characterization or any mention in the plot. Not one thing is at stake because we the readers have no investment in the fighters, we know none of them and care about none of them. This is the major reason why I don’t care for the 2nd and 3rd Lord Of The Rings movies, it is battle after battle where nothing is really at stake and nothing is risked. Nah but this is my most hated part of fantasy novels, big battles between anonymous forces of good and evil. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2014, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-the-battles-in-fiction-bore-anyone-else/701939/2 "2014-10-20T18:32:33Z")
In books, battles are not the favorite parts of fiction, but what really bores me are descriptions of one-on-one combat. A 10 page sequence detailing a fight between two characters is a 10 page sequence I will skip. ---
**Author:** ![YogSothoth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/8edcca/32.png) [@YogSothoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YogSothoth)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2014, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-the-battles-in-fiction-bore-anyone-else/701939/3 "2014-10-20T18:38:45Z")
How about a 10 page description of 10000 one-on-one battles? You should both love that ---
**Author:** ![Smeghead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f1d935/32.png) [@Smeghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smeghead)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2014, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-the-battles-in-fiction-bore-anyone-else/701939/4 "2014-10-20T18:53:52Z")
Well written fight scenes are interesting to read. Poorly written fight scenes are not. This, of course, makes fight scenes entirely different from each and every other type of scene it is possible to write. ---
**Author:** ![Sattua](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sattua/32/11906_2.png) [@Sattua](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sattua)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2014, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-the-battles-in-fiction-bore-anyone-else/701939/5 "2014-10-20T19:15:07Z")
Yeah. I started a thread about it a few months ago, and received much agreement. Chase scenes, too. ---
**Author:** ![gallows\_fodder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/8c91f0/32.png) [@gallows\_fodder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gallows_fodder)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2014, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-the-battles-in-fiction-bore-anyone-else/701939/6 "2014-10-20T19:33:43Z")
Yes, as do fist fights and sex scenes. It’s important that there _is_ a battle or a fight or that two people have sex, but I get bored when we have to sit through the step-by-step. ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_R.Mortiss](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tim_r.mortiss/32/142_2.png) [@Tim\_R.Mortiss](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_R.Mortiss)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2014, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-the-battles-in-fiction-bore-anyone-else/701939/7 "2014-10-20T19:43:59Z")
A good director can make them interesting, by focusing on small little segments of the battle, and giving us participants to care about. Also, by finding unique ways of depicting the activities. Check out Orson Welles’ “Chimes at Midnight” for some awesomely interesting battle scenes. But I agree that in many mediocre movies, they are just plain tedious. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2014, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-the-battles-in-fiction-bore-anyone-else/701939/8 "2014-10-20T19:56:06Z")
Yes. Fight scenes in books and movie nearly always bore me. I want to skip them to get to the interesting parts. You know the result in advance nine times out of ten (put your money on the hero, unless it’s early in the book/movie). I’d be perfectly happy if I never saw another fight scene again. ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2014, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-the-battles-in-fiction-bore-anyone-else/701939/9 "2014-10-20T20:02:51Z")
It’s too bad you used “science fiction” in the thread title, because all that _Ring_ stuff isn’t it. ---
**Author:** ![Renee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/renee/32/287_2.png) [@Renee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Renee)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2014, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-the-battles-in-fiction-bore-anyone-else/701939/10 "2014-10-20T20:06:01Z")
I’m totally with you on this. Boring as shit, both films and books. ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2014, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-the-battles-in-fiction-bore-anyone-else/701939/11 "2014-10-20T20:11:57Z")
> [@Tim\_R.Mortiss](#): > > A good director can make them interesting, by focusing on small little segments of the battle, and giving us participants to care about. Also, by finding unique ways of depicting the activities. > > Check out Orson Welles’ “Chimes at Midnight” for some awesomely interesting battle scenes. > > But I agree that in many mediocre movies, they are just plain tedious. Movies and books, and I take it that the OP is about books, are very different in this regard. In general, battle and fight scenes are much more suited to the movie medium, where a lot of complex action can be crammed into a short space of time, so you can depict it at high speed and get adrenalin flowing. It takes a lot of words to describe actions, so, in books, fight and battle scenes tend to go slow, when, to math the actual action and excitement being depicted, they should go fast. Nevertheless, it is possible, though difficult, to pull it off. I agree that Tolkien’s battle scenes generally are not the best parts of his books, but I think he did make it work with the Battle of the Pelennor Fields. With the battle of the Black Gate, Helm’s Deep, and, worst of all, the Battle of the Five Armies in _The Hobbit_, he did not do so well. ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2014, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-the-battles-in-fiction-bore-anyone-else/701939/12 "2014-10-20T20:18:48Z")
I kind of like how the Sherlock Holmes reboot movies handle the boxing scenes. Time slows down while Downey verbalizes his next blows, and speeds up again as he delivers them. ---
**Author:** ![Hampshire](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hampshire/32/4887_2.png) [@Hampshire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hampshire)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2014, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-the-battles-in-fiction-bore-anyone-else/701939/13 "2014-10-20T20:20:11Z")
The battles I’ve been really getting sick of lately are the superhero movie genre where two opponents who are impervious to damage from blunt force trauma (Superman, Zod, Thor, Hulk, Ironman, etc.) insist on going at it with eachother with nothing but blunt force trauma. You’d think after a couple of punches, hits, or smashes one of them would get a clue and figure out the whole punching him as hard as I can just doesn’t seem to be working. Maybe dismembering, pulling, or puncturing might be in order? ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2014, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-the-battles-in-fiction-bore-anyone-else/701939/14 "2014-10-20T20:40:03Z")
> [@gallows\_fodder](#): > > Yes, as do fist fights and sex scenes. It’s important that there _is_ a battle or a fight or that two people have sex, but I get bored when we have to sit through the step-by-step. When I first read that line, I read it as “fist sex” and “fight scenes”. :eek: But yeah, there’s a level of detail that doesn’t really add much. Isn’t there a writer’s principle that basically says that if something doesn’t add to the plot, don’t include or describe it? So if it’s not important that something’s throbbing or whatever, they ought to leave it out. That said, most fantasy battles are used more as a plot point so that the heroes can do some good old violent fighting, which at least in fantasy novels, is part and parcel of being heroic. Tolkien wasn’t talking about how the 33rd Regiment of Gondorian Foot held the line against the Orcs at the Pelennor Fields at great cost to themselves, but rather what Eowyn, Aragorn, Merry, Pippin, Gandalf and co. were doing during the battle and how they changed the course of the battle through their actions. It’s a sort of stage-setting; he set up the men of Gondor vs. this unstoppable horde of evil Orcs, and basically said they were going to lose, and then had the heroes show and save the day by virtue of their heroism. They wouldn’t have looked nearly so heroic had there not been jaws of defeat to snatch victory from, and that’s what the battle was about. I personally like the idea of describing the setup for the battles in a broad sense, and then the actual fighting from a very limited perspective- GRRM did a good job with the Battle of the Blackwater I think, in that it wasn’t so much a battle as a bunch of stage-setting for the battle, and the actual fighting being told from the very limited perspectives of Tyrion and Davos, and the end of the battle and aftermath being told through through other characters and later on, from their perspective dealing with it. ---
**Author:** ![C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b2d939/32.png) [@C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/C_K_Dexter_Haven)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2014, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-the-battles-in-fiction-bore-anyone-else/701939/15 "2014-10-20T20:50:41Z")
Like almost every other “stock” scene, they can be done well or poorly, either in books or movies. Similarly romance scenes, or the boy leaving his mother, or the villain torturing the spy, or… Battle scenes tend to be harder to make interesting because (by their very nature) they tend to big, with lots of people, and so not much involvement with individuals. I find the same with the villain destroys the city scenes, whether Godzilla or General Zod or just plain earthquakes. They used to be interesting, but they’ve been overused, and with CG anything can happen – and when anything can happen, nothing is interesting. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2014, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-the-battles-in-fiction-bore-anyone-else/701939/16 "2014-10-20T20:50:43Z")
It’s kind of contradictory. We, the readers, think we want them. If a book doesn’t have them, we feel cheated. But what we’re happiest with are fairly quick, minimal fight scenes. If you ever get a chance, read some of the Modesty Blaise comic strip compilations. The fight scenes will take up maybe a total of twelve frames – the equivalent of four daily strips – between the more conventional drama. The old TV show Combat had a fair amount of combat – but also a fair amount of drama. In written SF, Larry Niven and Poul Anderson, just as examples, had space battles…but they were usually brief and very concentrated. They don’t go for pages and pages, but just a few paragraphs. But…none at all? That’s going too far in the other direction. (Superhero fight scenes tend to be unsatisfying because they are rarely conclusive. Cable fights Juggernaut. Buildings get knocked down. Cable shouts, “This Ends, Now!” and, nope, it doesn’t. Juggernaut comes back later. Nothing gets settled. Instead, the single best Juggernaut sequence in Marvel Comics history was when he learned something from it, and tried to change over to being one of the good guys. That was brilliant writing.) ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2014, 3:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-the-battles-in-fiction-bore-anyone-else/701939/17 "2014-10-21T03:48:28Z")
I generally find fight scenes (one to one) utterly boring (especially since it’s not like we don’t know who’s going to win). I loathe action movies as a result. But there are exceptions. Battle scenes, on the other hand, enthrall me. Contrarily to the OP who doesn’t care about the anonymous, I find battles compelling, tragic, epic… The least interesting moment being when the hero save the day. In fact I’m often irritated that the hero(es) get all this attention. I sometimes catch myself thinking “what? You think you’re any better than the 5 000 guys you’re haranguing? They’re going to risk their life too, and they won’t get the girl/ the throne/whatever you’re after” or things like that. ---
**Author:** ![marshmallow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df705f/32.png) [@marshmallow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/marshmallow)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2014, 5:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-the-battles-in-fiction-bore-anyone-else/701939/18 "2014-10-21T05:13:50Z")
I’m a fan of well done action choreography. Action scenes usually have some of the best music. And you get to see both sides put their plans to work, then they fail, and then everyone has to think on the fly. That’s fun. Like saving the world, defending an entire city or country is too abstract. It’s better if it’s personalized down to a couple people the viewer can care about. ---
**Author:** ![squeegee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/squeegee/32/14537_2.png) [@squeegee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/squeegee)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2014, 5:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-the-battles-in-fiction-bore-anyone-else/701939/19 "2014-10-21T05:39:21Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > With the battle of the Black Gate There was a lot of preparation, some bandying of words with a messenger from Sauron, but that battle took place a paragraphs – battle starts, Gonder gets surrounded, they’re utterly screwed. Cut! to a very, very long sequence where Frodo + Gollum destroy the Ring. Back to the battle: Yay! We won! > [@](#): > > Helm’s Deep Okay, that was a long slog. I enjoyed it, but it got really goddamned involved, I can see someone not being patient with that. Duly noted. > [@](#): > > and, worst of all, the Battle of the Five Armies in _The Hobbit_, he did not do so well. Wait, what? I don’t have my copy of The Hobbit handy, but that battle was told (nearly) entirely in retrospect! Bilbo gets his head conked at the beginning of the battle, he passes out while hearing “the eagles are coming, the eagles are coming!” then we hear about the battle once Bilbo wakes up and the battle has been won. Am I missing something? ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2014, 1:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-the-battles-in-fiction-bore-anyone-else/701939/20 "2014-10-21T13:31:37Z")
> [@marshmallow](#): > > I’m a fan of well done action choreography. Action scenes usually have some of the best music. And you get to see both sides put their plans to work, then they fail, and then everyone has to think on the fly. That’s fun. I think to some degree it must be easier to choreograph and film a good action scene than to write one. I mean, the fight scene at the end of “Master and Commander: Far Side of the World” is a good one- very frenetic, fast, violent action like you’d expect in a ship to ship fight and boarding action. Yet reading the battle that inspired it in the book “Master and Commander” (_HMS Sophie_ vs the _Cacafuego_) didn’t really give me the same heart-pounding wide eyed feeling that the movie scene did. And yet, it was essentially the same thing. Maybe I have a deficiency of imagination, but I sort of suspect that it’s a consequence of a writer having to try and balance the level of description required to properly describe a fight scene with keeping the reading pace fast enough such that it’s exciting. I mean, he could describe _everything_, and it would be a horrible, boring slog that would take forty-five minutes to read, and it would actually describe 5 minutes of book time. Or he can write it such that it takes maybe 7 minutes to read, and leave out a lot of detail, which, if not done correctly, can make the battles seem a lot less eventful than what he was probably trying to describe. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-the-battles-in-fiction-bore-anyone-else/701939.md?page=2)