I am a thirtysomething woman and I have always found chase scenes and battle/fight scenes in movies to be deadly dull. I simply don’t care–they’re irritating interruptions in the interesting parts of the story.
Do you feel the same way?
No. I don’t feel the same way. I like chase and action scenes.
40-something woman, and I love well-done chases or fight scenes. The only films I bother to go see in theaters are the big-budget special effects extravaganzas that typically have huge battles. A quieter plot-driven film, I can wait to rent and see on a small screen at home.
Absolutely. I just start to tune out (or check the SDMB) and I’ll start paying attention when things wind down again and the plot resumes.
Michael Bay movies are excellent for treating my insomnia.
Also a 30something woman. I don’t think this was always true for me; in my 20s I was quite a fan of action scenes. Now, I truly have difficulty focusing on them for more than a few seconds, even when I want to. It’s like, run, run, BOOM!, run, punch…snore…oh! the movie’s starting again!
Usually has to do with how the scene is shot and edited. Often they cut with such quick camera changes that you can’t see any of the choreography and are just headache inducing but they can be well done and be exciting. Comedic fight scenes can be a blast, like a Jackie Chan one or the one from “Raising Arizona”.
Chase scenes are annoying. That was pretty much the most boring part of all Tony Jaa movies. Parkour chases are better.
Fight scenes can be boring if the same actors use the same styles all the time, e.g. Donnie Yen.
Sure, they’re usually mind-numbing. The point is you have to vary the pace somehow or you lose the audience anyway. Plus it’s a handy option as you start to build tension.
Take, for example, the much-heralded True Detective - a wonderful ‘escape’ sequence at the mid point; very difficult to come up with a cliche-free, completely engaging idea but they are out there …
Totally. I was really puzzled by the Transformers movies, as nothing at all happens, there’s just a lot of stuff blowing up. Then someone informed me that, apparently, stuff blowing up is what happens. This left me baffled, as I’d never thought about it like that before. Action sequences have always just been cues for me to run to the kitchen and grab a sandwich.
I do. Fight scenes are always boring – you usually know who wins (hint: the hero*) and the rest is just wasting screen time. And CGI only makes them even less interesting.
Chase scenes are usually boring, too. There are some exceptions, but, in general, it’s a good time to go out for popcorn.
*The probability of the hero winning approach 1, the nearer it is to the end of the movie.
I’m probably the only one on the planet who’d very happily go to see a superhero movie with no fight scenes. Generally they’re pretty dull - only the best are story-enhancing. (My personal mouth-frothing antifavorite is that one in the Avengers that serves absolutely no purpose but to indicate that all our superhero action figures are evenly matched. God that was stupid.)
My husband is very fond of Pearl Harbor. I think with a good editor, we could trim that movie down to an excellent 92 minutes. (Seriously, is that movie like 3 weeks long?!)
Well done (or amusingly badly done) fight scenes are something I will watch a move FOR. I have a basic understanding of fight mechanics, so a good fight scene is a joy. Many also have quite a bit so say about the characters. A good fight master can put quite a bit of characterization into the fighting style. If a movie is about swordsmen or navy seals, or whatever, part of the payoff is seeing them use the skills you have been hearing about. If you don’t want to see a fight, go see a romantic comedy. I want Jackie Chan to give me some good fighting, Gwyneth Paltrow, not so much.
On the other hand, chase scenes always bore me. Unless I really have to go visit the bathroom, then I know I safely can do so. They never advance the plot, the only actual suspense if how much incidental property damage. You can ALWAYS figure out the outcome. Early in the movie: bad guy will escape. Late in the move: it may end in a fight scene, but likely the bad guy will still escape so he can take the damsel in distress hostage and provoke the final confrontation.
Michael Bay BTW never delivers on either. Dreadful chases (Pearl Harbor turned what should have been a dogfight into one of these), or fights that look like someone threw spare parts into a blender, they can’t advance the plot, because there wasn’t one to begin with.
I like fight scenes and chase sequences. But they have to be well-done. Example the first - the elevator fight in Captain America 2. Example the second - Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry. The whole movie is a chase scene, and after seeing that movie back in the day, I’ve never relegated chase scenes to “bathroom time.”
Yes! I could even sleep through the one in Bullitt. 
(The only exception is the chase scene in What’s Up, Doc?, which is hilaious.)
Fighting scenes to advance the plot ( *Gallipoli, A Very Long Engagement * ) are fine, but LOTR-style endless hacking, ramming, lopping, catapulting, arrow shooting, dwarf tossing and beating down the castle keep bore the ever lovin’ crap out of me.
I enjoy well-done fight scenes–that is, scenes in which the combat is reasonably realistic given the capabilities of the combatants, and which we can see enough of to appreciate the choreography. I like a scene that captures the general chaos of a fight, combined with attention to specific actions, particular when someone gets creative. It’s also fun to play spot-the-technique when someone is using a fighting style I’m familiar with.
With chase scenes, oddly enough, I like pretty much the opposite. I prefer silly chase scenes, where the point seems to be producing as much bizarre chaos as possible. My favorite chase scenes are the ones full of little vignettes where the chase seems to intersect with other, unrelated stories, leaving confusion in its wake.
Yes, absolutely this. I want to be able to understand what’s happening, not see a lot of jumpy bullshit.
There are a couple of Stephen Chow films that I can watch over and over again (Kung Fu Hustle, Shaolin Soccer), John Woo’s HK films can be goddamned poetry in motion (Hard Boiled!), and of course Jackie Chan did fabulous work.
My first thought on seeing the title was “Do you like movies with gladiators?”
I like my chase scenes either plausible or over the top silly (like Dukes of Hazzard)
Battle/fight scenes can really break a movie/television show but rarely make it. One guy with a pistol takes out 10 thugs with Uzis- takes me right out of my suspension of disbelief. If a battle scene is well done (the naval battle in Ben-Hur, D-Day in Private Ryan), it adds a lot to the movie. But too often we see cliched drivel like Independence Day.
I don’t find those types of scenes annoying if they’re seamlessly woven into the plot. The Terminator and T2 are very good examples of this. When a cyborg killer is sent to assassinate someone, while another is sent to protect him/her, it leads to many fight and chase scenes that are solely products of their motivations. Nothing more.
The opposite of this would be any Expendables flick.
A good action scene will a.) Be well-shot, and b.) Have consequence.
Without both of those components it’s going to be boring. Examples of poorly-shot action scenes are, in my opinion, found in movies like the later Bourne movies, the Peter Jackson LOTR movies, and the pre-reboot Star Trek films. Examples of action scenes without consequence are, in my opinion, found in movies like Man of Steel and Suckerpunch, or in action scenes that aren’t attached to any sort of story (which is rare, but I guess there might be people who shoot action scenes for Youtube or something).
Examples of excellent action scenes can be found in movies like Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Titanic (James Cameron has a real knack for action), and the original Indiana Jones movies.
I don’t see many action movies so I don’t see many fight or chase scenes 
I did like the Mini chase scene in The Italian Job. I liked the foot chase scene at the beginning of Casino Royale.
I find myself liking martial arts or hand-to-hand fight scenes. I got a greater appreciation of them after I took martial arts myself.
I described The Avengers to someone a few weeks ago as “two long fight scenes with some stuff inbetween.”
I watched Despicable Me for the first time the other day and I kind of found it disappointing and lacking substance because there were two long fight/chase scenes in it. I was surprised that the minions were so popular with kids…it seemed kind of light on minions, heavy on action! To me.