I don’t like “gratuitous” chase scenes and fights and stuff… if the plot is such that these scenes are central to the story line, that’s different.
Formulaic utomobile chase scenes, especially with the obligatory “car goes up in the air, gradually rolling over on one side, then bursts into flame for no particular reason” footage, annoy me. It takes me OUT of the movie storyline.
Guy here, and I don’t like 99 percent of fight and chase scenes. I feel like the producers are saying, “We know you’re easily swayed by cheap, macho thrills, so here you go, little man.” Even a relatively good TV series like Law & Order had to have an obligatory foot chase in every episode with everyone going out of their way to “accidentally” knock over a fruit stand and crash into obviously empty cardboard boxes. The mundane formula, it burns…
We have been watching a lot of older movies lately, and I have noticed that chase scenes were the greatest thing ever in the 60s and 70s. It seems every film made during those decades had a chase scene, the comedies using increasingly absurd vehicles while the dramas had increasingly loud music.
I’m glad I’m not the only one.
Fight scenes can be good or bad. They’re bad if they’re just a bunch of half-second jump cuts where you can’t tell what’s going on. They’re also bad if they happen without context or for no reason, but I don’t usually go to see movies with those, so they’re not a problem for me. But as long as they make sense in context, and we can actually see the dudes fighting, they’re fine.
The same should in principle be true for chase scenes, that they can be good or bad, but I’m having a hard time coming up with any examples of good chase scenes.
I find almost all chase scenes to be incredibly dull. Battle scenes are usually decent to quite good. --Also a 30-something woman.
(There’s a special place in hell for most sound editors: when the sound is jacked all the way up for action/chase scenes & the dialogue is nearly drowned out the rest of the time.)
The only action scenes I really care for are the ones with real people doing amazing martial arts, & none of that wire crap either.
I always liked Jackie Chan movies because of this. Bonus for the outtakes during the ending credits too.
Otherwise I think most chase scenes need to be done in a montage or comic book style format highlighting the best takes.
I don’t care for them and I largely skip them in books. Since I like to read space opera, sometimes I just pass over whole pages of material. Nothing is more boring than reading Tony kicked out, leading with the steel tipped toes of his boots and narrowly missed David’s shin. Turning, David throws a right that rocked Tony back…
Sorry, I now just want to skip to the ending of this post.
There needs be a law that all movie chase scenes must be accompanied by Yakety Sax. Then I’ll start watching them.
I agree with this. Good movies have action scenes that are natural conclusions of what’s happened before with the plot, and the results of which affect what comes later in the plot. Bad movies seem to start with a requirement that there be an action scene every X number of minutes, and fit one in whether it’s natural or not.
This makes me curious, what do you envision a superhero movie with no fight scenes to be like? I could completely understand not liking superhero movies, but it seems like fight scenes are a part of the deal, and there could be more or fewer fight scenes of better or lesser quality, but I would expect them to be there. I would think a superhero movie without the superhero fighting someone and winning isn’t a superhero movie anymore.
Ha! These are exactly the movies I was thinking of when I started the thread.
Answering for myself, what I like about superhero movies are the origin stories and the original adjustment into the superhero lifestyle. This is probably why I particularly liked the Toby Maguire Spider Man movies, but I thought the first Iron Man was really great too (no comment on the sequels, I just haven’t seen them).
The fighting is always the boring part! A Superman movie, for example, should be about responsibility, and/or alienation, and/or the tough ethical choices you have to make when you’re the biggest kid on the playground. Sure, you can play that out through a fight scene, but you don’t have to, and I’d definitely suggest that the less fighting you do the bigger impact it will have.
Somebody mentioned the elevator fight in Captain America 2 - great example of a scene that served to further the plot and was as much about what was happening with the characters as it was about punchin’ dudes. That one you can keep. The Avengers scene where Cap fights Iron Man fights Thor was about… what again?
Like any other movie. There’s a lot more ways to resist an antagonist than just punching him really hard. Even in the genre they tend to portray the hero discrediting his philosophy or lowering his status in the world at large somehow.
Might just be me, but for testosterone fueled action scenes alone I feel like the animated super hero stuff is way better than the live action movies. Maybe because my suspension of disbelief isn’t shattered when it’s animated and they can pull off more ridiculous things without the budget that rivals the GDP of small tropical nations.
So I guess you didn’t care for stuff like Terminator, Aliens, Jurassic Park, The Matrix, any kung fu movie ever, etc.?
I’ll similarly live up to my gender stereotype by noting that in spectacle movies the “interesting part” is the spectacle. They don’t generally veer away from anything worthwhile, do they? I’d be interested in examples.
Those thrilling period pieces with elaborately costumed women gossiping about the Duke of Edinburgh might serve as a sort of fantasy escapism, but couldn’t they be improved with a couple tons of TNT and an out of control semi-truck or a crashed helicopter? Wouldn’t My Dinner with Andre be even better if they just dropped the disapproving glances and let loose with a couple of punches?
In all seriousness though, one of the best parts about action scenes is when they have cool music that syncs up with the action. Also, less is more works more often than not, so a not overly over the top scene can still carry a lot of energy. One of my favorite action scenes from Breaking Bad is the train robbery. Breaking it down, it’s just some dudes climbing around a train and manipulating some tools. But it’s shot so well and there’s a nice beat so the tension is kept sky high for several minutes straight. Another good one is when Walt dabbles in amateur car bombing.
Yeah, the Cap/IM/Thor fight was just pure “Who would win?” nerd fanservice. But it was brief enough to not drag, and also had a bit of character exposition (Thor acting first and thinking later, Stark being a jerk just for the heck of it, and Rogers trying to keep the peace).
What’s with the tone of voice implying that there’s something impossible about that? I’m a thirtysomething guy, and I don’t like any of those. (Well, except for Jurassic Park, obviously, it has dinosaurs. Everything’s better with dinosaurs. Actually… what if you had dinosaurs *and *Yakety Sax… OK, now we’re talking.)
I’m adding one more to this: C.) Be a realistic struggle for the protagonist. Fight scenes where the good guy wins just because he’s a better fighter are boring. Chase scenes where the good guys escape just because they are faster are boring. I want the hero to use cunning and skill.
For example, in the Hobbit, there’s a chase scene where they’re out in the open running from goblins on wolf creatures. They can’t just run away because they’ll get run down. So they have to use stealth and run between various rock formations to escape. It’s a tense, well done scene. Compare that to later on in the movie during the 30 minute chase sequence which is basically everyone staying ahead of the goblins and whenever one comes close slash it with a sword. Total snoozefest. At no point am I worried about them escaping.
The exception to this is when you need to show the hero easily dispatching someone the show how good they are. Iron Man needs to come in and take out a bunch of terrorists and a tank without breaking a sweat, because when he struggles against someone later it shows what a threat they are.
Change 30 to 40 and agree completely. I feel like I should bring a book to action movies - just read a little bit while all the chasing and fighting is going on, then back to the movie.
Totally agreed.
Not to mention how when you’re someone like Superman, maybe you should consider not ruining entire towns and cities with your fighting. That was a big annoyance for me watching the last Superman movie - holy shit, you guys have destroyed about a billion dollars worth of property with your snits!
The guys over at Red Letter Media noted that the latest Superman movie wasn’t really a superhero movie at all, it was an alien invasion / disaster movie.
I will admit that the best chase and action scene I’ve ever seen is in one of those “thrilling period pieces with elaborately costumed women.” The second poetry duel - the one that involves actual swords - in Dangerous Beauty is breathtakingly staged and filmed and is completely integral to the plot. A+
Sadly, I can’t find it on YouTube.
Many of the action scenes in *Firefly *were pretty darn good, too. Mostly because they didn’t always follow the formula; never being quite sure if our Big Damn Hero was going to prevail with a single well placed shot or have his ear cut off did encourage me to pay attention.
It’s been a while since I’ve seen them, but I’m pretty sure that Tobey Maguire’s Spider Man fought the Green Goblin and Doctor Octopus, and that Iron Man fought Jeff Bridge’s character. There’s a difference between a movie with well-done fight scenes that aren’t too long, and a movie with no fight scenes.
Do you have any specific movie in mind? Maybe I’m just not imaginative enough, because I can’t imagine a superhero movie without some fight scenes. Seems like most action and thriller movies have fight scenes, except for disaster movies and some heist movies.
I’m not saying that fight scenes are the end-all be-all of movies. I would definitely go to see a superhero movie that had no fight scenes if word-of-mouth and reviews were good. It’s just hard for me to imagine a movie like that, and also harder to imagine it getting made.
You could do it in a world where the superhero is the first metahuman, and an antagonist doesn’t conveniently arise for him at the same time. The “action” would be taken up by fights so lopsided they don’t even count (think Spider-man webbing up some random mugger), and by the hero battling literal forces of nature. Can Superman stop a volcano from erupting? Should he even try, or should he devote all of his efforts to evacuating the city in the valley below? Can he get all the people out in time? How does he deal with it if he can’t? What if someone doesn’t want to evacuate? There’s plenty of room for drama, there.
Or maybe you do have a villain, but fighting them isn’t the way to beat them. Let’s say you’ve got the Mafia. Sure, a superhero can beat up the Godfather, but what good is that going to do? What you really need to do is to find evidence that will incriminate him, and do it in such a way that it’ll stand up in court.