There are some actions sequences or chases that don’t work for me. As others have said, if it serves the story, it works. If it’s just to push some action into the movie, then it probably won’t work for me.
Since I like Avengers, although I’m not a comic fan boy of them, I guess I quoted the above to talk about it. Since I think that action needs to serve the story, I think that scene did so. The Avengers is about bringing together a lot of alpha people, male and female, and seeing if they can get past their egos and work together. Further, you have “vanilla” humans, augmented humans and aliens, so you need to know, imo, how they stack up against each other. It’s also about them trying to figure out the hierarchy among themselves and trying to be dominant but learning when to let go of that.
For me, that scene shows that Iron Man can stand up to Asgardians. Therefore, later, when he attacks the invading army himself, no one is surprised that he does a lot of damage to them but doesn’t get them all. It’s like the previous fight showing that Cap’n America might not do well but he will fight an Asgardian if he needs to.
Having said that, yes, the final fight was probably long for what needed to be done at that point in the story but I think the early ones were needed. However, I liked it, as I said, so I will work to explain it, if only to myself.
That’s the Hollywood mentality. But take a look at just about every live-action superhero TV show ever made: The Adventures of Superman, The Incredible Hulk, Wonder Woman, Superboy, The Flash, Lois and Clark…
With the exception of Batman, which was done as a comedy, fight scenes have been a minimal part of every TV series based on a superhero comic. They’re there, but they never last long, and are often over in less than a minute. Like many of the comics themselves, the emphasis is on story and character, with just enough action to keep the visuals moving. The movie studios haven’t caught on to that yet, and haven’t yet separated the superhero formula from the disaster movie formula in their heads.
True, though that’s also partly due to differences in the medium. Character development takes time, and you can do a lot more of it in an hour-a-week series than you can in a two-hour movie.
Fights cost large amounts of money and take a long time to film. Television shows have much smaller budgets and need to crank out an hour a week. If they were cheap and quick television shows would have alot more fights.
Guy here, I like a good chase scene or fight scene, especially if there’s some good CGI of the gee-whiz sort like the final battle scene in The Avengers movie. That said, I totally understand the objections of some of the commenters here about them, they are often just mediocre and do nothing to advance the story. I know this because I like a good sex scene too, and a long and predictable sex scene can be JUST as much of a hindrance to the story. Case in point: “Warrior Queen,” 80s big hair sword and sandal movie where most of the sex scenes were part of a tour of a bordello by a slavegirl who was slated to be working there. Bundling them all together like that just stopped the movie cold, not that it was any good in the first place, but damn, in a very boring movie, these long, repetitive, badly done sex scenes went beyond boring.
And that’s an apt description of the fight scenes in a lot of martial arts movies, too.
I’d say in movies as well as television the key is to keep the fights, the chases and the sex scenes brief and intense, so they deliver the hormone-generating thrills that such scenes are supposed to but don’t slow up the plot. Make them imaginative and visually powerful too, but most directors are mediocre and can’t manage that.
That said, a brief, intense fight scene, chase scene or sex scene REALLY adds some oomph to a movie. The long, drawn out ones … not so much.
I agree. I didn’t say that any fight scene at all will ruin a movie for me, but the fight scenes in those movies didn’t bug me. They were well filmed, not very long, and buried in a lot of quality storytelling.
For me chase scenes have to be clever and a little over the top. The best chase scene I’ve scene in years was in Date Night, a movie with Tina Fey and Steve Carell. It was a surprisingly well choreographed car chase, for a comedy.
The only fight scenes I hate now are set-piece battles. They are a tired, lazy cliché; there was even one in the third batman movie.
The one that finally ruined them for me was in Noah, it was so forced and boring, it seemed the producers hired Ridley Scott to give Darren Aronofsky wedgies until he did his way.
That’s part of what drives me a little crazy about modern movies; they make these overblown budget films with billions of dollars worth of special effects of fighting, blowing shit up, and chasing, without checking in with the audience to see if we actually want endless, expensive scenes of fighting, blowing shit up, and chasing. I don’t know what demographic they’re aiming these movies at (I suspect it’s teenage boys), but they seem to have overlooked that us 30 and 40 somethings have money and time, and more sophisticated tastes in movies.
That’s true, but IMHO it’s also backwards thinking on the studios’ part. The TV shows have a smaller budget, so they have fewer fight scenes and better stories. Movies have big budgets, but instead of spending it on better stories, they blow it on more fight scenes.
Watch Panic in the Sky. One of the most acclaimed episodes of The Adventures of Superman, it was retold twice in the comics and again on TV as an episode of Lois and Clark. It’s exciting and suspenseful, and shows good character development for a 30 minute episode. the special effects are cheap but effective. I would see a movie based on this story. And yet, there’s not a single villain or fight scene in it.
One especially good chase scene was in the Teen Titans animated series (“Episode 257–494”–and yes, “Episode” is part of the episode title). The villain Control Freak, who is a move and TV geek, managed to transport (or translate) himself into the shows-within-the-show, and we see the Titans follow him in, pursuing him through shows they’ve previously been shown watching–many of which are parodies of real shows and movies. Obviously, this provides opportunities for all sorts of gags, fourth-wall breaks, and other hijinks, which are great fodder for a chase scene.
It did other things, too, though. First, it provided character development in both the pursuer and the pursued, in the encyclopedic knowledge of entertainment possessed by both Control Freak and Beast Boy. Second, it established the rules of a new setting: a set of pocket universes containing the TV shows. It demonstrates that within the setting, the shows and their rules are real, in ways both obvious (real monsters) and subtle (characters being unconsciously compelled to rhyme when passing through a children’s show). This information is key, because the entire chase is effectively setting up the final confrontation, which is big fight scene, but one that’s not resolved by force. Instead, it comes down to a nerd fight between two masters of useless trivia using their knowledge to manipulate the rules of an alternate reality.
This chase hits all the buttons: it’s funny, it strengthens characterizations, and it furthers the plot in a key way.
I have watched Arrow. Aside from the Easter eggs thrown in for us comic book fans, I find it pretty boring. Same goes for Smallville. I’m looking forward to The Flash in the fall, but I probably shouldn’t be. He’s one of my favorite characters, so I’m either going to love it or hate it.
Chase scenes can be fun. Action/fight scenes, well they don’t amuse me that much.
Either one of these can be too long. I like chase scenes that have some fun new element or twist, which of course keeps getting harder and harder to do.
I’ve neglected to mention that one of my favorite current shows is Person of Interest. It *is *heavy on the fight scenes, but they’re usually brief and secondary to (as well as essential to) the plot. Plus, there’s usually entertaining dialogue going on during the fighting.
I rarely like chase scenes. In the middle of the extended chase of Batman Begins, I got up, went to the bathroom, and stopped by the concession stand to get a drink, I was so boired.
Battle & fight scenes are iffy. I enjoy the battles in Lord of the Rings, but space battles generally make me yawn.
I lurve a good space battle. The space battle that starts “Attack of the Clones” ((IIRC) is like porn to me, I watch that scene alone for its own sake.
Same with Kong’s battle with three T-Rexes in the Peter Jackson “King Kong.” So nice! Playing with giant bugs in the muck in the same movie … not so much.
Well choreographed fights are highly enjoyable. 300 was shitty movie wrapped around some perfect fight scenes. Same for the star wars sequels. Chase scenes don’t really do much for me, the only one i remember enjoying is from the second matrix movie.