I’ve been hankerin’ lately for good movie fight scenes. I saw a top ten list the other day and was not only reminded of a few that I had seen before (and sought out the full versions of them), but there were a few on the list I had never seen before (due to never having seen the movie they were in yet/before) and some were really good.
So here’s a bit of a good collection to start the thread off…I thought these all were really good. WARNING: MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS.
Bring it on. Martial art fights, fantasy fights, sword fights, fistfights, people-on-obvious-wires fights. Even if it doesn’t even involve fighting, but is just a big action scene ONE SIDE VS ANOTHER, it’s fine.
Blazing Saddles
Starts in the fake Rock Ridge, breaks through the wall into the dance number rehearsal and into the cafeteria then to the streets.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t find the whole thing in one video.
Even though most people seem to hate the Bond film Die Another Day, I love it, for various reasons. One of these is the escalating sword fight that starts with sabers and seems to run through just about every type of sword.
One sword fight scene that is particularly notable is the final sword fight scene in Akira Kurasawa’s Rashomon. As most Dopers doubtless know, this is the classic story of how different people relate the same event in multiple ways. The sword fight between the thief, played by Toshiro Mifune, and the Husband , in previous retellings has them as masters of the blade, but the last version, related by the woodcutter, shows an amazingly unheroic and not very impressive battle:
Part of this video is River’s final fight versus the Reavers in Serenity.
In the movie, the fight sequence was cut up into a bunch of bits and interspersed with shots of Mal’s fight scene with The Operative. The creator of the video edited them back together into one big fight sequence, and when they filmed it, there was a steady-cam operator in the middle of the fight with River, moving around so he could always have the focus on her and not have bunch of Reavers between River and the camera.
Robert Wagner and James Mason really go at it. You can hear the actual ringing of the swords when they hit each other and the panting of the effort they’re making.
No special effects nonsense in this fight. And no music. Just two guys trying to kill each other.