How to Structure a Fight Scene | Video Essay 

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I hope someday you talk about the japanese story structure Jo-Ha-Kyu, and how it is used in a lot of media such as anime, manga and games.

Do you watch 我就是演员?

God I've never joined a community so quickly

how you know you made it: a subreddit is made just for you

except, you know, marvel films.

That's exactly it. I skip most of the fight scenes in movies because its obvious that the hero will win. The villain may be taller and stronger or even agile, but hero always wins. Like Ipman has won every battle till now.

@@shashankpandey8346they still look good most of the point is that it looks cool because fuck the story when the choreography is amazing

Are you watching them in order? mid 80s - mid 90s Jackie Chan is the best so just wait until you get there!

BTW, if you're gonna watch the U.S. dub of DM2 (Legend of Drunken Master), just keep in mind that he's still using the Eight Drunken Immortals technique from DM1. They just changed his dialogue to not confuse Americans.

@@supersneaky113 No order at all! Couldn't find a definitive...source for all movies, so grabbing what I can, wherever I can, on various recommandations (just started with Police Story 1-3).

@@jp3813 No english dubs for me (I'm a Frenchie), and trying to go for original dubs as much as I can. Tried a few movies with french dubs for their "B-movie quality" appeal, but other than that, avoiding US dubs like the plague :p

@@JoshuaGuthrie I see. Well, let me chime in w/ some recommendations as well: Drunken Master 1&2 = Jackie's most iconic role, w/ the sequel featuring his best fight scenes Project A 1&2 = Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, & Charlie Chaplin's influence on JC in full effect Wheels on Meals & Dragons Forever = continuing JC's collaborations w/ fellow legends Sammo Hung & Yuen Biao Police Story 4&5 = you can end his longest-running franchise w/ these two Armour of God 1&2 = treasure hunting adventures that got flipped in the U.S. as Operation Condor 2&1 respectively Miracles & Twin Dragons = JC's homage to Frank Capra is one of his personal favorites, while the 2nd features him in a dual role City Hunter & Crime Story = one goofy live action anime & the other a serious gritty cop flick Rumble in the Bronx & Mr. Nice Guy = a couple of breakthroughs in the American market Who Am I & Gorgeous = his spin on the spy w/ amnesia concept & a crack at the rom-com subgenre

Exactly what I was thinking! The fights just felt like a random mess of CGI.

Which is why the fights in Bumblebee have so much weight. WE CARE.

Not to mention they are just sensory noise.

Pfft dont know about you, but seeing Prime whoop ALL The Decepticons including Megatron all at once in Revenge of the Fallen was freaking amazing.

@@UnifiedEntity Well those ones were pretty amazing, not all the fights bore me but usually the Prime ones are the best!

That is correct. It is used in Japanese, Chinese and Korean poetry and other forms of writing.

Every fight scene should be a mini story. Hello Future Me has several good videos on it.

These techniques are pretty much drilled into the minds of Hong Kongers who grow up watching fights be it in films or comics. We know this even subconsciously without studying it. Pity that Hollywood until now still cannot grasp this concept and their fights are boring as hell more often than not.

Luck bastard you. I still think it was overhyped ,underdelivered, and is a stretch to call good just like saying Darth Jar Jar is a thing even though the latter is more fun then the former ever will be. Though to be fair, his real last fight with Ashoka was what his fight in Rebels should've been (or at least half of that time) so I can't say he was shafted too much

@@alexanerose4820 I've never been a fan of any of the Star Wars movies. From Cheesy costumes, and bad acting, lame fight scenes. The only reason anyone would watch those is due to some emotional nostalgia tied to childhood.

@@alexanerose4820 Obi Wan is old at that time of the sotry, and it is reasonable for him to be weak just like any old person at the age of 80s, while Maul might have the better body physics due to his non-human race, the only way for Obi Wan to win is to kill maul with a swift strike and not prolongating the fight

@@richardmoskalyov8503 Canonically, Maul is 52 here and Obi-Wan is 55. But yeah, the fight shows that Obi-Wan, realizing the limitations of his age, has learned to fight smarter instead of harder, and Maul, suffering the effects of age and his cybernetic body parts and blinded his anger, loses, as he is still using the same tricks and tactics as when he first fought Obi-Wan when he was young.

@@richardmoskalyov8503 Yoda was old. Dooku was old. Sidious was old. Yet all their fights were longer than the Obi Wan vs Darth Maul rebels fight. Its a let down.

Not all of them in fact most of the action is quite static in rebels but man a few of the fight scenes especially the duels have emotional investment (given the series as a whole doesn’t work for me *personally* due to hijinks and incompetence on both the villains and heroes part, but it does have some special moments for me)

@@ravimanne8148 I agree, not all of them (but I still enjoyed the series as a whole). Really the two standouts for me are the Maul vs Kenobi fight and the Sabine vs Kanan duel. I think a lot of the shortcomings with the action scenes are similar issues I had in Clone Wars. If you've seen season 7 of CW and seen the big duel towards the end (which was mo-capped) you can see the difference between how visceral it is compared to most of the lightsaber stuff in CW and Rebels which does indeed feel rather static with hits that seem to lack weight and movements that seem unnatural.

@@NebirosKnight I honestly felt the duel in season 7 was pretty solid. Especially the emotional content and tension and how well the scene was set.

Maybe it's better that there wasn't a family member to explain it. A good movie can be enjoyed on different levels at different times in your life.

But imagine a kid whose able to understand deep meanings into works like this.. wouldnt be that amazing. How amazing would that be where theres a lot more who can appreciate art

From now on, I'll call him Zhang sifu.

Yeah, I don’t need film school, I have Accented Cinema to teach me

mumen rider fight, he wins the battle against the sea king, but threatens to devalue the other fighters who had stakes in the fight, so he decides to give up his victory. Mumen rider loses the fight but becomes a true hero in the eyes of the audience

The twist would just be Saitama deciding to punch then? So short aw.

Despite defeating his opponents, Saitama never wins. He never gets the excitement he seeks from battle.

That is the biggest advantage and weakness of One Punch Man. Saitama has literally no stakes, so the side characters must pick up the slack..... Or at least the challenge must not be internal. And not just "who's the strongest".

The only good/forgivable one is lotr3

@@Redditaurus kinda disagree, because those meaningless bright beams are mostly pointless, I mean there's no consequences whatsover from those spectacles. the only beams that actually matters are usually in scifi stories, like ID4 where the beam is literally WMD, however, I'd argue that the only death star beam that mattered was in rogue one, the others where they ompletely destroyed entire planets that we never really know about before are equally pointless as the pointless LOTR beam from minas morgul.

Oh absolutely. I didn't bring up fights with multiple twist because those scenes are hard to come by, and even harder to edit into a short video for demonstration, but like a good rollercoaster, a few more drop makes things even more exciting.

As a professor here in Japan, I run up against 起承転結 all the time. Nice to see its logic explained.