The Rise of Gun Fu | Video Essay 

I was gonna say Equilibrium was the epitome of Gun-Fu and it was used sooo well in that movie. Even the story with the family and kid not turning him in was good in its own right.

I think they nailed it by adding the explanation to it... being a martial art form based on efficiency for guns in close quarters and multiple targets, considering science, angles and shit. It's hard to forget that part. In most other films the hero just did gun-fu... because, no explanation, no training to get there.

The gunkata was fantastic, but I also really enjoyed the story of a world that is suppressing emotion through dictatorship and how a small rag tag bunch are trying to preserve their culture which is a source of emotion for them.

Gun kata, like in karate. loved that film.

Nothing else like it

lmao

Frankly, I like the middle ground some games propose of guns being fired from a distance and used as clubs when things get up close and personal.

When characters can move at super human speed, shooting at a distance is not as much of an advantage as you think it is.

No bullets wasted.

@@rickrollerdude pew pew bonk

Surely you used the word 'nobody' as an exaggeration .😶

i haven't seen a Wick film all the way through and the way they pre-choreograph and pre-vis a lot of gun actions scenes. the rythym is noticeably different to me anyway

Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure

@@BlandBloke Yes.

He was known _way_ before John Wick. Ever heard of the cult classic, indie movie, "The Matrix" before? /s /s

I hit like, then I watch it.

@@IamDeathIncarnate1337 Exactly, every Accented Cinema video is more killer than John Wick, so you gotta make sure they all gain proper support.

Chow Yun-Fat is the king of gun fu.

​@@RazorEdge2006 and John Wick polish it to perfection haha

I LOVE Underworld! But I always thought that was because of my love of werewolves and vampires. I can’t tell if it was objectively good.

@@Haannibal777 first movie is OK. 2nd (or was it the 3rd?) movie tho was better. it has sex! XD

A himbo in distress saved by a goth badass My dream honestly Fuck i love underworld

Underworld 2 is a great movie imo. The first, not so much. Even the prequel is better. Anything beyond that is garbage.

lol ok

isn't Hollywood full of liberals though, i kid btw

Dude look at taran who trained keanu he shows lots of actors how to shoot

Helped, yes

Lols. i suggest you watch The Yellow Sea (Korean movie) and see how gun control looks like. (That's a joke btw, but I recommend that movie. And I'm not saying people having "easy" access to guns is OK.)

I think US gun culture starts shaping it around John Wick. Prior to that, no one involved in US gun culture wanted anything to do with gun-fu. Before that they wanted nothing to do with gun-fu, preferring to work on more grounded stuff instead like Heat. I'm reminded of the story about how the one firearms advisor on the set of the Matrix begged the Wachowskis not to have Smith use the Desert Eagle because it would come off as extraordinarily stupid to anyone who'd actually ever fired a Desert Eagle (they're not very practical nor are they very good) however they insisted because "it's the cool big pistol from Commando and Metal Gear Solid"

There are plenty enough iconic examples of the contrary for that generalization to be moot. We all know the likes of Excalbur and I doubt that Bruce Lee's nunchucks ever had names.

"Snake, try to remember the basics of CQC"

Also, engravings give no tactical advantage whatsoever

Metal Gear Solid alone should make a movie franchise

@@davidchiho there's one movie in the works with Oscar Isaac

@@whoelsebutmeofcoursei My God, it's a guaranteed flop, lol, movies barely able to translate video games with basic story into cinema, now they're trying to make movies from Kojima games? Lol.

Thats actually the perfect description!

rip Bradley Allan ;(

Yeah mang. Gone 2 soon after successful Shang Chi.

John wick and Collateral? It's a preference thing. Some audience likes the calm and collective characters others prefer the passionate and emotional ones

I think there's much irony in which Christian Bale's character in Equilibrium (the movie depicted) is a criminal guilty of feeling emotions.

FPJ unsung hero

Same, slow-motion shoot outs are Peckinpah's trademark

Good point, The Wild Bunch went on to influence so many other films.

Anybody know directors that have equally beautiful and surprising styles (of editing a scene) as these 2? Showing a scene from many different angles with different speeds (of slomo), with great rhythm, employing acceleration and deceleration masterfully while keeping the flow of visual information clear and recognizable is something nobody really does so well. Speed ramps have become a cliche of modern action movies, so much so that they have become boring, slow motion in general is either overused, underused or wrongly used by directors. Anticipating the choice of edits of the majority of directors has become so much of a routine to me that nothing really surprises me anymore. Don't telegraph your next move in advance - surprise me you mofos! Of course this kind of fast editing of dynamic scenes is not the only thing one can do, it is not suited for every director or movie or scene, but I feel many directors are way to conventional and they completely ignore the artistic possibility of editing in a specific way. Editing is VERY important. Most treat this way of artistic expression as an necessity rather a possibility, sticking to known formulas and bore me to death with their lack of creativity. Pekinpah and Woo are expressive like Wagner and Beethoven, everybody else is like bad minimal Techno.

Bayonetta, Vanquish, Max Payne... These are Gun Fu games

Max Payne and Hotline Miami too

Stranglehold :)

Devil may cry

TBH I really hate Equilibrium. Always felt like it was cheap, sterile, noncreative and boring rip-off of better dystopian movies (or novels). Also - Gun Kata feels really dumb. It looks so unefficient... I believe the better you are at Gun Kata, the less succeful figher/shooter you should be. It looks like it shouldn't work. Sorry for this rant; I had to. Nothing against you liking this movie :)

​@@skeezaworkan Well.. It IS a dumb idea, but so are most ways of portraying gunfights, up to and including gun-fu. Hell, gun kata at least pretends to follow the laws of physics (blatant lies, but they at least bother to come up with a lie) gun-fu just outright tosses logic out of the window. The funny thing is, there is this game called double action, that pretty much is a gun-fu simulator, however, it being a pvp shooter, it needs to keep track of just who the hell is winning, right? Well, lo and behold, the game more or less just ignores how many players you killed. Why? Well, if you try to play it, you will notice that it is pretty much impossible to hit jackshit while running around just pointing your guns in the general direction you are looking at, and since playing the game like a traditional shooter in order to have steady aim wouldn't be a very gun-fu thing to do, the game instead gives you a score based on how many "stylish" things you did. Like, trying to make gun-fu into something you can do in a videogame requires for the game to disregard not only logic, but even videogame-logic. Like gun-fu is just THAT nonsensical Its still fun and exciting, though. Thank you for reading my blog post LOL XD

@@skeezaworkan haha it okey. The story might be cliche but the action is satisfaying.

@@skeezaworkan It's true that gun kata is too unrealistic and not practical, it might also looks dumb as well. But at least it looks COOL XD, and that's all about gun kata.

There's this neural network training exercise in which two humanoid figures controlled by two ai's are supposed to stop the other one from moving. After enough exercises, the system starts to exploit the opponent's ai by forcing it to break down just by observing the opponent. In my headcanon, Gun Kata was supposed to do something similar to the untrained human mind. Equilibrium is my favorite movie dystopia. I think it's a lot closer to Zamyatin's We than to 1984, which came out earlier and inspired most of the genre, including 1984. Equilibrium takes a very similar concept but adds to it by giving the characters agency, and a tool to enforce that change in form of the main character's deadly capabilities. It just fits the cinematic medium a lot better, since dystopian books are usually more about the character's perception of the outside pressure. Even in something like Hunger Games, the action or the choices matter a lot less than the character's thoughts. Christian Bale shows it brilliantly through his action, he is perfect in this role, but after processing those feelings his character gets to choose not to participate in the oppression, by turning himself on it with everything that it gave him. The state gets destroyed by its own greatest weapon. Recent Fahrenheit 451 adaptation tried to do something similar, and the way it failed is enough to show how much Equilibrium has succeeded.

That's exactly my thought - having actors who practice endlessly and get very, very good is just as important as having a director and choreographer with a strong vision. Accented Cinema mentioned previously just how skilled Beijing Opera actors were, and I think it still applies

Booooo I need a Fireteam asap This comment needs to shot down ; )

The video shots its points directly at our heads.

Kungfu Panda 4 : Gun-Po.

Yes! It's a kinda silly but overwhelmingly stylish movie, and the action is stylized to the nth degree. It's a very fun romp, and a great performance from Christian Bale AND Sean Bean. If you like Gun-Fu, it's a must-watch. You'll see so many things that became blueprints for (admittedly often better) movies that have come out since.

Go watch it then

Spoilers: Those are not literal guns, they're literal katanas -- made to look like guns.. and the bullets are actually shurikens! =)

Metal Gear is a better example of gun fu imo

Max payne series

If I remember correctly and it has been awhile since I learned information about Woo. He was a dance choreographer before directing films, and wanted his gun fights to be like dance choreography and that is how his style came about.

@@Dlatest His style is Peckinpah all the way down to the slowmo.

The answer is both and more. He wasn't a choreographer. He loved dancing, acting, and he was inspired by Peckinpah, Gene Kelly and Hollywood musicals, Truffaut, Scorsese, Fellini, Kung Fu, chivalry, his Christian values..

@@kimberleywoo5658 add Melville too

I mean, it sure as shit wouldn't ever happen in my country, not like that, at least. But yes, Collateral was excellent at contrasting two incredibly conflicting things; a realistic night environment, with a violent, almost surreal efficiency for actual murder.

It felt realistic, because it's called "Drawing and Shooting from Retention", and it's becoming more commonly taught this way. Granted Collateral was filmed nearly 20 years ago, and Tom Cruise had spent a ton of time being taught by 2 British ex-SAS Special Forces guys, so him nailing it in that scene was as legit as it comes. Also very useful IRL, not that anyone should seek or hope to encounter a situation like that. Bonus: Ex-Delta Force Operator Larry Vickers breaks the scene down in real world application in this video he made ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-fEZeb5lKPkk.html

AMEN!

It's a movie that tried so hard to cash in on The Matrix and tried so hard to be cool that it's laughable for sure

John Wick is based on books tho. The guy where wrote the books hates Reeves as the Character because Wick isn't a pretty boy in the books.

Gunman version of Expendable seem like a great idea.