Slate’s ‘evolution of the fight scene’

Slate writer Dennis Lim has put together an interesting article with video clips that looks at the evolution of screen fighting, mostly in Hollywood but with references to Hong Kong and Korean action. The gist of this piece is that the movie fight scene has evolved from clearly defined sets of action to incoherent chaos. THE DARK KNIGHT and the BOURNE films are cited as examples of how modern Hollywood filmmakers interpret physical conflict. Lim could have easily included THE MUMMY: TOMB OF THE DRAGON EMPEROR in this club as well.

Lim partially lets these modern filmmakers off the hook by suggesting the slurred fighting in today’s action films is a reflection of the acceleration of Hollywood movies in general through trends set by MTV. There is a measure of truth to this but my theory is that these filmmakers simply do not know how to shoot and cut action. If I’m wrong, why else – with the exception of the BOURNE films – do they feel the need to obscure, dilute and muffle their fight sequences in a way that is unintentionally confusing and disorienting to the audience?

The art of pacing, mounting tension and character development through action seems to be lost on these filmmakers. It’s as if they are desperately trying to capture the excitement of quality Hong Kong action but without understanding the film language. The results seen in THE DARK KNIGHT and THE MUMMY: TOMB OF THE DRAGON EMPEROR, as well as some of Hong Kong’s newer films from the likes of Daniel Lee is self evident.

The shame is that the chaotic fight work in these films are drowned in just enough superficial eye candy to appease mainstream audiences who may not even be aware of how low the standards of the action sequence they’re watching are. Audiences do recognize quality fight presentation when it is shown to them. This is evident from the success of films like OLD BOY and THE MATRIX.

Lim uses the word evolution when describing the changing trends in fight scene presentation. I’ll be less diplomatic. I call it devolution, the equivalent of throwing poo on canvas, hanging it at the Met and calling it art. Untrained monkeys could produce the same results.