MovieChat Forums > Saat po long 2 (2016) Discussion > How much slow motion and/or wirework is ...

How much slow motion and/or wirework is used?


I saw the preview for this a while ago, and it looked great until the very end of it, when the unbearable gravity-defying absurdity that ruins nearly all of the Hong Kong films I've seen in the last 15 years suddenly showed up, making me both angry & nauseous. The same clumsy tricks they use in Hollywood to make unathletic thespians into "masters". The kind of boring crap that made me refuse to watch "The Grandmaster" and countless others.

Please tell me these tricks are only for that one wretched scene and not the whole film.

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You have watched too few Hong Kong films.
And do you even know who is the action director of "The Grandmaster"?
Your ignorance makes me both angry&nauseous too.

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I have watched tons of Hong Kong films. If you like artisanal slow motion fight scenes with tons of wires, more power to you. I do not. Regardless of who the action director of "The Grandmaster" was, I hated every fight in that movie. Yes, that is just my opinion.

Compare '80s & '90s Hong Kong action scenes to ones that have come out in the last 10-15 years and I don't think anyone could say with a straight face that they're better now. I understand that the there are no longer young & eager Jackie Chans & Sammo Hungs to do the stunt-fights of yesteryear, but Tony Jaa and Wu Jing don't need slow motion and wirework to make their abilities look more realistic. That is why it makes me nauseous to see stuff like that used in a film that stars the very talented likes of them.

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so,just out of curiousity what martial arts film do you consider the best til this day?
without the wire-fu and springboard effects/slow-mo you mention?

you do know that jackie and sammo used them too back in the day,lots of slow-mo and springboards back then not so much wires though, i think all the kung fu movies i watched as a kid had some slow-mo scenes in them even bruce lees films,watch the young master or dragon lord,drunken master to mention a few oldies
watch my stunts by jackie and they also speeded up the movies fights much more often then than now, some of the great 90s films i loved was once upon series, iron monkey, fong sai yuk, tai chi master and such, they all had a lot of wirework in them but then again its a matter of taste,some people just want to focus on the fights,i love the chinese culture and wu xia fantasy so i really enjoy the stories in these films wires or not,i dont only look for good fight scenes,legendary assasin with wu jing does not have a lot of wirework and ip man is also pretty straight on,ong bak had lots of slow-mo and 10 angles for each movement,but this is for entertainment purpose,if i wanna see a realistic fight i watch a ufc match,i just think its hard to make martial arts films today without these effects it has evolved into what it is today and sadly i think you are missing a hell of a movie if you dont watch spl 2, i did not really see either wu jing or tony jaa using wires maybe a springboard or so, on the other hand they used it quite a bit for the bad guy at the end strong perfomance as allways by wu jing and tony jaa a solid 8 for me.

Peace

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I don't mind *some* wires, slo-mo, etc., I just don't like it when otherwise grounded movies resort to gravity-defying nonsense. It seems like some of the effects take more precedence than the fighters/fights themselves. If it's a fantasy Wuxia movie like "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", or Jet Li's "Kung Fu Cult Master" (aka "Lord of the Wu Tang") then I don't mind folks flying through the air.

I don't want fight scenes in movies to be either completely realistic or completely absurd. Maybe somewhere in the middle.

My favorite fights of all time probably belong to Jackie Chan in films like "Drunken Master II", "Wheels on Meals", and many more. But I also loved 2006's "Fatal Contact", where some wires were definitely used, but they weren't used to ridiculous lengths. I actually thought that "Legendary Assassin" was ruined by too much wire use. Also, a move like "Ip Man 2" had decent fights, but then had those 3 totally ludicrous table-top fights with the masters.

Films since 2000 that contain fight scenes that I love, even though some fights contain elements that I don't:

S.P.L.
Fatal Contact
The Protector
The Raid (almost no slow motion at all)
The Raid 2
Fearless (too many wires but still good fights)
Ip Man
Contour (independent cheapie from San Francisco's the Stunt People)
Never Back Down 2 (how movie-MMA should be done)
Flashpoint (how movie-MMA should be done)
Man of Tai Chi (not great but generally filmed competently)
Blood & Bone
The Legend is Born: Ip Man
Undisputed 2 & 3
The Girl From the Naked Eye
Merantau
Ninja: Shadow of a Tear
Bangkok Knockout (most of the fights anyway)
Ong Bak

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I get your point, and i agree with you,drunken master II fight with jackies real life bodyguard ken lo epic fight! and bangkok knockout was insane,the raid 1,2 is a favorite of mine and undisputed 1+2 is by far the best "western made" martial arts movies i ever saw
ip man 2 i dont really understand why Darren Shahlavi r.i.p (2015) was used as a boxer, i mean this guy was on par with scott adkins,great fighter and awesome kicks he didnt get to show off any of it, sadly he is gone now,but it would have been a better end fight i.m.o.
for those who have not seen Darren in action i recommend looking up tai chi II with Wu jing (1996)
A film with no wires as i recall it,old movie with Donnie
(correct me if i am wrong its been a while since i saw it)
drunken tai chi, highly recommended (1984)

contour is the only movie on your list i havent seen
i will try to find it.
it got a good rating

btw did you like warrior (2011)?

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I still haven't seen "Warrior". Though I like MMA I typically stay away from MMA movies, unless I'm made aware of good fights or the involvement of specific choreographers/stunt coordinators whose work I appreciate, like Larnell Stovall. "Warrior" didn't look bad from the previews and I will eventually see it, but am in no rush. I've sat through some pretty dreadful MMA films, like "The Philly Kid" or what ever cruddy cagefighting drama Hector Echavarria most recently worked on. Then again, I've sat through some pretty awful kickboxing (my preferred style of movie fighting) films, too.

"Contour" is a very cheap film. It looks & feels like a silly film made for a college project that just happens to have jaw-dropping fights in it. They make real contact and are fast and hard. There are several capable members of the Stunt People but actors Eric Jacobus & Dennis Ruel have legitimate acting chops to accompany their moves and should have made it bigger by now. I'm sure you can watch all the fights from "Contour" on youtube, plus any number of their short films, which are plentiful. Check out one of their latest 2-part shorts, "Rope-A-Dope".

I've never seen "Tai Chi II" but would be very surprised if Yuen Woo Ping made a movie from that era that wasn't drowning in wires. Try to think of a movie that he made in the '90s that didn't take place on top of some pyramid-like structure of either tables, ropes, ladders, poles, or something. The only one I can think of is "Fist of Legend". I own "Drunken Tai Chi" but have never been able to get through it. Started it twice but was too painful to continue.

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lolz yea drunken tai chi is kind of slowpaced and bad comedy but great fights later on ,black sheep affair,wenzhuo zhao (1998) is another one i like if you didnt see it allready,once upon a time in shanghai is a great film, and true legend was also quite good imo. and yes you are right about yuen woo ping,tai chi 2 does have a end fight with ropes and ladders,still the fights are very enjoyable and of course i have to mention legend of the wolf(1997) but you probably allready seen it,and some hard to get tv-series with donnie,fist of fury sworn revenge(1994). and tigercage 1+2 those had no wirework as i remember it maybe the use of a springboard here and there but not much.

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Some really good MA movies you have listed, I dont know what exactly constitutes as a Martial Arts. I think its a much broader genre ..... Like Movie Raid awsome fight scenes but are they MA I am not sure, true MA for me is the one that was in Yun Bao's debut movie "Knockabout" and another one of Yun Bao's Master piece "The Prodigal Son" .... without these two movies I think any list of MA movie is incomplete. Ofcourse there are others as well like Pedicab Driver, Magnificient Butcher ..... loads more but the two above are the best of the lot .....

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I really don't have a technical definition of what a Martial Art movie is. I know one when I see one, I guess. Having some martial arts certainly would not make it one. It's a subgenre of the general category of Action. "The Raid" started out as more of an Action film, but by the end, to me, it's a Martial Arts movie.

Some damn good classics you mentioned, sam9s! They'd have been on my list too but I was only going from the year 2000 to present. That pole fight in "Pedicab Driver" between Sammo and Lau Kar Leung is one of my absolute favorites. Same with the final fight in "The Prodigal Son".

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Thanks Mitch, do watch Knockabout it has awsome fight choreography. Its available on you tube as well.

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Good post, thanks for the list! 

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To be honest comparing fight scenes to martial art films from the 80s and 90s is not really a fair comparison as quite a few of Tony Jaa films have scenes that are single camera that follow the action for minutes at a time, such as he prison fight, I mean, to choreograph something as complex as that is truly mindblowing (which were not a feature in old school films), and while yes areas of the fights were 'wireworky', it was not like the holding onto mid-air and dodgy slack landing seen with some American films (Romeo Must Die comes to mind).

Tony Jaa is an extremely talented action performer who deserves more credit in my humble opinion...

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This isn't really related, but are you talking about the WKW film The Grandmaster? If so, why watch it if you are looking for a martial arts film? I am curious, because I really like that movie.

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I didn't watch "The Grandmaster", but I did watch the fights on youtube, looking for at least one that wasn't dripping with slow motion. I'd have been happy to buy an official copy had I liked what I saw. Unfortunately I didn't. The fights were way too artsy for me. Kind of ironic when the style depicted is Wing Chun, possibly the least flashy of traditional Chinese styles.

So you *don't* consider "The Grandmaster" to be a martial arts film? Even though it's another biopic of Yip Man? What would you call it then?

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Well it's a Wong Kar-Wai film, how could you expect it not to be artistic? That's like watching a John Woo film without doves or a Keanu Reeves movie where he doesn't say, "Whoa."

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I just finished watching SPL2 and I can assure you there are only a few moments where I could tell they had to use wires. For the most part, all of the fighting was really really impressive.
The last fight scene alone was worth the price of admission for me. It was damn satisfying. Personally, I think the fighting was on par with SPL and Flashpoint, 2 movies that had gritty fight scenes. The actors in SPL2 could definitely fight and there were no camera tricks used to hide that fact.


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Wrong. Wires were used a ton in this movie. Sure they weren't flying through tree's but they were there. Jin Zhang during the prison riot was badass and then the 2 Andy On fights were about the only thing good about this. Nicky Li really needs to get away from using wires so much in all of his choreography.

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A lot of wirework was used in most of the fights. It was distracting.
Btw, OP, I don't think you categorize very well. :) The Grandmaster from WKW is is a movie from completely different league than those films on your list. It's not a b-grade action flick. You don't watch it fot the "fights". That one is watched for other cinematic qualities. Not saying mistakes weren't made during filming but judging it from youtube fight clips as boring crap? :D That's too funny. You're like the guy in Louvre staring at a Picasso and going like: "What is this sh*t? This doesn't even look like a person!"

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I won't say you're wrong shinji-ikari-1, because I did not see "The Grandmaster" in its entirety. However, it was marketed as a Martial Arts films, is a biopic of a famous martial artist, and has enough fights to qualify as a Martial Arts movie. And whether or not a movie has other cinematic qualities it brings to the table, one thing I expect from a movie I deem to be a Kung Fu flick is good fighting. I've no problem with folks enjoying the fights if that's what they like (or the whole film), it's simply not for me. Even if it is analogous to the appreciation of a Picasso, I stand by my youtube assessment.

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Please tell me these tricks are only for that one wretched scene and not the whole film

Almost all Andy On fight scenes that involve jumps. Some Wu Jing scenes as well, I think Tony Jaa has used wires in couple shots. Yeah, gravity defying bs is annoying but you know what? All kung fu films has wires, 95% OF THEM; deal with it. Yeah, sometimes it's bad, sometimes not so bad. When they make non-martial artists to perform tricky stuff they always look clumsy af. And since The Matrix... I can go on and on. It's entertainment yo, chill))

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Have you watched the movie since you last posted, Mitch?

I assume the movie was everything you didn't want it to be. I've just watched it and especially the fight scenes were disappointing. A *lot* of slow motion and wirework. It's nowhere near the same quality as the original SPL.

Where are the choreographing/action directing skills from the eighties? Is this really the future of martial arts movies?

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Nope, still haven't watched it, but have seen more of the fights on youtube and will buy it at some point. More wires than I'd prefer, but the sweetness of Wu Jing & Tony Jaa can't be completely ruined, despite the filmmakers' best efforts.

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Trust me, it won't bother you. It blends in quite seemless, but I understand your concern. When I first saw The Raid: Redemption, it made me think of how amazing foreign action movies can be when there is little to no wire work and just full blown badass fight sequences.

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I have to side with the OP. A real and good kung-fu movie has no wires
(or, I guess, only uses them for safety purposes, but not for actually lifting people into the air etc).

We don't have to just talk about kung-fu. The greatest and best fight and chase movies/scenes are (IMO) mostly Hong Kong movies from the '70s and '80s but also a number of non-Chinese ones from the last 20+ years: stuff with Bruce Lee (Enter the Dragon), Jackie Chan (Snake in Eagles Shadow), Gordon Liu (Born Invincible), Jet Li (Tai Chi Master), Tony Jaa (Ong Bak), lots of Yuen Woo Ping's older movies, less known HK kung-fu movies like Shaolin vs Lama, parkour movies like Banlieue 13, etc.

Some of them use wires a little, but the best fight and chase scenes are wireless and shown from a good distance, without slow-motion. That's the kind of thing I enjoy watching -- when the cast can actually do the things they're acting that they're doing. When Tony Jaa can do a 4-minute one-shot fight scene, or when Jackie Chan can scale a building or jump around on top of a moving bus or fight guys with his feet on fire, or when David Belle can jump through a tiny window in the top of a door and then drop 20 feet onto concrete. That's entertainment!

Yeah, I feel a bit too strongly about this. I'll go chill now.

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