Action movies fight scenes and Professional wrestling?

[braveh]

Do you think there is any connection between the hand to hand combat scenes in action movies and wrestling matches?

As far as I know, every classic action movie follows the same formula - building up to the final hand to hand fight between the hero and antagonist.

I can't sign off on his but pretty much every James Bond movie has the climactic fight scene, every Bourne movie, every Mission Impossible movie, every Die Hard movie......

So basically if you're writing an action movie you have to deal with the same problems as a the two guys trying to put on a classic wrestling match. How do you do something new and unpredictable when everything has already been done?

In action movies you always have a handgun tossed around back and forth, the two guys almost falling off a cliff, in MI2 they're riding motorcycles as if hey were horses in the 14th century.....

How is it that action movies are still successful when those scenes are 100% predicable while professional wrestling matches still feel fresh and new? Yet the public perceive wrestling as something old and obsolete

 

[Jack-Hammer]

To some degree there is. The similarities between fight scenes & wrestling matches are pretty clear when you think about it.

In movie fight scenes, it's almost always about a heavily choreographed style of combat that makes the people fighting look positively superhuman. That's especially true in martial arts and boxing movies. In martial arts films, you'll see the artists perform moves that look extremely cool and even beautiful from a purely visual standpoint. In boxing movies, it's very frequent to see the "boxers" deliver multiple punches & take multiple punches that would damn near kill someone. Look at the Rocky movies especially. Every punch looked as though it was delivered with the force of a shotgun blast. In a real martial arts fight, you often see the fighters performing these outlandish kicks or flips, partially because it leaves them wide open. And when they take a hit, they just don't shrug it off as if it was nothing. It hurts them as much as it does anyone else.

In pro wrestling, the matches are similar to that. The wrestlers endure "physical punishment" and "offense" that we're supposed to believe, via suspension of disbelief, that no ordinary person could withstand. Like a fight scene, it's not just about the action itself, it's how the action looks and the athleticism & toughness involved in it. Just like in an action movie fight scene, wrestlers can also get hurt in wrestling matches.

Just like in action movies, you have to be willing to suspend disbelief to enjoy watching pro wrestling. I think a major difference is how the action stars in movies are portrayed in compared to wrestlers. The wrestlers are tough, but there's never any genuinely serious attempt to make you believe that they're anything more than human. It's not that way with action movies. For instance, both Stallone & Schwartzenneger have movies out in theaters right now. These are two legitimate senior citizens that are all juiced up with steroids to help keep a youthful looking physique and are in shoot outs, ax fights, fist fights and explosions against assailants that are, at least some, young enough to be their grandchildren. When I saw the trailers for their two films, I honestly burst out laughing because of the ridiculous notion of these two 60+ year old men performing in the exact kind of roles that initially made them stars back before I was old enough to crawl. Whenever we see someone in wrestling these days that we feel are simply too old to be viable anymore, it often leads to a backlash online, at least among internet fans.

 

[ABMorales787]

A movie takes an hour and a half to 2 hours to develop it's story and reach it's climax. You see the linear pattern faster. Wrestling storylines can go on for months progressing at most once a week. There is a damn good difference to each. Especially when there's no killing or deep, personal issues in pro wrestling conflicts. Not to mention it's not so black and white and you don't have a designated protagonist and antagonist.

 

[CrunKSinatrA]

I think there are a lot of similarities between the fight scenes in movies and wrestling matches. But they are two totally separate styles, and I think movie fight scenes have a lot to learn from pro wrestling.

One similarity I've noticed from the movie fight scenes is how they typically flow. In pro wrestling, the face gets beat up for the majority of the fight and then mounts a miraculous comeback to win as a climax to the suspense. The heels might control the match but are normally on the receiving end of the biggest hits, like how top rope finishers are typically reserved for faces.

Using the Thor vs Hulk on the SHIELD Helicarrier from the Avengers as an example. Hulk was the heel b/c no one can trust the rage monster and he dominated Thor and Black Widow throughout the fight. Widow is trapped under debris and Thor gets tossed around like a rag doll. But Thor lands that monster uppercut with the hammer and the Hulk eventually falls out of the Helicarrier.

Also in the Matrix 1, Agent Smith is unstoppable. Neo fights to the best of his ability but he will lose and escapes when Agent Smith gets hit by a train. Agent Smith even shoots Neo several times, but Neo "hulks up" realizing he is The One and pulls off the miraculous comeback destroying Agent Smith.

The big difference between the fight scenes and matches are their usage. Fight scenes are primarily eye candy and serve as a fun break from the story. But in pro wrestling, the match is where the story is. If one were to watch a match sans storyline and no information about the wrestlers, a fan can still see the good vs. evil story being told. Heels cheat and cheap shot at every chance. The faces have the heart to keep fighting, feeding off the crowd and landing the big moves for the come from behind victory. All the character building comes in the fight, the interviews and promos build to the match but the match is where find out who the wrestlers are.

There are a lot of things that movies can learn from wrestling. But one thing I would like to see are the wrestlers retaining their personalities when they make movies. Lots of respected actors get typecast in the same roles. It's not just Michael Cera and Owen Wilson being the same character in every movie. Morgan Freeman, Will Smith, Robert Downey Jr, etc carry the same persona in every movie from role to role.

But we don't get see the Rock be the Rock in movies. Stone Cold wasn't the crazy SOB that him a star in The Condemned, he was some quiet guy fighting to the death. We know they can do the fight scenes, The Rundown probably has one of the most underrated fight scenes in movie history. I dream of seeing a movie where the Rock and Stone Cold can show off the personalities that brought them to dance. My bank account will be emptied if and when that happens.

 

[Mustang Sally]

Fight scenes are primarily eye candy and serve as a fun break from the story. But in pro wrestling, the match is where the story is.

That statement brings to mind the serious neck injury Lita suffered, not in a wrestling ring, but in her fight scene with another woman during a guest appearance on the show "Dark Angel." It's ironic that after all the fights she had in her main profession, the worst injury of her career occurred in making a TV show, in which the fight scenes are regarded as "stunt work."

In performing stunt work, the actors get as many takes as necessary to get the scene right. In wrestling, you perform before a live audience and get one crack at it; there's no director to yell "Cut" when things go wrong.....instead, you get Vince McMahon screaming at you for messing up.

Yes, the match is where the story is in the "fake" world of pro wrestling. Incidents like what happened to Lita go to show how difficult a world that is to perform and how amazing the wrestlers really are.

 

[CrunKSinatrA]

And the worst thing about Lita's injury is that they blamed her. I don't remember the exact interview but Lita's defense was that she does the flying head scissors 300 days a year with pro wrestlers no problem. The ONE TIME she does the move with a Hollywood stuntman she breaks her neck.

 

[Mustang Sally]

And the worst thing about Lita's injury is that they blamed her. I don't remember the exact interview but Lita's defense was that she does the flying head scissors 300 days a year with pro wrestlers no problem. The ONE TIME she does the move with a Hollywood stuntman she breaks her neck.

Yes, and that's really the point. In pro wrestling, your "opponent" is actually your partner. His/her function is to sell the moves of their opponents and to have the opponents do the same for them. Really, it's a masterpiece of theater to have a person working with you even as they're portraying themselves as working against you.

At any rate, the person Lita was fighting on "Dark Angel" wasn't a professional wrestler and obviously didn't know how to go with the move Lita was performing, thereby causing the injury. The production people of that show would have been better off hiring a wrestler to work the scene with Lita, someone who knew how to stage fights and protect their partners.