“Looking for New Ways to Smash Heads and Blow Things Up?”
Does this problem plague your writing? Whenever you write an action sequence, the fisticuffs and pyrotechnics feel stale? Well, help is on the way courtesy of Michael Lee at TheWrap with this article Looking for New Ways to Smash Heads and Blow Things Up:
They’re making movies based on bestsellers, videogames and 1970s toys. Fight choreographers are using everything from wushu to krav maga to Brazilian Jui Jitsu. But the search never stops. It’s always about what’s next, what’s new. Here are my 10 picks for action auteurs to take a gander at.
A few of Lee’s proposals:
1. Puroresu: Japanese pro wrestling. Have you seen this stuff? It’s nuts. Check out this video, or this one, and this one. American wrestlers here know all about it and respect their Japanese counterparts. Many travel to Japan to test their skills and pain threshold. It can be played serious or comedic. Imagine a “Semi Pro”-style wrestling comedy where Will Farrell getting knocked off the top turnbuckle like this!
2. Savate: I can’t believe Jean Claude Van Damme has spent his entire career without making a savate movie. I can’t believe Mike Judge is the only one who sees the potential in a Victorian-era chopsocky picture. Silas Murder indeed.
3. Dirigibles: Michael York starred in a pretty good movie called “Zeppelin,” which has a pretty awesome theme. There was “The Red Tent” with Sean Connery, which has an even better score by Ennio Morricone. But the mighty airship hasn’t gotten as much love as it should. Imagine you’re in a slow-moving aircraft that can at any moment explode in a fireball all around you. If that’s not a formula for excitement, I don’t know what is.
4. Renaissance Warfare: We’ve had medieval epics, we’ve had flintlock weapons, but here’s a period that combines them. In the years before the flintlock musket and bayonet became standard, infantrymen were armed with either long pikes or match-firing muskets. The nobility still suited up in armor and rode into battle with lances, only now they were charging down cannons and men with long swords hacked away at men armed with muskets.
5. Sammo Hung-style Kung Fu: Fans of ’80s Hong Kong action know Sammo Hung, late of the series “Martial Law,” is the man. Ow, ow, ow. That’s all you can say after you’ve seen a really well-done Sammo Hung fight scene. He combined the hard-hitting style of Bruce Lee with Jackie Chan’s insane stuntwork to produce some of the most breathtaking action sequences ever filmed. Wire Fu is rampant now; to be honest, a lot of it looks like an audition tape for Cirque du Soleil. Look at this fight from Sammo’s classic “Dragons Forever” (here’s part two).
Hit the link for five other suggestions.
Perhaps GITS readers have a few they’d like to add to the list?
BONUS: Here’s Jackie Chan way before he was teaching Will Smith’s kid how to crack heads: