I actually find that bond is particularly suited to long cuts with interesting music, but instead the newest DC bond movies, for all their positives, often give us absolute garbage fast cuts for action with 400 beats per minute music. John wick is another really good example, they wanted a more cool, calculating, calm tempo to the action so you get more long tracking shots during most of the fights. You might sacrifice some tempo (music is easily enough for gods sake) but you gain viewers actually remembering the fight sequence. Longer cuts to show cool choreographed moves and ensure viewers understand the fight. Fast cuts to emphasize specific hits (punch moves left side to right, cut, show the impact of hit on the right side where viewers eyes already have moved). Now you can follow the fight, so any "cool" stuff can actually stick with you. Mix fast and slow cuts The more old school method. All I remember when people ask is that he did cool unstoppable Karate.Every cut just shows what is cool about that move in isolation, so you don't risk having awkward transitions and being able to see actors pulling punches or being badly trained.
LIAM NEESON TAKEN 3 SERIES
There is some push back, but its still the dominant method of showing action scenes, to the point where long shots in a chase/fight are considered risky and stand out.įast cuts watch the video with the sound off and think to yourself, what series of moves did he perform to take out those bad guys, and how did he move from one guy to another.
You do one move per cut, and its nearly impossible to follow the action or figure out what happened, and you can't really remember the fight. It has been over over over used recently by directors and your action ends up being generic "random karate + flips" or "cars smash somewhere somehow GEAR SHIFT change lanes EXPLOSION where are we EXPLOSION GUN SHOTS I'm so confu GEAR SHIFT EYES WIDEN CHANGE LANES SPIN OUT" instead of an interesting sequence. Its a newish attempt to create a frantic tempo with frantic action. They have finally caught up to what he was doing in the 1970s (which was inspired by what Hollywood was doing in the 1920s), but alas, he's probably too old for all that now. These days, we have a trend of non-stop, wall-to-wall action films coming out of Hollywood. They're no longer Jackie Chan films, just films with Jackie Chan in them. So we get buddy films with 30-60 second fight sequences, so the actors can get back to the wisecracks and lame jokes. They also wanted more character development and drama. When he went to the US, and they said: "Nobody wants to watch a ten minute fight sequence, tone it down a bit". Plot was simply there to drive the action, and the longer and more elaborate the action sequences the better. They were action comedy, first and foremost. In Hong Kong, the films were an offshoot of his time in the Seven Little Fortunes performance troupe (along with a lot of inspiration from Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd).
I recall watching a documentary or interview where he explained the difference between his US and HK films.