Today I thought I would finally start and complete a draft that has been dying to be posted, I've watched a lot of action films in my life (too many probably) and I want to pick out a handful of some truly memorable fights. This will range from a full war against thousands or a fist fight between two but what I am going to do is avoid the realm of Marvel this time because I already did a post surrounding the combat which you can view here:
http://james-lister.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/best-marvel-fights.html
Obviously there are a lot out there so I'm going to pick a handful of my personal favourites which should be fun! The way I am going to judge them is simple... which ones are awesome! I think for this I will be heading towards Wars. I hope you like my selections but I think a few may surprise you, all will be revealed!
Transformers: Dark of the Moon
Michael Bay may not be great at character development but he does know how to create a good battle, whether you hate him you just cannot deny that the battles in Transformers were "rubbish" because you are lying to yourself! there are quite a few battles in the third installment including the fight at Chernobyl or the highway fight but I am going to focus on the huge fight in Chicago. The epic fight lasts for roughly 30 minutes which is quite a long time for a battle in all fairness and it is stunning! there are some truly awesome moments involving the Transformers and the humans, we see the driller tear through a giant building, human characters successfully take on a Decepticon squad and we get to see Optimus prime deal some damage which is definitely the highlight of the entire thing a long with his fight against his former leader, Sentinel Prime. "Optimus's rage" I promise you if you google that all it will come up with is the 45 second scene, yeah 45 seconds but its an amazing 45 seconds. We get to see Optimus use his flight tech to join the battle and take out maybe 7 Decepticons including Shockwave, the scene is full of over the top explosions and beautiful CGI. The rest of the battle primarily focuses on Optimus and Sentinel and their fight is awesome, we have Optimus with his energon sword and axe against Sentinels double bladed sword and bad ass shield, we get a look at some really nice combat scenes that do involve the rest of the Autobots as well and one bit shows how big and strong Sentinel is when he flips Sideswipe over with just his shield. The action is intense, the CGI is amazing and the combat itself is mixture of guns and swords which is brilliant to watch as well as the explosions which just make it more fun. Ah! how did I forget! the music in the scene is just fantastic as well, composed by Steve Jablonsky, again I'm a weirdo for enjoying the music (I'm totally aware of that!) but there is something about it that makes the scene even better especially when we get a first person (ish) perspective of some missiles which I really liked.
Saving Private Ryan
Without a doubt this is the best recreation of a battle I have ever seen and now it is such an Iconic and powerful scene that if you study D-Day the first thing you will do is watch this scene because it does give you a very good idea of what happened. The Omaha beach scene is just amazing in many ways, it's different to Transformers because when I watch Dark of the moon I watch it out of pure enjoyment however the opening scene to saving Private ryan is disturbing and very brutal but that means they did it right, nothing about war is good and they conveyed that perfectly. I swear to god at one point a guy is carrying his own arm! do you want to know how big this scene was! well it cost $12 million dollars to produce and involved over 1,500 extras (Thank you Empire magazine) Spielberg went to great lengths to make this scene memorable, he employed amputee's to join the fight and he refused to storyboard the scene. The action itself is utterly brilliant! the explosions are amazing and like I said its hard to watch because its very graphic, but if your looking for a good war film this is one for you. I honestly don't know what else to say about it other than its brilliant! the way it was constructed was fantastic and you can tell a lot of thought was put into this scene. I honestly believe this is closest we'll get to a good war re-enactment, there have been some good ones but nothing compares to this especially for 1998, this film came out roughly 16 years ago when CGI was still developing and I find it amazing that the team were able to create this scene. If your squeamish... then I definitely recommend this! out of all of it the part that really disturbs me is when you see the water turn red, there's something about it that just puts me off. I'm not entirely sure how accurate the scene is but I think Spielberg would have wanted it to be as accurate as they possibly could, lets face it we will never be able to get it 100%
Troy
Ok this is going to be difficult because there are a few fights in this and they are all spectacular! we get a few awesome wars between the Greeks and Trojans that mind me of Lord of the rings, the choreography is awesome! brutality of it is pretty epic especially the uncut edition! But I'm actually going to talk about the epic duel between the best warrior in all of Greece and the leader of Troy, yes I am talking about the fight between Achilles and Hector!
Why is this fight so awesome? well compared to the other fights it involves no CGI and it only involves 2 characters, there is no one else just them two outside the gates of Troy and I really liked that because that meant I didn't have to focus on anything else other than the scared faces of Hectors family. What's also really cool yet pretty insignificant is that there were no stunt doubles used, it doesn't sound like a big deal but when you watch the fight you may be pretty amazed because the fighting style is so unique and captivating. I've explained this before, I love a good sword and shield fight I can't explain why I just think they produce a better and more engaging action scene. Their fight lasts for about 4 minutes and its so cool! the quickness of it is extraordinary as well as the fluent movement by both actors, I dread to think how long this took to learn and execute without errors! Plus we get to see Achilles signature move where he jumps and aims for the neck with his beautifully designed sword. It's a fight that I could watch many times just because its interesting to watch, some of the moves performed by Achilles are brilliant and what's interesting is that he barely breaks a sweat. Achilles is that awesome that he doesn't look scared... just determined.
Something that also made it really cool were the over-emphasised noises of clashing swords, the music behind it is fairly quiet so the ringing of metal sounds really cool, its the little things in films that I notice for some reason. If you like Ancient history and stuff, the epic battle between these 2 legends is definitely for you as well as the famous story of how Troy fell. I did a review thing on Troy and I'm pretty sure I highlighted that this was an epic scene, go find it on YouTube!
I can only be talking about 1 scene, if you've seen it then you'll know I am talking about Batman's first brawl against the brute known as Bane and it doesn't go that well for the cape crusader. The reason this fight is in this post is because it is beautifully choreographed and for all the Batman fans its something we've been waiting for and we NEEDED it to be good, in the trilogy Batman hasn't really faced a physical enemy besides Ra's al Ghul so when we knew Bane was going to star in the finale we knew Batman would struggle; they showed that brilliantly. Also they incorporated quite an iconic scene from the comics where Bane breaks the Bats back and it was awesome! a great end to a fight.
The entire fight itself was seriously one sided and it really needed to be for this part of the film, never before have we seen the Bat break so easily and Bane really does beat the crap out of him... with style though!
The entire scene is just fantastic, there's no music which was good (surprisingly) I think music would have killed this serious vibe. The choreography as I mentioned was brilliant and we get a great look at Bane's strength, its just epic! Its a brilliant scene to watch although I wish it went on for a tad longer perhaps but I think any fan would be satisfied by the intense counter and attack routine performed excellently by the two actors, admittedly I doubt people expected a Bane like this but... he did make the final film brilliant! we finally got a villain who broke the Bat both physically and psychologically, Christopher Nolan re-invented the perfect villain that was better than the Bat himself and this scene was there just to show him off and it worked, just look how big Bane was! he menacing, huge and quite scary.
Lord of the Rings
I'm just going to go right out and say it... I will not be talking about a specific battle, this section will be purely dedicated to every single battle featured in the Lord of the Rings trilogy because frankly they are all amazing! When you consider the time these were created the giant battles involved are gobsmacking, the CGI is outstanding especially for the final battles or more specifically the battle of Pelennor fields which featured the gigantic Mumakil which is probably my favourite battle of all, I just think it was designed beautifully. All the fights are amazing to watch because of the CGI, the makeup which is beyond awesome and the type of creatures we see like the Wargs, Ents and Fellbeast just make them even better. Who wouldn't enjoy a battle that involved a thousand horses running down hill and slamming into Orc's? I have no idea who wouldn't enjoy it, people who don't like Lord of the Rings could still enjoy it! A definite highlight would be when Legolas takes out a Mumakil... thats pretty epic! We also got to see some of the characters shine, this was their moment to show us how cool they truly are and for characters such as Gimil who took on quite a few Wargs definitely proved himself to be more than a Dwarf but a formidable fighter who's height does not concern him when fighting larger creatures, he would happily attack a Troll.
If your not a big fan of the trilogy because you think there "too long" just watch the battles, you won't regret it! the scale of the battles is amazing! and they really know how to make a climactic battle and each film does it very well, so in all honesty... the final chapter to the Hobbit better work hard if it wants to be anywhere near as good as these!
Pearl Harbor
Yes I know! Michael Bay made it on here again and I believe it is well deserved! I loved the film Pearl Harbor and I have never moved closer to the screen like I did when I witness the unforgettable attack brought to life. A few facts that show how dedicated Michael Bay was:
1) He got permission from the Pentagon to film at Pearl Harbor
2) He used real planes- it sounds stupid but alot of the planes used in the actual war are difficult to find
3) This film had a record for "most explosions" but I'm sure it has been beaten... by Michael Bay :)
The entire scene was spectacular, the explosions were amazing and the effects were superb! it was such an interactive battle that took you into the heart of it at every angle possible but just the detail of it all was fantastic!
I watched that scene 3 times! and was blown away by the detail and just the magnitude of the entire thing, after watching some behind the scenes footage I realised that they put a hell of a lot of work into this, they went to lengths such as building a destroyer just so they could flip it!
Like Saving Private Ryan... I'm not sure how accurate it is, he got compliments for it and he got complaints and in all fairness developing a film based around a true story isn't easy and I think its a gutsy move, well done!
Do you have a favourite battle? did I miss some out?
I hope you enjoyed today's post, I did have a few more battles planned out but... effore
I had
Narnia and Sherlock Holmes along with the gunfight in Lone Survivor. I am aware that I missed out the raid but I am still waiting to see it (Whats wrong with me!)
Anyway, I'm seeing Noah on Wednesday which should be good so keep an eye out my post... I was trying to think of a pun involving Noah but I can't, well that sucks
this will do!
If you need a boat... I noah guy....
Until next time my friends!!
Have an awesome Easter, I know I will!
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