Why do Action Scenes Suck?

G

Gillvane

Veteran
From Corridor Digital. I think they nailed it. I've been saying similar things for a long time, especially about the shaky cam close up style that is so popular today.

 
Oh man, spot on. The problem however goes deeper - in order to give action sequences meaning and motivation, the whole film needs to be structured with this in mind; too often you see films where someone has clearly taken to heart the old nostrum that "you must have an explosion or car chase every 10 pages/minutes", and as a result you get artificially inserted action sequences that feel very mechanical from a pacing point of view: massive action, low key sequence, massive action, low key sequence, massive action, rest etc. where the action and rest sequences pop up with no rhyme or reason, even if they're technically fine. This is such a frequent problem, I suspect that it cannot come from incompetence or ignorance on the part of the director/producer, but simply because in the end they calculate: I can get 99% of the commercial and critical return simply doing bad schlocky action, so why would I put in 5 times the effort for that last 1% that is not going to make a lick of difference to my career? So, they save money and effort doing "implied" action, quick cuts and obfuscation and try to dazzle you with cgi. In the end, it's pretty cynical - they know better, but the economics are just not there for them; only a director who cares about the artistic merit would bother doing better... for the vast majority of the public, the bad action sequences are good enough.
 
Any scene, not just an action scene, that doesn't serve the story, sucks.

Action scenes just happen to be particularly bad at this for a couple of reasons. Both are budget related. On the limited budget side, it takes a big chunk out of a small budget to do a good action scene, and some movies that want to do them can't afford to do them really well. On the unlimited budget side, you might find them thrown in because they feel they've got to spend all that money on something. Some producers / directors have been on both sides of this -- think of the first, and third, of Lucas' StarWars movies. And look what Jackson did to the Hobbit movies. He was just making stuff up (you can't blame Tolkien for Jackson' screw ups) to create meaningless non-story-serving action scenes. Had so much excess footage laying around that he made three movies where one was called for. The Hobbit movies really show the "curse of too much money".
 
  1. In the Cut, Part I: Shots in the Dark (Knight). In Part 1 of an excellent three-part series, Jim Emerson examines, shot by shot, a hard-to-follow action scene in Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight.
  2. In the Cut, Part II: A Dash of Salt. Another shot-by-shot analysis by Jim Emerson, this time of Philip Noyce's excellent handling of an action scene in Salt, with Angelina Jolie.
  3. In the Cut Part III: I Left My Heart in My Throat in San Francisco. Jim Emerson analyzes The French Connection, Bullitt, and The Lineup.
  4. John McTiernan on filmmaking philosophy. My already high opinion of him got even higher. Compiled by Film School Thru Commentaries.
  5. Jackie Chan - How to Do Action Comedy, by Tony Zhou (Every Frame a Painting)
  6. Edgar Wright - How to Do Visual Comedy, by Tony Zhou
  7. Michael Bay - What is Bayhem?, by Tony Zhou
  8. The Spielberg Oner, tangentially related, by Tony Zhou
  9. David Fincher - And the Other Way is Wrong, tangentially related, by Tony Zhou
 
combatentropy said:
  1. In the Cut, Part I: Shots in the Dark (Knight). In Part 1 of an excellent three-part series, Jim Emerson examines, shot by shot, a hard-to-follow action scene in Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight.
  2. In the Cut, Part II: A Dash of Salt. Another shot-by-shot analysis by Jim Emerson, this time of Philip Noyce's excellent handling of an action scene in Salt, with Angelina Jolie.
  3. In the Cut Part III: I Left My Heart in My Throat in San Francisco. Jim Emerson analyzes The French Connection, Bullitt, and The Lineup.
  4. John McTiernan on filmmaking philosophy. My already high opinion of him got even higher. Compiled by Film School Thru Commentaries.
  5. Jackie Chan - How to Do Action Comedy, by Tony Zhou (Every Frame a Painting)
  6. Edgar Wright - How to Do Visual Comedy, by Tony Zhou
  7. Michael Bay - What is Bayhem?, by Tony Zhou
  8. The Spielberg Oner, tangentially related, by Tony Zhou
  9. David Fincher - And the Other Way is Wrong, tangentially related, by Tony Zhou
Click to expand...

Good stuff.
 
my thought for a long time has been that unless its something especially well done (IMO), like the scenes in the earlier episodes of daredevil, the scenes staged entirely in a single wide shot, ANY action scene is boring after a very short time and am just waiting for the movie/show to get back to the plot. seriously. action scenes/foot chases/gun fights/melee combat/car chase scenes that go on for more than about a minute are where i start thinking about dinner and my plans for later. i dunno. watching people fake fighting/chasing just isnt interesting to me.
 
I loved Mad Max: Fury Road. The action was great, and part of the story, not just a break from the story. The second Transformers, I thought all during the move, OMG so much transforming! I can't watch one more stupid robot battle! because it was action without motivation.

Sometimes I watch a movie and it's done really well so I wonder why I'm so bored, and this is usually the cause, unmotivated action.

I"ve shot just a tiny bit of action, and wow, is it time consuming! If you want to do that shaky cam close up mess, you can knock it out pretty fast. But if you want each move clearly on the screen, with turn arounds and appropriate close ups, it's a lot of work and LOTS of takes.
 
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