Favorite fight scene in what respect? One that tells a good story? One that feels "completely real" even though it can't physically be? One that flat-out feels real? One with insane or ground-breaking choreography?
As a professional fight coordinator, I love different fights for different things. Different scenes simply can't be compared, for both technical and artistic reasons. You simply cannot compare the near-perfect comedic fights in "Drunken Master" to the iconic clifftop fight in "the Princess Bride" to the hardcore masterpiece that is the spiral ramp fight in "The Protector". You're comparing apples to weasels.
That said, here's a list of some of MY favorite "modern" fights, and why (and a YouTube link if I can find it without significant effort). I'll limit myself to small-scale swordplay (so no huge group fights or gunplay, sorry "Children of Men"). These are in no particular order, and off the top of my head:
The Court Jester Danny Kaye vs Basil Rathbone. Danny Kaye's schizophrenic swashbuckler and natural energy help make this scene one of the best comedic fights in history, if not THE best. Going back and forth from to completely incompetent to the "greatest with a blade" with a mere snap of the fingers is simply hilarious. Poor Basil truly had his work cut out for him staying unharmed in this scene.
Video LinkCoN: Prince Caspian Peter (William Moseley) vs Miraz (Sergio Castellitto). Yup, a kid's flick. Here's the thing, though. This fight set a new standard in the stage fighting community for armored combat. Generally speaking, armor is always depicted as heavy and unwieldy (see also: Excalibur) or completely useless (most movies). CoN:PC, however, depicted armored combat as it actually
is - fast and deadly, with the combatants fighting
around the other guy's armor, not trying to pound through it, and with the armor actually having redeeming protective value. Watch especially after the helms come off and practically every blow is thereafter aimed at the face, and watch when Peter takes a cut across his vambraces (arm guards) to protect his face and the armor isn't even dented. THAT'S why people wore it!
Video LinkThe Princess Bride Inego Montoya vs The Man in Black. Really, if you don't know why this is on the list, you fail at watching movies. A masterpiece in
every respect. For sheer dramatic impact, the "My Name is Inego..." scene is better, but it's hardly a fight, so the cliffside fight takes the slot.
Video LinkThe Seven Samurai Kyuzo vs Random Dumbass Samurai. If you want to know how most real swordfights look between unarmored combatants ("civilian duels"), watch this. This probably represents a good 50% of them. One technique, and done. In another 49%,
both people die from a more or less simultaneous strike. The last 1% is the extended sequence of attack and counterattack what everybody thinks of when they think "swordfight".
Video LinkTroy Hector vs Achilles. And not just because Richard Ryan (one of my SAFD Fight Masters) did the duel. This fight showcases two completely different fighting styles (Hector is straight-ahead, straight-back linear, while Achilles is circular in movement, always attacking
around the shield as opposed to everyone else in the movie) and making them both completely plausible onscreen without CGI trickery. What's more, this is a wonderful example of a fight
telling a story. A fight without a story behind it is just dance with metal props - essentially masturbation for the stunt coordinator. "Ooh - look at the pretty dances I can make my actors do!". A LOT of fights, especially the unnecessarily-long ones, and a LOT of them out of the eastern movie tradition, have that problem (Jet Li is especially prone to doing this). But this one's got a story, with a clear beginning, rising action, setback, recovery, climax, and falling action.
Video LinkThe Adventures of Robin Hood Robin Hood (Errol Flynn/Paddy Crane) vs the Sir Guy of Gisbourne (Basil Rathbone). Yup - Basil's on my list twice. The man was THE "bad guy du jour" for most of the 1930s, 40s, 50s, and early 60s. What's more, this fight set the frame for all further American film fights into the early 1990s, once Asian influences left "chop-socky flicks" and truly became mainstream. Remember, this movie isn't a 1950's technicolor piece like most people think. Robin Hood was done in
1938. You've barely had sound in movies for ten years by this point. This fight is possibly the most influential in film history (think about how often you've seen homages to the shadows dueling on the wall), and no other reason than that it deserves a slot on the list. Fortunately, there's plenty of other reasons as well.
Video LinkThe Duellists The whole frikkin' movie. The Duelists is a semi-true account about a pair of Napoleonic French cavalrymen who got involved in a petty dispute and fought a series of inconclusive duels over 15-ish years during the entirety of the Napoleonic Wars. Every fight, the weapons change. As a side bonus, the use of the weapons is generally accurate - William Hobbs (the choreographer) borrowed
heavily from period fencing manuals. It's just fun to watch, and the fights are wonderful for "feeling real", although the film print quality is iffy - it was late getting to the restoration process for DVD, and so hard to watch at time. For those of you who like his work , this is Ridley Scott's directorial debut.
Video Link (first scene)Scaramouche Stewart Granger vs Mel Ferrar. A fairly typical smallsword duel in a theatre, this duel is made notable by being the longest fight in history to be done in a
single take - about 7 minutes. There were multiple cameras on set, so we get cuts between angles, but the actors only did it once. At the time, most movie swordfights are about 2 minutes (rehearsal time is expensive) or less. Even today, fights of greater than 4 minutes are fairly rare, and fights of greater than 4 minutes that are
nothing but fighting are practically unheard of. Its record has stood for 57 years, and is considered by mostly everybody to not be beatable.
Video LinkThe Protector Tony Jaa Beats Up Everybody. This 4-minute sequence has to be seen to be believed. You'll note, there are no cuts - it's a single, 3:58 take where
everything has to go right in a monsterously complex fight scene. This takes the awesomeness of Scaramouche's duel and turns the volume to 11; sure it's only about half as long, but it's orders of magnitude more difficult to pull off. The more you know about how movies are made, the more you'll see can go wrong in the fight, and the more impressed you'll be.
Video LinkThe Phantom Menace Obi-wan and Qui-Gonn Jinn vs Darth Maul. Ignore Kenobi in the fight, and just watch Liam Neeson vs Ray Park. Neeson is a wonderful fighter to watch, and Park is poetry in motion. There's practically no CGI or wire work in the fights (sure, there's the sabres and backgrounds, but the fight itself is almost entirely straight-up badass human). Again, it's just a fun fight to watch - I could have sat in the theatre for 90 minutes just watching this duel on a loop and been perfectly happy shelling out the $10 for a ticket.
Video Link that cuts out all the crap about droids and starfighters nobody cared aboutRob Roy Rob Roy (Liam Neeson) vs Archibald Cunningham (Tim Roth). The commentary says it best: "arguably one of the best swordfights in movie history". Cunningham has raped Rob Roy's wife, killed their son, and been a general sociopath throughout the film. And he has the gall to thoroughly dismantle Roy in this climatic duel, using his faster, modern smallsword and reflexes to stay out of the path of Roy's archaic basket-hilted claymore. The stomping that Roy receives and the glee with which Cunningham gloats makes the end of the fight all the more sweet. Even 10 years after seeing it for the first time, I still have to fight the urge to leap out of my seat and yell "Yes!" when it happens. Not especially flashy choreography, but I'm old enough I don't feel the need to be entertained by simple "motion" any longer.
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