How to write a fight scene

 

Fight scenes. People ask all the time, how does one write them? My advice to them is usually, "Read The Matrix." The Matrix does a phenomenal job of it. Lookit:


[scrippet] INT. SUBWAY STATION Neo whip-draws his gun with the flashpoint speed of lightning as!-- Smith OPENS FIRE. GUN REPORT THUNDERS through the underground, both men BLASTING, moving at impossible speed. For a blinking moment we enter BULLET-TIME. Gun flash tongues curl from Neo's gun, bullets float forward like a plane moving across the sky, cartridges cartwheel into space. An instant later they are nearly on top of each other, rolling up out of a move that is almost a mirrored reflection of the other -- Each jamming their gun tight to the other's head. They freeze in a kind of embrace; Neo sweating, panting, Agent Smith machine-calm. Agent Smith smiles. AGENT SMITH You're empty. Neo pulls the TRIGGER. CLICK. NEO So are you. The smile falls. Agent Smith yanks his TRIGGER. CLICK. Agent Smith's face warps with rage and he attacks, fists flying at furious speed, blows and counters, Neo retreating as -- A knife-hand opens his forearm, and a kick sends him slamming back against a steel column. Stunned, he ducks just under a punch that CRUNCHES into the BEAM, STEEL CHUNKS EXPLODING like shrapnel. Behind him, Neo leaps into the air, delivering a necksnapping reverse round-house. Agent Smith's glasses fly off and he glares at Neo; his eyes ice blue. AGENT SMITH I'm going to enjoy watching you die, Mr. Anderson. Agent Smith attacks with unrelenting fury, fists pounding Neo like jackhammers. [/scrippet]

 So what can we learn? Before we begin, let's get something straight: never ever - never never never ever ever, like ever - write "They fight." Ever.

Ever.

Each fight scene has to have its own identity.
Look at the scene above. This is the first time Neo and Agent Smith will face off against each other without interference. This is the first time we've seen two dudes go at each other, so it's different from every other fight we've seen. The rest of the film was an agent chasing down a free man who was just trying to survive the battle. So already we have something new. That's important. Every fight scene has to offer something new, something we haven't seen already seen even in this very screenplay. A different location, a different goal, a different style of fighting. But if you find yourself writing the same fight in the same spot over and over, your script sucks.

Each fight scene must have its own plot.
Just like every other scene in your script, the fight has to have a beginning, middle and end. Your fighters have to have their own goals. What do they want out of this fight? What are they doing to get it? If one wants something the other one has, he needs to be pushing to get it while the other is pulling away. If one wants to destroy the other for revenge, the other one needs to be defending himself. And as these characters fight for what they want, a story emerges. Look at the above example. Agent Smith starts off calm and cool, thinking this will be just like every fight he's ever had: quick, easy, ending in certain death for his opponent. Neo starts a little nervous, panting, struggling to keep up, but then something happens. He gets one up on Agent Smith. Smith is PISSED. Neo is confident. There's a switch that happens. Agent Smith turns on the rage because he's never had to work so hard, and suddenly he brings the pain.

Which leads me to....

Fight scenes need reversals.
Your hero is winning, then losing, then winning. He gets backed into a corner. How's he going to get out. Oh yay! He's winning! Oh wait, not he's not. Oh no! He's going to lose! Oh yay! He did it! He won! - That's how a great fight scene should feel. Look at the above example. Neo starts out at a disadvantage. Then he gets the upper hand, but his victory is short lived because Agent Smith comes back with a vengeance. But just as you think Neo is toast, he flips the script. A fight scene where the good guy is always winning is a really boring fight scene. We need to worry in order to get any real joy out of it. So a fight should be equal parts badass moves and worrisome moments. There should always be a moment where we're cheering the victory and a moment where we're genuinely wondering if we're about to watch our hero die.

And one more thing....

Learn the terminology.
Fights have a language. You don't necessarily have to know what a triangle choke looks like, but if you want to write fight scenes you should at least know the difference between Jujitsu and Judo and Muay Thai and Krav Mga. Know which style you want to see, because that's what sets the tone for your fight. Different styles create different types of fights, and you can use them to create variety in your script. A Muay Thai fight is prettier. A Jujitsu fight is going to involve a lot of wrestling on the ground. Krav Mga is great when you have multiple opponents. Sometimes you may just want a really ugly brawl. Say so in your prose. Know what you want this to look like depending on the plot of the fight.

You don't have to detail every single punch, but you do need to know what the point of the fight is. You should know the plot and the tone, just like any other scene in your script. Now go kick some vicarious ass!

Thoughts on the film: Monsters

I spent five whole days with no Internet save one daily email check. That was weird, yet somehow freeing. I did not go through the amount of withdrawal I expected, probably because I was distracted by snow.

And Monsters. Stepdad got Monsters on Demand Sunday night.

Monsters is an independent film about a man and woman who must cross an infected zone on the Mexico/USA border filled with giant alien creatures in order to get home.

This film was listed as a horror movie, which it 100% is NOT. If anything it's a drama with suspense elements, which makes it a bit of a challenge. It doesn't fit any particular category. The closest thing I could think of was a low budget Close Encounters, but even that doesn't seem right.

I'd seen enough articles about this film that I wasn't really surprised when it wasn't scary, but Stepdad was disappointed. He liked the film, but it wasn't what he intended to watch. He thought he was going to see a horror film, when in fact it was...

SLIGHT SPOILER

...a quiet metaphor for the illegal immigration issue symbolized by peaceful, misunderstood invading aliens who are attacked by military forces.

END SLIGHT SPOILER

It was a terrific film. Only the two leads were played by actors - everybody else was a local Mexican, allowed to ad lib the dialogue. And according to Boxoffice Mojo it cost $500,000 to make.

Let me repeat that. $500,000. With big giant beautiful aliens.

So I find this film fascinating. It's called Monsters, and Monsters is the perfect title from an artistic perspective, but if you consider the marketing it's a terrible title. Monsters implies a scary movie, and it's listed under Horror, but someone who loves a movie like Hostel would throw spitballs at the screen if they picked this up thinking those two films belonged anywhere near each other.

It's a film that could only be made outside the studio system because it does not fit neatly into a box. Good thing it was so cheap to make or it would have disappeared into oblivion. As it is, it had trouble in the states finding an audience, and that's a shame. Apparently it got a lot of love in Russia.

Interview with Alex Litvak, Part Two

Interview with Alex Litvak, Part One 

The spec sale of Medieval landed Alex Litvak more than just an opportunity to write Predators. He’s also finishing up rewrites on Grayskull and a reimagined version of The Three Musketeers. So a lot of you guys probably want to hear about Grayskull, but I didn’t watch that much He-Man as a kid and She-Rah annoys me, so the novel was a priority. I love this novel. I am cautiously optimistic about the outcome of this film.

[EDITED TO ADD: Dear He-Man fans, I had two hours to ask Litvak whatever I could before he went off to a meeting, and that two hours flew by. I had a long list of questions I didn't even get to ask. I am a HUGE fan of the Three Musketeers so that was early on the agenda. If you had been the one interviewing him, you would have asked about He-Man, and then I would have been disappointed because I would have wanted to read about The Three Musketeers. Perspective is your friend. Thanks for reading!]

Anyway, Litvak was supposed to take a few weeks to punch up the existing script for Musketeers, but once he took the project home he just couldn’t stop changing things. What began as a quick little project grew into a full rewrite and another screen credit. He wrote a page-one rewrite in 16 days because that’s how long the studio had given him for the original job.

Like his previous work, this version of Dumas’ classic is balls out action. Litvak took the characters and the spirit of the story and ran away with it, playing on the opportunity the story provides for lots of sword fights. “It’s true to the spirit of Dumas,” he said.

In the original novel, a young Musketeer is tasked with saving the queen’s reputation when her husband’s advisor, Cardinal Richelieu, sees an opportunity to remove her influence from the crown. This is based on a true event from French history, and the Disney version crapped all over it. Litvak used this moment as a springboard for a sort of heist story filled with intrigue and swordfights and scuba gear. It's a little like what 2001's The Musketeer tried to but with more of an effort to stay on the source material.

In the film, M’lady De Winter, played by Milla Jovovich, is a strong-willed woman. Like Isabel in Predators and Amelia in Medieval, M’lady has her own independent goals and weaknesses. She is not merely a love interest to follow around the protagonist, a common characteristic of female characters in most action films. Litvak said he tries to write women well, and uses as influence the women he has encountered in his life.

On the other hand, he does see action films as a chance to revel in masculinity. “On one level, it’s conflict personified,” he said. “On another level, a fantasy of guys. The epitome of cool. Testosterone in its purest form.”  After all, women amounted to essentially zero percent of the market share for Predators.

As his most recent work finishes up production, another writer has taken over duties on Medieval. At this point, the story is someone else’s job now, and Litvak no longer has control over what happens next.

“It’s a bit like sending your kid off to college,” he said. “Bye. I just don’t want to see you on Youtube.”

Tomorrow in part 3: Advice for the rest of us

What Samurai Jack taught me

Know what was a good show? Samurai Jack. I miss Samurai Jack. If you've never seen it, Samurai Jack was a show on Cartoon Network back when it showed cartoons, about a martial arts genius who was sent into the future just before he was about to kill the evil Mako Aku, and now either has to kill Aku or find a portal back to his own time so he can kill Aku in the past.

I was watching season 4 the other day and thinking about how amazing it is they managed to tell so much story without a lot of dialogue. Genndy Tartakovsky, the show's creator and also the creator of Dexter's Laboratory and the only Star Wars Clone Wars to be actually good, said he liked action scenes so he wrote a show about action scenes. He didn't want to load the show up with lots of unnecessary dialogue. Action scenes are awesome, so let's have an entire show full of action scenes.

There's definitely something to that. A lot of times I read amateur scripts where people talk. And talk and talk and talk and talk. They talk about their feelings and their desires and their fears and all the things they're thinking. In reality they should just have their characters work out their angst with a sword fight.

Samurai Jack taught me that. Sword fights for everybody.

See Salt. Or else.

Ever since I heard Salt had switched to a female protagonist I've been antsy for opening weekend. I keep hearing all the time "Don't write an action film with a female protagonist." Every time I tell someone about my latest project they sort of give me this tsk tsk response, like I've made a big mistake with my life and I should really learn to write about men or stick to romcoms.

So I prayed for Salt to be good. I was going to force all my friends to go see it if it sucked, just to give a minuscule push to the box office. I'm relieved that fans of action say it's good.

Because you know what they'll say if this movie fails: People just don't go see female action heroes.

It has nothing to do with whether or not it's a good movie, of course. I mean Alien, Terminator, Nikita, Run Lola Run, Resident Evil - those are all flukes, right? Nobody wants to see a woman kicking ass.

But if it does well.... oh if it does well, then we're back, baby. If this movie makes money in a season where nothing is guaranteed, the first thing studio heads will do is to look around for the next Salt.

I'm waving my hand hello.

Predators and the only girl around

Saw Predators today. I have the same opinion that's been going around - fun flick, not an Oscar winning piece of brilliance, but exactly what a solid action film should be. I would probably have enjoyed it even more were it not for the old dude in the back who kept yelling "OH NO!" every time a new complication arose.

Anyhow, I like Isabelle.

We all know how generally unsuccessful female action heroes have been, and I think the main reason is the difficulty so many writers have separating strength from compassion. Even though this film doesn't pass the Blechdel test - there's only one woman, although I kind of want to see what a female Predator looks like - I still felt that Isabelle is a perfect example of how to write a female badass.

I think there's a feeling that a woman must be either compassionate or strong, and that if she's strong she's a bitch, but if she cares about people, she's weak. In reality, a woman in a man's world generally tends to be the one who reminds everybody that we don't have to kill each other. I've often maintained that if one of the Lord of the Flies had been a Lady of the Fly, they may not have destroyed each other. Everybody needs a mommy. That doesn't mean Mommy has to choose between being a harpie or a pushover.

Isabelle has a heart. She also has a gun, and she sees no reason she can't balance both. At one point in the story Walton Goggins character, the convict, stares at her ass and tells her it's awesome. In a lot of films, that's when Michelle Rodriguez would have pinned him in some kind of thumb lock and told him to shut his fucking mouth or she'd shove her sniper rifle up his ass.

Instead, in this version, Alice Braga lets it go and moves on to more important things. She might be able to kick his ass - we never find out - but what would that prove? She's not an angry butch lesbian, she's just a warrior with a vagina.

I don't necessarily agree with how she was handled at the end of the film, but overall I felt that she was handled with realism and respect. Action writers would do well to pay attention.

This is the end

I am just super excited. I said to myself long ago when I first started Not Dead Yet that this was the script that finally got me started. I felt that way because of how much smoother the process was, and how much more fun. And now that things are happening - well, I'm pretty much jumping out of my skin every moment of the day. Every time I see I have a new email I'm wondering if it's one of the people in high places.

Yes I know many things could still go wrong, but I'm annoyingly optimistic. But don't worry. The Beefcake is like King Pessimism so he keeps me from floating off into the atmosphere. I keep him from going on a killing spree.

I've gotten a few notes from people - no major changes, but an occasional observation about a minor change that might help my chances. One of my favorite notes was that I don't NEED the changes. This thing can sell as is. But the changes might help get it done faster.

That's shit you want to hear.

The funny thing is, when I started this I never imagined it would sell. I mean, it would be great, don't get me wrong. Money and a movie and launching a career and all that. But this is an expensive film and most people think of zombies as cheap, so I never thought anyone would want to buy it. But a few people in the know have indicated that it could indeed sell.

I'd also like to give thanks to World War Z. It makes it easy for me to point to a zombie action film and prove that this is a viable concept. It's supposed to come out next year and if it does well I'm in like Flynn. If it tanks I am screwed.

But that's a year from now.

Anyhow, one note that resonated with me the most, and the one I immediately set out to correct, was my ending. More than one person has remarked that it's REALLY depressing. It's not supposed to be. It's supposed to be bittersweet, but that's evidently not coming across, and some readers feel a bit let down.

So I said "But in Dawn of the Dead they end up thinking they're safe until they're attacked by a horde of zombies. And in Night of the Living Dead everybody dies."

Except those are horror movies, and as I am so fond of telling people, this is not a horror film. It's an action film.

And before you get all "But it has zombies!" Yeah well Twilight has vampires. So shut up.

I can't be a hypocrite. I can't keep going on about how my story is an action film and then ignore one of the staples of the action genre - the stabilized ending. Action films don't always have a happy ending, but they're Shakespearean. They always end with a king on the throne. And my ending left things all out of balance and hopeless.

So I added four lines of dialogue in various places and that's all it took. Now when the producers who pick it up read it they won't be quite as depressed. I still don't do happy endings, but at least this one won't quite make you want to slit your wrists as you leave the theater.

The only annoying thing is that it made the script go from 112-113 pages. One hundred thirteen is a prime number. My OCD senses are aggravated, but it's worth it if my script sells or gets me a job just a little bit faster.