Member DiP Posted July 19, 2011 Member Share Posted July 19, 2011 A while ago, I got into a short discussion at YT concerning differences between the alley fight in SPL and end fight in TMFN. The guy who I discussed with seemed to favor realism though and brought up good points of the SPL fight lacking anger and madness in the acting, as well as visceral impact of what real violence brings and that it's flowery, showy, less brutal and hard-hitting in comparison. However, while I can agree with those points (from a realistic stand-point anyway), the overall aspects of onscreen fighting was missing in the discussion which had me thinking alot about advantages and disadvantages both have. Anyway, I wanted to see what you guys think about the quality of these two scenes in terms of highs and lows. How would you compare them regarding choreography, camerawork, editing, acting, and overall execution? p56obZuCDYY 2oMyaj_upmE&feature=related Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member mpm74 Posted July 19, 2011 Member Share Posted July 19, 2011 MFNW all the way. It's quality all-round. Those damn slow motion shots kill it for me in SPL. There's no intensity to it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member OpiumKungFuCracker Posted July 19, 2011 Member Share Posted July 19, 2011 put my vote for MFNW too.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member Drunken Monk Posted July 19, 2011 Member Share Posted July 19, 2011 I think the "SPL" fight wins by a landslide. Granted, the slow motion is a little irksome but the kinetic action, frantic weapon skill on display and wide camera angles makes it far superior in my eyes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member Delirious Posted July 19, 2011 Member Share Posted July 19, 2011 SPL all the way. Artistically, the contrast lightning creates better atmosphere. Overall blue surrounding with over saturated concentration of red neon light, it brings out the furious intensity of the fight. And the most importance thing is the camera work: Donnie actually zoomed the camera out and filmed in long sequence. It showcases the harmonic rhythm and chemistry between the two actors, and their legitimacy as martial artists. While rewatching MFNW, I see a lot of quick editing and camera changes to compensate the lack of preparation and rhythm between the actors. Aesthetic and technicality, SPL wins by a landslide. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member odioustrident Posted July 19, 2011 Member Share Posted July 19, 2011 MFNW is surprisingly intricate just a little too liberal with the camera work. That SPL fight is one of the best of the 2000's and one of the few from that decade to break new ground in choreography. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member Lionclaw Posted July 19, 2011 Member Share Posted July 19, 2011 This is a hard one. SPLs fight was as beautiful gritty fighting can get. Everything just seemed right about it from the choreography to the music. I've had to have seen that fight at least 70 times. The Man From Nowhere had me emotionally got from the beginning. As far as knife on knife fights go it will place top on my list. It was very gritty with interesting camera angles and skills involved. I'd say SPL edges the fight because it seems like more work and time was put into it, thats all. Both fights were amazing and both fights have a special place in my heart. Its just that SPL had a special place in my heart first.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member Mark Pollard Posted July 19, 2011 Member Share Posted July 19, 2011 Excellent fight sequences to compare! Neither is better because they flow differently. Here's my take purely looking at the choreography rather than the emotional context of the sequences. SPL's scene is like jazz with two skilled performers improvising and playing off each other within the basic framework of a single tune. This is the improvisational, forward-thinking Donnie Yen, possibly at his best. TMFN appears to be more like skilled classical musicians following extremely well orchestrated sheet music. Tighter editing and more methodical exchanges emphasize greater structure and pre-visualization of this scene. TMFN wins when judging purely on realism. While the SPL scene is quite gritty by Hong Kong standards, the other is more so. It doesn't rely on dramatic music, slo mo and broad flourishes, although creative license is taken with the camera work and editing. I would say this isn't a detractor but purely an artistic decision to enhance the intensity of the fight. Also, while both scenes paint violence as ugly, the end to TMFN looks more authentic. It's not "heroic" to stab your opponent multiple times until they're dead but that's what an attacker would have to do against an armed opponent that's actually fighting for their life. SPL ends with more of a dramatic fatality which suits the Hong Kong style. Time for me to watch TMFN. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderator One Armed Boxer Posted July 20, 2011 Moderator Share Posted July 20, 2011 A tough one to call, for me I would probably go with 'SPL' as well, based both on choreography and emotional content. In terms of character both movies work as opposites to each other, in 'SPL' Donnie Yen does what he does best, plays an angry cop, but doesn't give us much to connect with....were as Sammo Hung gives us a well rounded villain with a clear motivation which makes things not as black and white as they seem. In 'The Man From Nowhere' we have a well developed lead character to root for, but the bad guys come across as cardboard cut outs. Even though the fight being discussed from 'SPL' isn't the one with Sammo, Wu Jing's character is still connected and has been ruthlessly killing Yen's partners in the scenes preceding the alley fight, so I felt I had more invested in the scene. That, combined with the fact that I watched 'SPL' when it first came out, and there hadn't been such a creative and exciting onscreen fight for what felt like many years at that point in time, just makes me favor that movie more. 'The Man From Nowhere' still delivers a good finale, but the one man armed with a knife against many reminded me of the finale of another Korean movie, 'Soo', which plays out in a similar fashion (& ironically, in relation to Mark Pollard's post, actually is set to classical music!)....but I would go so far to say that the finale of 'Soo' is even more desperate and bloody than 'The Man From Nowhere', if anybody is interested to check it out I've posted a clip below - BcmiiLdpZvg Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member luckystars Posted July 20, 2011 Member Share Posted July 20, 2011 Not wishing to get into deep discussion, but both fights are aiming for a different dramatic asthetic, and 'tell a different story' with choriography... SPL (by the way its lit, filmed, the score and the choreography) is all about adrenaline and showboating. The 2 exponents are styled as nearly indestructible 'superheroes'. This styling is even more accentuated with the Donnie vs Sammo finale. If you compared that one instead the two films have nothing in common. I haven't seen 'The Man From Nowhere' but from that clip the dramatic emphasis was on the danger of the blades in fast, very close contact. And it was filmed in a straight, more 'naturalistic' way (with the shaky 'hand held' camera shots to help sell that 'realism'), but obviously the fighting style is still highly exaggerated. Both good fights in their own way. Personally I love the lavishly visual styling on the SPL one...love that film. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member odioustrident Posted July 20, 2011 Member Share Posted July 20, 2011 No two bits of choreography can be compared across the kung fu canon. If there was all this objective value of course there would be little subjective appeal to us. It is fun to compare these though, and in imo SPL brings a lot more new stuff to the table. Can't miss an opportunity to post these. NO3FczQB0ws vS6x0-mHDxk Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member ShaOW!linDude Posted July 20, 2011 Member Share Posted July 20, 2011 I'm going with SPL. I always prefer MA over 'basher' style fighting. It's great choreography and brought Wu Jing to the forefront of fans' attention. He's plays a good psycho. I've yet to see TMFN. That knife fight was pretty cool though. Hey, OAB, thanks for posting the clip from Soo. Now I can save myself from sitting through the whole thing. If I'd done that and it ended with melee fighting like that, I'd've been disappointed. No, I'd've been pissed. Now that I know sort of what to expect I might still check it out in the future and be more appreciative of it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderator One Armed Boxer Posted July 21, 2011 Moderator Share Posted July 21, 2011 It's great choreography and brought Wu Jing to the forefront of fans' attention. He's plays a good psycho. Agreed...it's a shame he was never able to fully capitalize on it, and has now stated he wishes to quit making movies in HK all together, preferring to focus on TV work on the mainland. On one hand it's a shame, but on the other in all honesty he has never made one standout movie where you can say "this is the one where Wu Jing really gets to show his stuff". It should have been 'Legendary Assassin', but somehow that movie managed to fail on almost every level. Hey, OAB, thanks for posting the clip from Soo. Now I can save myself from sitting through the whole thing. If I'd done that and it ended with melee fighting like that, I'd've been disappointed. No, I'd've been pissed. Now that I know sort of what to expect I might still check it out in the future and be more appreciative of it. Well in fairness Korean movies over the last 20 years, and in particular 'Soo', are not made to be viewed as martial arts movies....by that I mean one of the main reasons to watch it shouldn't be the fight scenes or finale. The closest Korea has got recently to intentionally producing a movie where the main focus is the fighting is 'City of Violence'. Wilson Yip & Donnie Yen both describe 'SPL' as a police thriller, but let's face it when people watch it for the first time...including myself, the main thing I'm looking forward to was seeing Yen, Wu Jing, & Sammo Hung in action....and that's also what people will talk about whenever the movie is brought up. Also Korean movies don't really go for stylised action, at least not in the same way Hong Kong movies do....if you're looking for intricate and lengthy exchanges, the recent Korean movie scene is definitely the wrong place to look. Most violence in their movies centers on the ugliness and desperation that it brings, from the clip of 'Soo' that I posted to scenes like the hammer fight from 'OldBoy', style and fluidity are never the intention. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member daisho2004 Posted July 22, 2011 Member Share Posted July 22, 2011 WOW! That's a tough one but I did like the Alley fight scene in SPL but inside the Pool room TMFNW was Off the Hook! So I'm split on this one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member Tosh Posted July 23, 2011 Member Share Posted July 23, 2011 While they're both great fights, and SPL was one of the better movies to have come out in the last decade I'm going to have to go with TMFNW(loved the noise for the grinding between the knives), if the SPL fight would of been edited down a bit and took those Wuxia moves out, which were totally unneeded, like the slow motion knife going off the baton and Yen backing up, it would be a better fight scene imo. I'm just glad they didn't do the twirly spin that seems to be in evey modern movie:neutral: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Administrator KUNG FU BOB Posted July 23, 2011 Administrator Share Posted July 23, 2011 I love both of these scenes, but SPL wins for me. The scene in TMFN is really something and was a great payoff to what came before. But the SPL scene tops it for me. Contrary to what was said early in this thread, personally I found there to be great dramatic and emotional intent behind the Donnie/Wu Jing fight, and after everything that happened leading up to that moment I (and an entire theater full of people) were on the edge of their seats for this fight. Of course, the fact that Wilson Yip, Sammo Hung and Wu Jing were all sitting in the same audience with us may have added just a bit to the excitement I was lucky enough to see both of these at film festival screenings and to experience them the way they were meant to be seen. People were definitely gasping during the end fight in TMFN, but during SPL the alley fight completely charged up the whole room and people were roaring with excitement and going crazy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member DiP Posted July 24, 2011 Author Member Share Posted July 24, 2011 Great feedback guys! Here's my take on this: Strengths of the SPL fight is how the choreography displayed techniques with such wide space and how the actors relied on their whole bodies to sell the fight choreography without the need to make things complicated. The outcome is very beautiful and thanks to the camerawork, editing, and cinematography/lighting you will see that Donnie wanted to attract and make viewers appreciate the performances as a whole and see that they (Donnie/Wu Jing) did all those stuff as open and real as possible and without being doubled. But it's near perfect. Acting-wise, I think Donnie could've cleaned up a little because there's instances where his character out-behaves against his characteristic development. The fight is supposed to convey two characters showing anger and mercilessness, according to how both were build up. Yet out of nowhere Donnie starts preening (the long walk forward with the camera in front of him moving backwards), and then in the middle both guys starts doing shapes with their weapons to look cool. All that destroys the momentum of the scene and everything else about their characters that was set up until that point. It's like those martial arts movies where you see the martial arts actors act in one particular way for the fight scenes but acts differently for the rest of the movie. The TMFN fight pulled off intensity and brutality perfectly and in its' own fresh way but the way they captured the choreography and the actors shows an amount of intricacy that can be hard to make out. The scene starts with a long take of exchanges and had a good ending which are the best parts. But toward and during the middle, the fight goes Bourne-style (due to the actors' general incapabilities in onscreen fighting) and into first-person, the latter of which was out of place for such a realistic fight. Plus the scene was built through extreme rage which meant the actors moved on to finishing techniques too early not giving more hints of how great the antagonist's fight ability was, considering that he was a potential threat to the protagonist earlier in the toilet scene. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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