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midge posted:HOLYYYYYYYYYYYY SHITTTTTTTTTTTT It’s fun, great, and Clive Owen was great in it, I have no idea why people think it wants to be Crank or something or that Statham would have been better, I don’t think he would have gotten it like Clive Owen did.
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Sep 10, 2020 15:09
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Gatts posted:It’s fun, great, and Clive Owen was great in it, I have no idea why people think it wants to be Crank or something or that Statham would have been better, I don’t think he would have gotten it like Clive Owen did. IIRC it was like a Raid/Dredd situation with how closely they were finished/etc. vs. when they were actually released. It's fun stuff though and a different vibe from Crank so I don't really get it either but I think that's why.
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Sep 10, 2020 15:15
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Keep in mind this is right at the height of the Bourne era, where the most prominent action series was very somber and grounded(and arguably boring). So two zany over the top action films coming out in the midst of that were going to be connected to each other in people's minds because they both stood out from the pack in similar ways.
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Sep 10, 2020 15:19
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Basebf555 posted:Keep in mind this is right at the height of the Bourne era, where the most prominent action series was very somber and grounded(and arguably boring). So two zany over the top action films coming out in the midst of that were going to be connected to each other in people's minds because they both stood out from the pack in similar ways. It's interesting now that you mention that, 2006-2007 was like a transitional time. I looked up lists of action movies released in those two years and it's like you say, but it's also when Underworld and 300 (and some other stuff like Apocalypto) came out and going forward from there you can definitely see a shift. The majority of less grounded action at that point seems to mostly be YA targeted stuff.
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Sep 10, 2020 16:03
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Adkins has mentioned Bourne in his videos a few times and it's always interesting. Because he's somewhat deferential(he was in one of them after all!), he usually makes a point of saying that the movies overall are very good, but he clearly feels that they had a negative effect on action films that took a while to get past. I'd love to hear Adkins thoughts on the Taken series.
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Sep 10, 2020 16:07
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I think the Bourne films really cemented the practice of hiding the actor's lack of skill with editing. Also the trend of using some very specific styles of martial arts with the idea that they're more realistic.
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Sep 10, 2020 16:14
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The crazy thing about that though is Damon actually put in the work and had the skill to be shot more clearly. It was just a stylistic choice by Greengrass. But then other directors took the wrong lesson from it.
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Sep 10, 2020 16:27
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Paul Greengrass is the reason I've seen The Bourne Identity like 10 times but have only seen Supremacy and Ultimatum once each.
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Sep 10, 2020 18:32
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Shoot 'em Up made it cool to eat carrots. I will forever love it and Constantine for sending up the trope of the cool action hero dude who smokes.
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Sep 10, 2020 19:02
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One of my favorite hide the actor's lack of martial arts things ever will be when Nicholas Cage kicks that woman into a wall in The Wicker Man remake. It's like Mitchell climbing over that gate level jump in space in time.
Neo Rasa fucked around with this message at 19:27 on Sep 10, 2020 |
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Sep 10, 2020 19:24
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Grendels Dad posted:Shoot 'em Up made it cool to eat carrots. I will forever love it and Constantine for sending up the trope of the cool action hero dude who smokes. Don't forget Cobra where Stallone has a matchstick in his mouth (something some folks do when quitting smoking) and his partner Gonzales (with an S totally unrelated from the partner Gonzalez with a Z from the Dirty Harry series played by the same actor original character do not steal) eats candy instead of smoking. 
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Sep 10, 2020 19:26
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Basebf555 posted:The crazy thing about that though is Damon actually put in the work and had the skill to be shot more clearly. It was just a stylistic choice by Greengrass. But then other directors took the wrong lesson from it. It’s just a whole bunch of misconceptions and false dichotomies. Even in this case, there’s nothing ‘unclear’ in the later Bourne movies. They’re extremely clear about how the Bourne character thinks and moves. The idea that editing and cinematography cover up the action is false; it’s not how movies work. That’s akin to when people complain about those black bars at the top and bottom of a widescreen image. It’s imagined that the bars are covering up something really important, and not purposefully changing the composition of the image - like you’ll find something other than, in all probability, a boom mic. When you get these kinds of complaint, people are reacting to something, but they don’t know what. It’s not the ostensible target of the complaint, like the quality of the camerawork or the actors’ skills, because both are fine. But we can say that the action in Bourne isn’t naturalistic, and that that’s what people are actually objecting to. The camera is moving in unnatural ways, and the fact that this is deliberate means the filmmakers are deliberately not doing other, more expected things.
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Sep 10, 2020 19:48
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I never had any trouble following the action in Greengrass's Bourne films. No matter how rapid the cutting or how much the camera was moving, he always made it clear what you were supposed to be looking at in each shot. Simple things like making the various vehicles in the car chases visually distinct helped a lot as well. (I loving love Ronin and think the two big chases in it are among the best ever filmed, but I know more than a few people who had trouble following the Paris chase because the main cars are very similar in shape and colour. The different headlights and grilles weren't enough; they just saw "dark-coloured cars".) On a sidenote to that last, I knew someone who found the dogfights in Top Gun incomprehensible because she literally could not tell the aircraft apart. All she saw were "planes".
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Sep 10, 2020 21:38
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Payndz posted:I never had any trouble following the action in Greengrass's Bourne films. No matter how rapid the cutting or how much the camera was moving, he always made it clear what you were supposed to be looking at in each shot. Simple things like making the various vehicles in the car chases visually distinct helped a lot as well. (I loving love Ronin and think the two big chases in it are among the best ever filmed, but I know more than a few people who had trouble following the Paris chase because the main cars are very similar in shape and colour. The different headlights and grilles weren't enough; they just saw "dark-coloured cars".) It's funny thinking about the things like that that are obvious to some but not others. When I first lived with my girlfriend-now-wife and her roommate we could be watching something and they'd spot some fashion by a certain designer and I was mystified at how they knew who designed the clothing just by the look. But then we'd watch a movie and some character flies across country and I'd go "who was the continuity person for this, the take-off plane isn't the same as the plane that landed!" And they'd look at me like a freak.
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Sep 10, 2020 22:56
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I love Shoot 'em Up and one of my favourite things about it is you can play the first minute to someone and know whether they'll love the rest of it by the first carrot interaction shown. 
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Sep 10, 2020 23:35
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Basebf555 posted:Adkins has mentioned Bourne in his videos a few times and it's always interesting. Because he's somewhat deferential(he was in one of them after all!), he usually makes a point of saying that the movies overall are very good, but he clearly feels that they had a negative effect on action films that took a while to get past. It's sort of like shaky cam from Saving Private Ryan. SPR is shot so well that people often forget that it has shaky cam, because it uses it differently to most of its heirs. The subject of the shot stays consistent (a tank, a bunker, a group of soldiers) and the camera's point of focus orbits that subject without ever leaving it, so you're always looking at the same thing, the camera's just moving a little. the latter Bourne films cut a lot in their shaky cam, but each cut has a purpose. The third definitely does it better than the second, and you can see the idea develop. But there's definitely a real idea behind it. Halloween Jack posted:I think the Bourne films really cemented the practice of hiding the actor's lack of skill with editing. Also the trend of using some very specific styles of martial arts with the idea that they're more realistic. This isn't true at all. Damon really loving put the work in. The b-roll footage in the making of confirms that beyond any reasonable doubt. And there's always been faddy martial arts. I did martial arts for a lot of my early life and there's literally always some new one that's actually fifty years old that is the new, real one (as opposed to those other, not real ones) Just in my lifetime, it's been Muay Thai, Jiu Jitsu Hapkido, BJJ, Krav Maga, CQC, Kali/Eskrima...even as the UFC has demonstrated that freestyle and greco roman wrestling are actually superb bases for real fighting. There are films that hide the actor with editing, and they're a shitload older than any of the Bourne movies.
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Sep 10, 2020 23:49
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Boco_T posted:Paul Greengrass is the reason I've seen The Bourne Identity like 10 times but have only seen Supremacy and Ultimatum once each. Supremacy is much better on a TV then in the cinema where it's a confusing mess. I wonder how much of the shakycam looked fantastic on the director's little monitor and in the editing room. At what point do they go to cinema size screens in post to see the effect ? Long before test screenings ? Surely some of the test audiences will have noted the action scenes were impossible to follow.
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Sep 11, 2020 08:59
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The first Bourne movie is the only film I have ever fallen asleep during at the cinema. I think the combination of having to sit closer than I usually would to the screen due to it being release day and trying to follow the shaky cam just fried my brain and knocked me out. In other fall asleep film I only managed to stay awake for Blade Runner on the 9th time through. I'd nod off about 45 minutes in and wake during the credits.
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Sep 11, 2020 09:25
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Neo Rasa posted:One of my favorite hide the actor's lack of martial arts things ever will be when Nicholas Cage kicks that woman into a wall in The Wicker Man remake. It's like Mitchell climbing over that gate level jump in space in time. lol I looked this up to remind myself and the scene where he asks for help in the pub is almost Breenlike in its ineptitude https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5pkjg5_RH8
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Sep 11, 2020 10:33
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CeeJee posted:Supremacy is much better on a TV then in the cinema where it's a confusing mess. I wonder how much of the shakycam looked fantastic on the director's little monitor and in the editing room. I think there's a lot of truth in this. I've never had a problem with following the flow of the Bourne fights, but I only saw them on the small screen. I also wonder how much of the problem is actually bad editing/filmwork and how much is us wanting to see the fight in clearer detail? I've been frustrated at not being able to get to see the choreography from a wider angle to appreciate it more, but I've never thought "WTF is going on?". Whereas one of the Taken films (they all blend together for me) had a scene that was so choppy it actually took me out of the scene. As action fans we want to see the work that the actor put in, so it's annoying when it's chopped up and served in a frantic pace to suit the story telling rather than the spectacle. With a Jackie Chan film they know that we're not there for story or dramatic beats - we want to watch Jackie Chan do his thing and we want to see every moment of it, so we get a nice wide shot so we can kick back and say "holy gently caress, did you see that?!". Funnily enough, my favourite Jackie Chan scenes aren't the epic stunts or the crazy feats of athletisism, it's the little bits that chain together in one smooth shot that impress me. There's a scene in Mr Nice guy where he's fighting around some garden tools and does a crazy spring/flip thing that's a tiny part of the overall scene but thanks to the wide shot it actually triggered an argument among my friends ("no way that was real, he's got to be on wires!"). that would have been lost in modern film editing, or it could have been over-focused and lose the impressiveness of how casually such a crazy move was done. The Bourne films kind of fall between the genres where they want to be seen as dramas/thrillers rather than pure action, so the filming is geared more towards a dramatic audience than an action audience. While I'm watching thinking "drat, I really wanted to see that move from a better angle" my wife is watching and thinking "this is a desperate, fast fight for our hero". Short version - shakey cam and fast editing is the action movie version of a romantic love scene. As action fans we want porn.
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Sep 11, 2020 12:52
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Boco_T posted:Paul Greengrass is the reason I've seen The Bourne Identity like 10 times but have only seen Supremacy and Ultimatum once each.  I think Bourne Identity is a delightful romp of an action film that manages to squeeze genuine emotion out of a pretty sterile tom clancy-esque narrative. The sequels are seizure-inducing nightmares. And I will die mad about them fridging Marie.
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Sep 11, 2020 13:58
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Dog_Meat posted:I think there's a lot of truth in this. I've never had a problem with following the flow of the Bourne fights, but I only saw them on the small screen. Batman Begins is a huge offender to me too. It's not even cut THAT badly or particularly hard to follow (and the staccato-ness of it matches how Batman is generally working by dropping in and out of sight and quickly taking out folks), but like, they were really talking up the keysi fighting method bullshit and how they put in a lot of work to use that with how Batman would work to make a unique fighting style and stuff and like, if you committed that much why would you not show it?
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Sep 11, 2020 14:35
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Dog_Meat posted:As action fans we want to see the work that the actor put in, so it's annoying when it's chopped up and served in a frantic pace to suit the story telling rather than the spectacle. With a Jackie Chan film they know that we're not there for story or dramatic beats - we want to watch Jackie Chan do his thing and we want to see every moment of it, so we get a nice wide shot so we can kick back and say "holy gently caress, did you see that?!" The issue here is that you are, actually, watching Jackie Chan for the story. For example, Who Am I? - which seems like a pretty good comparison to the Bourne movies, given that it's the same plot - is absolutely 'chopped up'. There's a ton of editing. Extremely simple actions, like "Jackie knocks over a pile of shoes" are presented from a variety of angles, and then cut together for reasons that are purely narrative. The shoe thing uses four different shots to present a very basic stunt, because the actual point is to show that the Jackie Chan character is surprised and disoriented - "covering up" the fact that Jackie Chan was not actually surprised at all. Editing also let them adjust the timing of the fall, and let them sneak the goons chasing Jackie back into the scene. It's all editing trickery; those guys weren't actually there in the previous couple shots. Jackie was pretending to be chased, but nobody was actually chasing him. So if you wanted to see Jackie Chan outrun some dudes and then bump into some shoes 'for real', then you should be be horribly disappointed. They could have done that in one shot, showing "every moment of Jackie Chan doing his thing" - but they didn't.
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Sep 11, 2020 15:20
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Jackie and Sammo Hung used cuts to clarify the action, and to emphasize impact. The Bourne shakey-cam style is more about frenetic chaos, so they have pretty opposite goals. So it's not about how many cuts there are, but why they are there and how they're used. When you watch a Jackie scene you never say "how did that guy get hit exactly?", you know where each punch is coming from and it's impact is clearly shown(even if a cut is used).
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Sep 11, 2020 15:44
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Basebf555 posted:Jackie and Sammo Hung used cuts to clarify the action, and to emphasize impact. The Bourne shakey-cam style is more about frenetic chaos, so they have pretty opposite goals. So it's not about how many cuts there are, but why they are there and how they're used. When you watch a Jackie scene you never say "how did that guy get hit exactly?", you know where each punch is coming from and it's impact is clearly shown(even if a cut is used). Forget it Jake, it's SMG.
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Sep 11, 2020 15:49
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:
Dude... let me be clear about how me and my friends watched Jackie Chan movies in the early 90s. - put on movie - talk poo poo and generally act like teenage assholes while the talking bits are on - see a fight scene start and say "here we go..." - alternate between saying "holy poo poo" and "laughing our asses off" - resume teenage assholeness when the fighting stops and talking starts Funny you mention Who Am I. I was so bored with that I literally forwarded through the whole film and the only part I remember is the rooftop fight. I should point out that I'm not some ADHD riddled kid who needs shiny things, but when I rent a Jackie Chan film I want to see him get his rear end kicked, nearly die on a roof and take out a bunch of guys using every item in the room. That said, when I watched The Foreigner I didn't apply this criteria because I knew from the trailer it was a more "serious" role and was genuinely intrigued to see how it would go. Neo Rasa posted:Batman Begins is a huge offender to me too. It's not even cut THAT badly or particularly hard to follow (and the staccato-ness of it matches how Batman is generally working by dropping in and out of sight and quickly taking out folks), but like, they were really talking up the keysi fighting method bullshit and how they put in a lot of work to use that with how Batman would work to make a unique fighting style and stuff and like, if you committed that much why would you not show it? This was actually an example I was thinking of. Thematically it makes sense and works extremely well, but I was left with blueballs at the thought of a method acting Christian Bale learning to beat the poo poo out of people and not actually showing it on screen.
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Sep 11, 2020 15:56
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With Batman, and Bale was no exception, it's usually about the restrictiveness of the suit. Especially by The Dark Knight, Bale could barely move in that thing. The only reason Affleck was able to do such a great fight scene in Batman v Superman is because like half the suit was CG.
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Sep 11, 2020 15:59
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Basebf555 posted:Jackie and Sammo Hung used cuts to clarify the action, and to emphasize impact. The Bourne shakey-cam style is more about frenetic chaos, so they have pretty opposite goals. So it's not about how many cuts there are, but why they are there and how they're used. When you watch a Jackie scene you never say "how did that guy get hit exactly?", you know where each punch is coming from and it's impact is clearly shown(even if a cut is used). Well, again: no. The four shots of Jackie running into the pile of shoes don't clarify the action at all, compared to a theorhetical oner or full-3D interactive simulation. The shot choices actually ensure that we are denied plot information about, for example, where the goons are in relation to Jackie. This is done in order to make it more of a surprise when they grab him from the pile of shoes. And that's storytelling. If we truly only care about the stunt action, then this element of surprise shouldn't be there at all. To the other end, there's nothing particularly chaotic about the action in Bourne. What the style actually conveys, narratively, is the split-second decisionmaking of the Bourne character - who acts instinctively, but with extreme precision.
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Sep 11, 2020 16:10
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Jackie running into a pile of shoes isn't really the type of "action" we're discussing but sure, continue making points about Jackie and the pile of shoes.
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Sep 11, 2020 16:15
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Has anyone seen that Mulan film because I really need to bellyache about how miserable that action is
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Sep 11, 2020 16:21
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Basebf555 posted:Jackie running into a pile of shoes isn't really the type of "action" we're discussing but sure, continue making points about Jackie and the pile of shoes. Uhhh, it’s a stunt like any other. It’s the kind of thing where, if this were an untrained actor, the filmmakers certainly would have employed a double. Not only are the shoes evidently real wooden clogs, Jackie goes right through the wooden rack that supports them. And that’s no easy feat, even if it is a specially-created prop. And we can use additional concrete examples. The centrepiece shot in the shoe chase/fight has Jackie kick a thrown shoe back at his assailant and then do a cool stomp on his feet with the clogs. However! This is actually two shots. Jackie does a cool jump, and then we cut to a close-up of some feet being stomped. This cut is not done to ‘enhance the impact’ of some real action, because there was no actual impact. If you’ve got a quick eye, you can see that Jackie actually grabs the guy to brace himself and ensure that he hits his mark safely and no impact occurs. In the logic of this thread, this use of editing to create action from nothing is bad because it’s disguising Jackie Chan’s lack of skill. He wasn’t actually able to stomp on the guy’s feet in reality, so they used two different shots - shots filmed minutes or hours apart - to create an illusion. SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 16:49 on Sep 11, 2020 |
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Sep 11, 2020 16:45
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Snowman_McK posted:This isn't true at all. Damon really loving put the work in. The b-roll footage in the making of confirms that beyond any reasonable doubt. Payndz posted:I never had any trouble following the action in Greengrass's Bourne films. No matter how rapid the cutting or how much the camera was moving, he always made it clear what you were supposed to be looking at in each shot. I don't even want to pick on Greengrass' style in particular, much less repeat reviewers' cliches that the action made them "seasick," etc. In keeping with what Base said, I think other directors used Greengrass as an excuse to be sloppy. Damon actually has the skill to go through a simple exchange of technique without multiple cuts. All filmmakers use multiple cuts for a single motion, including renowned Hong Kong kung fu directors, but they are capable of staging something as simple as a punch without three or four cuts. quote:And there's always been faddy martial arts. I did martial arts for a lot of my early life and there's literally always some new one that's actually fifty years old that is the new, real one (as opposed to those other, not real ones) Just in my lifetime, it's been Muay Thai, Jiu Jitsu Hapkido, BJJ, Krav Maga, CQC, Kali/Eskrima...even as the UFC has demonstrated that freestyle and greco roman wrestling are actually superb bases for real fighting. Then this poo poo shows up in Jack Reacher, where it's supposed to be this "no nonsense" military CQC, and he's doing the same spinning elbows and punching people in the leg. Bringing it back to the Bourne films, they did inspire a lot of fight scenes where the premise is that a character is this relentlessly efficient killing machine, and the way they express that through their fighting style is to do a lot of trapping techniques and then beat their enemy to death with household objects. SuperMechagodzilla posted:When you get these kinds of complaint, people are reacting to something, but they don’t know what. It’s not the ostensible target of the complaint, like the quality of the camerawork or the actors’ skills, because both are fine. Lurdiak posted:I will die mad about them fridging Marie.
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Sep 11, 2020 17:17
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Halloween Jack posted:Same but for Nicky. I feel like that was even worse because it was so predictable and transparent. Like, there was no real reason for her character to even be there but you know they said "poo poo it's been like ten years since the last movie, we need some sort of connection to the original trilogy that fans can latch onto and give Bourne a reason to get pissed off".
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Sep 11, 2020 17:27
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Marie came as a shock, but with Nicky there was the grim inevitability of waiting for another character you like to be murdered as fuel for the latest Bourne-seeks-revenge plot.  I would honestly only have been surprised if she hadn't died.
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Sep 11, 2020 17:38
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I'd like to know what Stiles got for that movie because a good agent would've been exerting leverage to get her maximum dollars. She was literally the one and only character that had any sort of connection to Bourne that was left out there to bring back for story motivation.
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Sep 11, 2020 17:40
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:
No.
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Sep 11, 2020 17:52
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Neo Rasa posted:Batman Begins is a huge offender to me too. It's not even cut THAT badly or particularly hard to follow (and the staccato-ness of it matches how Batman is generally working by dropping in and out of sight and quickly taking out folks), but like, they were really talking up the keysi fighting method bullshit and how they put in a lot of work to use that with how Batman would work to make a unique fighting style and stuff and like, if you committed that much why would you not show it? I think they don't show it because it actually looks really stupid. A friend of mine actually went and lived at the monestary that developed it and the entire style pretty much revolves around holding your head and doing elbows
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Sep 11, 2020 17:59
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Uh, excuse me, you forgot vital Keysi techniques such as hammerfists, punches to the leg, and putting people in a headlock and then letting them go. They probably never even taught your "friend" how to turn your back to your opponent as often as possible.
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Sep 11, 2020 18:08
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Dog_Meat posted:No. Like the entire point of the scene is the shoe narrative, where Jackie loses his shoes and then gets superpowered Dutch shoes. The simple fact is that if folks truly only care about the stunts, then we can abandon movies entirely and switch to raw behind-the-scenes footage.
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Sep 11, 2020 18:43
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B-Rock452 posted:I think they don't show it because it actually looks really stupid. A friend of mine actually went and lived at the monestary that developed it and the entire style pretty much revolves around holding your head and doing elbows Yeah looking at it more now oh my lord what were they thinking. Like Halloween Jack posted it really is one of those Black Belt Magazine THIS IS THE REAL poo poo scams. Given that it was Batman it would have been interesting to see if they did show the whole thing how the world would have reacted, like would we be seeing tons of keysi places in strip malls instead of Tiger Schulmanns? The Dark Knight had a restrictive suit too but I remember the action in that felt like a good balance, it has a lot of the same issues of folks waiting around for Batman to do a move on them or whatever but still a step up. Halloween Jack posted:Bringing it back to the Bourne films, they did inspire a lot of fight scenes where the premise is that a character is this relentlessly efficient killing machine, and the way they express that through their fighting style is to do a lot of trapping techniques and then beat their enemy to death with household objects. The 2006 movie The Sentinel has a lot of this. There's an "amazing" point where Michael Douglas has to escape a house or whatever and to get the drop on someone he opens a freezer door in someone's face. And I'm sad I can't find a clip of it on YouTube because it's really shot like a massive game changing moment out of nowhere with how plainly the rest of the movie is presented with super choppy slow motion and everything. Not a terrible flick overall but the plot and Kiefer Sutherland being a no nonsense agent, it had to have been an unused 24 script from when they were talking about doing multiple 24 movies. Neo Rasa fucked around with this message at 18:53 on Sep 11, 2020 |
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Sep 11, 2020 18:50
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