This time, we’ll be talking about action scenes, specifically the church fight in Kingsman, Max vs Furiosa in Mad Max Fury Road and the stairwell fight scene in Atomic Blonde, and how each was crafted in a way that serves that film effectively. I’ll give some descriptions but it would really be more understandable if y’all go to our website and check out the youtube links to the scenes.
There’s a scale, here, of how realistic the fight scenes in these 3 films are supposed to be: Kingsman is the most unrealistic, followed by Fury Road, and then Atomic Blonde is the most gritty and real. This scale means that for these 3 films, its directors / cinematographers / editors would have had different aims in mind.
For Kingsman, I think they were trying to be a breath of fresh air in the overly-serious spy film genre, in that it’s almost meta in its comedy and use of spy tropes. For action scenes, violence is portrayed with a detachment and revelry in the gore of it that’s more reminiscent of a video game than a spy movie. As such, the church fight scene — where Harry Hart gets influenced by Valentine’s drug (?) and massacres the entire church — isn’t meant to be realistic or gritty. Even if the gore makes you wince it’s meant to be easy to watch, fun and enjoyable. And so, we have a really upbeat rock track played over the entire violent, messy ordeal called Free Bird, setting the atmosphere of the scene and highlighting the action as being more for our entertainment than anything. Noticeably, it’s also edited to look like a one-take, with cuts sneakily hidden. This is done through having someone / something obstruct the lens (e.g. getting thrown across screen), with muzzle flare from Harry’s gun, or whip pans sped up in post — there’s a youtube video that explains it a lot better than I do.
Furthermore, in terms of camera movement, we’re made to feel like we’re following Harry as he jumps and rolls and ducks his way through the fray, as the camera sticks to his every movement. Most of his actions is followed up by the camera moving in the same direction (e.g. when he punches the camera jerks too) such that the impact is greater and we feel it visually. And this is all really fitting with Kingsman’s nature as a movie. It’s a spy movie that isn’t taking itself too seriously, and prioritises giving us a good time. And so the camera’s eagerness to display all that gore, the ease of watching that comes with hidden cuts, the atmosphere of the music — all that helps with audience’s adrenaline-fuelled enjoyment. The camerawork as well makes sure that it feels like we’re with Harry in the church, and that we’re moving with him, ducking and rolling and hitting, so we not only think “wow, Harry’s real cool” but we also get the subconscious feeling of being with him, and therefore being cool too. Sounds like a bit of a stretch, but honestly subconscious influence works real well.
The Max vs Furiosa scene in Fury Road aims to be a little more realistic. Unlike in Kingsman, it takes itself and its stakes more seriously, in that our characters aren’t going to emerge unscathed — they’ll sustain injuries, and these injuries will matter in the plot. This time, there’s no mood-setting music, it’s just drums, but used effectively such that they coincide with hits and punches to maximise impact. Instead of the fancy camerawork in Kingsman, we have fast-paced editing to set and carry the pace of the scene.
Honestly, this is a really good example of editing to the flow of the scene. When Furiosa gets Max on the ground and puts the gun to his neck, the drum beats stop and there’s a series of quick cuts: Furiosa as she puts the gun to his neck, Max’s reaction, Furiosa’s finger squeezing the trigger only to find there’s no bullets, then Furiosa’s reaction, rearing back to bring the gun down towards Max’s face, the drum beat suddenly back just as the impact hits. That one moment of silence with the 3 quick cuts, letting the characters’ reactions speak for themselves without losing the momentum of the action — honestly editing well done.
Another really cool moment is almost right after, when Furiosa comes at Max with the metal rod and he falls backwards and scrambles to get away — there’s a bunch of cuts between Furiosa swinging the rod and Max scrambling that are really obvious when you watch for it, but somehow work seamlessly when you watch the scene as a whole. You don’t need Kingsman’s one take illusion to make an action scene look seamless, but rarely is it done as effectively as in Fury Road.
Furthermore, the reason why this fits with Fury Road as a movie is the sheer determination that this scene displays on both Max’s and Furiosa’s parts. Both of them are survivors, and they haven’t survived this long without being afraid to play dirty, to grit their teeth and push through pain, and get thrown in the sand while doing it. There’s no dialogue, no posturing, no dramatic sizing each other up — it’s just a fight for survival, even while the camerawork and editing gives us the opportunity to get to know these 2 characters better, with the close-ups on their reactions, and equal amount of attention given to both of them.
Of course, now we have the grittiest, most brutal of the 3: the stairwell scene in Atomic Blonde. Ah, watching this really made me wince. It’s 3 minutes (really long for a fight scene) of very very very painful stuff. What really sets this apart from the other 2 is the lack of background music. There’s nothing here to set the mood, other than grunts of pain, the hard thumps of exchanged hits, and roars of determination as the characters throw each other down the stairs. There’s no music, and so we’re forced to focus on the diegetic sounds of the fight. They also refrain from any dramatic visuals or colours — the colour scene is a barren thing of greys and blacks, allowing the fight choreography to be shown in all its brutal glory.
Unlike Kingsman, there’s no revelry or entertainment in this violence. It was probably made in the hopes of making the audience turn their faces away. Also, unlike Fury Road, what we see here isn’t determination — it’s desperation, gritty and real. There’s a pause after Lorraine gets thrown down the stairs. She sits back against the wall, breath coming in harsh pants, clutching her side, and the KGB agent above her is listing against the wall, as winded as she is. He staggers down the stairs, and there’s a moment where they just look each other, Lorraine crouched on the floor and the agent holding himself up with the banister. Both are too exhausted by the fight for a second, to even attack the other. If Fury Road’s Max vs Furiosa is a fight for survival, Atomic Blonde’s stairwell scene is a war of attrition, and the winner is the one that can dredge up that last bit of strength when her opponent is run out. And that fits with Atomic Blonde’s concept as a movie, being the closest to our reality out of the 3, and considering its aim for realistic portrayal.
So yeah, that was how these 3 action scenes work, and how their construction is congruent with each movie as a whole.
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