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The Matrix was one of the worst movies that tried to use martial arts. The fight scenes in The Matrix were so stupid and phony that I fell asleep while watching the movie. The sword fights in The Princess Bride were more exciting than the "martial arts" in The Matrix. It seems that most people nowadays like seeing martial arts that look good. Well, over 90% of that good looking "martial arts" is a bunch of crap! The "true martial arts" aren't about exhibitionism. The "true martial arts" were made for actual combat. Very few of the martial arts left today are still "combat arts". Bruce Lee would've been disgusted if he saw how the martials arts in the movies have degenerated to the phony level that The Matrix was. The one of the reasons why Bruce Lee was good in his films was becaused he was a commited martial artist that insisted on realism. He didn't silly fight scenes. He wanted the fights to be very realistic. Very few of the martial art fight scenes in movies nowadays are realistic. However, there are some movies that have good martial artists or fight scenes. Steven Seagal's new movie Exit Wounds looks promising. I heard that Chuck Norris is going back to the movies when the series Walker: Texas Ranger ends this year. I'd rather watch John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, or Charles Bronson slugging it out with "the villain" in a realistic slugfest instead of watching this guy doing one "jumping-reverse-spinning-wheel kick" after another to the head of all his twenty oppents.

Are you ABSOLUTELY insane? Unreal physics aside, I have it on VERY good authority, from several sources, including one freind of mine who does the most incredibly lethal and skilled martial art, says that the Matrix is the FIRST movie in ages that had REALISTIC fights- right down to the hand movements between strokes! I don't believe with all the chod out there you chose to criticise the one that got it right! I am totally bewildered! After all that trouble they took to actually teach the four main people the martial arts as well! They even included Drunken Boxing! Very few people know that there IS such an art as that- most of my friends thought it was an on-screen joke! My Cantonese friend was very upset...

Star Wars fights, on the other hand, are very rarely 'realistic' in any sense of the word.

And I would like to say with my futuristic force-sense, toGundark that I typed this post totally correctly, and I don't know what Gundark is talking about. And I certainly didn't edit it after seeing Gundark's post.

Very rarelyre what ? Or did you mean very rarely are ?

Bending out of the way of fired bullets? Yep, very realistic.

Yeah, but you weren't talking about that. You were talking about the Martial Arts and the moves that are used in the Matrix are very real. Either way is was still a great movie.

Sorry, Ushgarak...I guess I needed to put my glasses on.

I did specify that unreal physics ASIDE, the Matrix was spot on... and like the other great martial artists of all time, including Bruce Lee and his Jeet Kune Do, didn't put some fanatastical elements in their films...

Also, flashy and apparently unneccessary moves are in fact a large part of many Chinese martial arts and actually form a vital part of it (though Jeet Kune Do is actually an exception).

Well I liked the Matrix....I didn't watch it to critique the fight scenes...I watched it purely for entertainment. IMHO OC.

I would normally take that point of view as well but the starting post here really got my goat... it just wasn't on, it wasn't on at ALL.

Bruce Lee didn't like MOST martial arts because "It looks good, but it doesn't really work." I'm the same way, when it comes to seeing all these flasy Wushu arts. The artists are talented no doubt about it. It's just not very practically to use all those flasy moves in a back alley against 5 street thugs who are slashing knives, wielding chains, and swinging baseball bats at you. As Bruce said "Fighting is simple and direct."

A great, great fight scene and my favorite of all time is from the movie Raging Bull. It's the scene in which Joe Pesci goes nuts and proceeds to smash a glass in this guys face at a bar. He then runs outside, waits for the guy and when he appears Pesci beats him with a pole and smashes his head in a cab door several times. Anyone want to back me up on how authentic, funny and overall awesome that scene is?

I also wanted to mention that all Joe Pesci fight scenes are awesome. Check out some of the ones in GoodFfella's, Casino and Carlotta's Way. They're sick...

Tifa- nonsense.

Bruce Lee just didn't believe in maintaning flow, and wanted to jsutify that.Also, he was amalgamating so many arts that he didn;t have time for the flashy stuff.

Look more closely at the CHinese model, where all the great arts have come from. Nearly all of them use expressive movements to better concentrate your actions between moves and distract your opponent.

Drunken Boxing, which has countless stories- many true- in Cantonese literature, is entirely based around making an incredible amount of movement so you look like you're drunk, you see.And it was very. very lethal.

Bruce made a style decision, and fair play to him. But that does not mean that only he was right. Excessive movement has its definite place in martial arts. And even if you beleive that it is a bad thing, the fact is that is IS in these martial arts, those arts DO exist, WERE used in the real world and were very accurately seen in the Matrix.

I'm sorry the film bored you, I think you're missing out on a lot. But the fight scenes were very accurate.

New title, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon has the most realitic fight scenes.

I love the Roadhouse movie. The characters Sam Elliot, Patrick Swayze, and Marshal Teague played were such bad-asses. I liked when Dalton (Swayze) ripped Jimmy's (Teague) throat out. I cried when Wade (Elliot) was killed. I LMAO when Brad Wesley (Ben Gazzara) kept getting shot at the end and when the stuffed polar bear fell on Tinker (for the actor's name).

"Did you see anything Tinker?"

"A polar bear fell on me."

Now, CTHD is an interesting one... it's difficult to call. Certainly the martial arts were so intrinsically tied in with the 'impossible' moves, it's difficult to make a decision- unlike the Matrix, where it was all rather more distinct... the speed moves were just normal moves done faster, the flying through the air was normally after being hit, so it was effectively just a pause in the fight which was later resumed, and the bullet dodging was all out-of-fight...

I would go out on a limb and say yes, CTHD is the most realisitc. There were certainly nasty injuries on set when the moves were mis-timed- these people play hardball...

Roadhouse was pretty damn vicious, I'll give it that.

Go CTHD!!

If you want to talk about martial arts, visit my new forum Tifa's Martial Arts Academy.

pub52.ezboard.com/btifalo...gelforever

But Tifa, Final Fantasy has stupid fights as well. The characters take it in turns to hit each other.

Yes, the fighting moves looked silly in FF7. Ergheiz has better fight scenes and those are still comical, but that's video game fighting.

If a computer game manages to get decent martial arts in it, it will be a bloody mircale.

Just look at their attempts to getlightsabre fighting right. And that's even a fantasy concept!

There's a new game out called ONI, and it has rather realistic moves from what I've seen of it.

I'm more a quake kinda player myself. Though, as DD indicated before Alice is a greta game.

I can think of a really stupid fight scene. Between an entire legion of the emporer's best troops and some teddy bears with rocks and sticks.

You know, if the whole Ewok thing really WAS a Vietnam allegory, it was a pretty badly done one. The worst of any ofGL's allegories.

The Gungan battle in TPM was a far better example of a lower-tech (but not tech-incapable, by any means) people holding their own against superior forces... and they had the good decency to lose as well.

Hey, don't be so hard on the Ewoks .. Given that GL was working on Coppola's Apocalypse Now when he first came up with that concept, the whole Vietnam allegory really isn't suprising.

I am soooooo pleased that I don't understand a word you're talking about.

Yeah, but it was WOOKIES when he first came up with the concept, wasn't it?

I try not to lay too hard into the Ewoks- kid's film and everything etc.- but I really don't think they acheieved the point he wanted, while the Gungans did, Jar-Jar and all.

Yes, it was a little too naive. I disagree they achieved that with the Gungans though. For one, they lost. Were it not for Anakin disabling the entire army.
Second, the Ewoks WERE fighting a guerrilla war against soldiers out of their element. The Gungans were out there in an open field, army facing army. Much like Spartacus.

But let's face it, there were fun bits and after 18 years we sort of got to live with it.

FIne by me. So, not so stupid after all, just imperfect.

I always thought Commando was on of the worst offenders for fighting, in the sense that all the enemies rush headlong into Arnie's endless bullets while somehow firing 10,000 shots at him without hitting once.

Oh, I thought Rambo (II) was worse. The scene at the helicopter with sly half naked, being shot at by half the Vietnamese army firing an M-60 in one hand.

Or where the Vietnamese officer shoots at him several times near the waterfall and Sly nice and easily takes out his bow and arrow and blows him to bits.

I like the ewoks and wookiees. Underdogs.

Not really the point... besides, I don't think there's been any anti-Wookie sentiment. Wookies as underdogs? Doubtful.