A brief diatribe on the Hollywood Fight

Not some choreographed wrestling spectacular (1) but the way that your traditional action movie lumbers through its climactic hero/villain confrontation.

Fantasy fiction has far, far more than its fair share of fighting. From duels to running skirmishes to vast set-piece battles and sieges (2), the genre is a fundamentally violent one. So fine, so are our earliest myths, so is our species, so big deal.

An author of fights has various responsibilities in describing the action, not least to make it comprehensible and readable, but more, it must be plausible. This may seem a strange word to throw into a genre of dragons, magic wizards and demons, but plausibility is all the more important when the basic axioms of your world are altered. If Sigmar Owlfoot can blow up the dragon in chapter 2, you must provide a reason why he can't blow up the other dragon in chapter 17, relying instead on the innate undragonising abilities of the Runespork. I won't say that there aren't books out there where the otherwise wildly powerful hero seems to have acute attacks of amnesia regarding his capabilities whenever the story needs to fabricate some suspense, but those aren't necessarily good books.

And here's the Hollywood way out:

-it's the final showdown between huge-bicepped hero and huger-bicepped villain. They are both martial arts boxer killer commandos (3).

-They go at it with lots of fancy-pants moves.

-The villain, in a lion-and-unicornesque manner, beats the hero all around the town, with the hero barely getting a blow in

- after sufficient of this, either

 — the villain makes some particularly callous remark about the hero's love life, parentage or some flaw in his character; or

 — the hero catches the eye of his loved one who, in moments, will be at the villain's mercy; and

- the hero has a sudden access of rage and/or inspiration and strikes the villain, either just once or repeatedly.

- the villain inexplicably forgets how to fight and has the bejesus beaten out of him and/or is floored with a single blow.

- A select proportion of the cast live happily ever after.

- the fight coördinator, if he has any honest pride in himself, sulks in a corner and doesn't get the drinks in when it's his round.

To my immediate memory two of the worst examples of this baloney are the Slater/Travolta fight in Broken Arrow and, perhaps deserving of some sort of plausibility-suspension nobel prize, the Van Damme/Lundgren fight in Universal Soldier, but, Lord — they're hardly alone at that party. Over and over the hero gets his ass whaled on, only to suddenly get "angry", turning all the tables. Angry? Are we supposed to believe that ol' Jean-Claude was taking the whole beating quite philosophically until Dolph said what he did about his mother? (4). I mean, where did all that beating go? If you've beaten a six foot man to within an inch of his life, that's 5'11" of beating to account for before he can suddenly get back on his feet and save the day. Neiztche may have proposed that if it doesn't kill you then it makes you stronger (5) but this seems to be an extreme interpretation of the dogma. After all, I don't think boxing managers spend twenty minutes going over their prizefighter with a baseball bat immediately before the title fight. (6)

It's possibly some comment about how the hero's good heart and righteous motivations and "spirit" can overcome any superior skill, strength and lack-of-being-beaten-on-for-the-last-twenty-minutes that the villain can bring to the table, which is the sort of thinking that can get a lot of people killed trying to take on bank robbers, but of course…

But of course it's the underdog thing, that we are invested so heavily in. The whole point is that hero must come from nothing to save the day, and that's a good story, and there's nothing wrong with it (8). It's imaginative bankruptcy, though, that means that the day is saved by a story told so poorly, and again and again in the same unlikely way. Plausibility, you see. Now, in fiction you have a lot more leeway, it's true. You can be inside the hero's head, or the villain's, to show exactly why their form declines/spontaneously improves, and smooth over the cracks of continuity. In fantasy fiction you have a whole extra level of whizz for your plots, as if you're kind of magic can arise without warning from nothing to ultimate power, and if you've established that already, then so be it, it's plausible (if not necessaribly terribly satisfying). But the burden of plausibility is still very much there, and the bigger the reversal, the more work is required to make it work. The villain, if he’s a hero-villain type, can suddenly be unmanned by a swan-song eruption of his better nature. The villain can pause to gloat, allowing the hero to use that trick-shot move he was practising earlier. Some expendable ally of the hero can make a sudden dash to intervene, sacrificing him/herself but allowing the hero to recover and strike. You can even, fates help you, fall back on prophecy and destiny, which happens a lot in fantasy (9)

So long as your hero doesn’t just get “angry” and show his “spirit” by beating all the odds by way of a single knock-out punch, that’s all. In a world of dragons, giants, sorcerers and orcs with the serial numbers filed off, is a little plausibility too much to ask?

 

(1) Why should I get so annoyed at pre-choreographed wrestling, when all they're trying to do is tell a story? I think it's a courage-of-their-convictions issue, like the aforementioned false 'based on a true story' stories. If it's a story you're telling, at least have the guts to admit it. It's nothing to be ashamed of.

(2) I think David Gemmel probably still holds some kind of record for the world's most protracted single military engagement in Legend.

(3) At your option add "from Space" or any other suffix of choice.

(4) I cannot for the life of me recall what it was that so abruptly turned the tide of this particular fight, nor do I have the inclination to re-watch it to find out.

(5) But, as Jonathan Coulton points out in his song Madelaine, if it kills you, you'll be dead

(6) Interestingly, of course, whilst the tired old format makes little sense with a fistfight, it can work for a swordfight. After all, if the hero's been slugged by his bigger, stronger opponent 27 times, then his great knockout punch in return is just plain daft, but three feet of steel through the ribs will ruin anyone's day, and it only takes a moment's lapse of concentration. The Roth/Neeson duel in the otherwise unremarkable Rob Roy is an interesting, and workable, case in point. However, you still have to account for that lapse, that moment where the hero has a clear shot, and if you've already established the villain as a superior swordsman then this has the same plausibility threshold. Just because the hero gets very angry after the villain kicks his dog doesn't mean that the hero therefore becomes any better at swordfighting, indeed usually quite the reverse. People talk of berserkers, but I imagine berserkers usually still died, just not alone.(7)

(7) Of course that's an option. If your hero is expendable, after the villain is done for, then that's a good solution to the problem.

(8) The exception to this is Superman, arguably the world's most tedious superhero — not just superhuman, but so risibly overpowerful that he can (depending on which incarnation) turn back time, put the moon out of orbit and irradiate the oceans with one mighty belch. And who was this enormous ubermensch originally pitted against? oh just goons with guns, bank robbers, hoodlums, you know. Superman, who has sufficiently vast reserves of potency in the twinkle of his lazer-heat-visionomatic eyes to unmake creation — and you're telling me he's not himself the greatest threat to the world because…? He's sort of a nice guy? That's it? That's the only think saving the world from Superman's fits of ill temper after he gets super-drunk on the world's total alcoholic production for a year, the night before? That he's, you know, ok really? The fact that Lex Luthor, a moderately clever bald man, can occasionally even temporarily cause Superman slight difficulties should earn old baldy some kind of Hero of Humanity medal.

(9) Hmm, destiny… I’m very leery about using destiny as a plot mechanic. It’s monumentally overused, in fantasy – the stableboy turns out to be the prince so damn often it’s a wonder they don’t keep a red carpet in every hayloft just in case. And is he more the hero because everything was foretold, and because his blood is as blue as a bluebottle? According to rather a lot of novels, apparently yes. Surely, though, logic dictates the opposite. If all he’s done is fulfil a prophecy, then surely he was being spoonfed all the way and can claim no personal credit. If the stableboy was the prince of the true blood all along, then how much that removes from his triumph – what can he claim credit for, if mere heredity has fit him for it? No, give me heroes who save the world in the teeth of adverse omens and then go back to muck out the stables.