Moviegoers have been treated to some pretty fantastic fight scenes over the years, and,
from the looks of it, they're only getting better and better. From brutal spy-on-spy
brawls to epic superhero showdowns, here are the movie fight scenes you need to watch before
This Christopher Nolan film features Joseph Gordon-Levitt duking it out within Cillian
Murphy's subconscious, as they try to navigate a hallway that just won't stop spinning. It's
one of the most impressive scenes in Christopher Nolan's blockbusting filmography, and it was
achieved thanks largely to a 100-foot-long set hooked to eight giant rings. The rings,
in turn, were hooked to motors, allowing the hallway to rotate 360 degrees, and a camera
was mounted to the set in order to properly capture the action.
Naturally, maneuvering down the hallway was a little tricky, and Gordon-Levitt spent two
weeks of prep time trying to get the moves just right. The actor would even imagine Bach
music in order to time his steps and hit his marks. But there was also the issue of motion
sickness, and as Gordon-Levitt explained to E! Online, he discovered a unique way of fighting
against nausea. The actor explained:
"I couldn't think of the floor being the floor and the ceiling being the ceiling. I had to
think of it like, 'This is the ground. OK, now this is the ground. And now this is the
ground.' It was just that the 'ground' was always moving under me. That was the mind
game I had to play to make it work."
The Avengers was a game changer for modern-day blockbusters. It basically kickstarted the
concept of "cinematic universes," and proved to Hollywood that superhero movies really
were here to stay. It was also the culmination of four years' worth of build-up, finally
uniting the world's mightiest heroes in an epic, city-wide battle against a horde of
alien invaders.
With Loki at the lead, the Chitauri show up in Manhattan ready to take a Leviathan-sized
bite out of the Big Apple. But while Loki has an army, the Avengers have a Hulk as well
as a demigod, a super soldier, a couple of master assassins, and a genius, billionaire,
playboy philanthropist. Before long, the battle has hit its peak, and in between all the action,
the movie delivers a hero shot for the ages.
Of course, the real heroes here are the CGI artists. Since it's hard to set off explosions
in New York or fly down the street for a helicopter shot, almost the entirety of the Battle of
New York was created on computers. While the actors mostly performed in front of a green
screen, the wizards at Industrial Light & Magic shot approximately seven miles of New York
and captured shots from 35 different roof tops. They then used these images to create
20 blocks of battlefield. Pretty much everything you see including the buildings, the cars,
and the fire hydrants is all digital.
The John Wick franchise is basically made up of one amazing action spectacle after another.
Take that first movie, for example. There's the scene where Wick slaughters a gang of
home invaders or the moment when he goes toe-to-toe with the deadly Ms. Perkins.
“Yeah, I'm thinking I'm back."
Most impressive of all, however, is the sequence where Wick takes out an army of bodyguards
in a bloody nightclub shootout.
Hunting a Russian mobster who foolishly killed his dog, Wick shows up at The Red Circle,
hoping to exact a little revenge. As he pursues his prey through the club, the taciturn assassin
is assaulted on all sides by gangsters -- but they're no match for John Wick's gun-fu. There's
not a movement wasted as "Baba Yaga" flips bad guys and fires bullets in a ballet of
violence that would make John Woo himself green with envy.
The scene comes off flawlessly, thanks in part to Reeves' dedication to his craft. The
actor spent four months training for five days a week in both judo and jiu-jitsu. And
when he wasn't working on his combat skills, he was practicing with firearms.
That hard work totally paid off, however, allowing directors Chad Stahelski and David
Leitch to film in long, uninterrupted takes because their star was pretty much a martial
arts pro.
For a long time, From Russia with Love held the number one spot when it came to James
Bond fistfights… until Spectre showed up, that is. Sure, the movie might not have been
quite as good as Skyfall or Casino Royale, but the brawl between Craig-Bond and Mr. Hinx
was a throwdown for the ages.
The fight takes place on a train traveling through Morocco, and all Bond wants to do
is spend an evening with his latest ladylove, Madeleine. Unfortunately, their fine dining
experience is interrupted when all 289 pounds of Dave Bautista shows up, ready to rumble.
What follows is nearly three minutes of absolute savagery, a fight so intense that both stars
suffered nasty injuries as a result.
Craig was the first to go down after suffering a knee injury. The Brit had to take two weeks
off from filming in order to get surgery, but just a few days after the accident, he
was back and ready for business. And when Craig returned, he got a little revenge on
Bautista. As the wrestler-turned-actor told Entertainment Weekly:
"There's one part where Daniel lands a punch, and you just heard it. My nose just spattered
blood."
The Captain America movies have some of the best fight scenes in the MCU. But if one comes
out on top of the rest, it's got to be the epic airport battle featuring pretty much
every hero in the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Seriously, this is the mother of all superhero fights. Want to see Captain America have a
martial arts duel with Black Panther? Sure. Fancy seeing Scarlet Witch toss a car on top
of Tony Stark? Go nuts. Always dreamed of Spider-Man swinging circles around a giant-sized
Ant-Man? You've got it. This fight has all that and more, making it feel like it's been
ripped straight from the pages of a comic book.
"What the hell is that?"
"Everyone's got a gimmick, now."
Unfortunately, the scene wasn't quite as much fun for the actors and stunt people involved.
It took 30 days to film this baby, three at the actual airport in Germany and 27 in Atlanta,
where the costumed actors and their doubles had to deal with 100 degree weather. For obvious
reasons, this was particularly tough on Paul Rudd and Chadwick Boseman, so you've got to
doff your caps to these guys for putting up with the southern sun and helping make Marvel
movie history.
Unlike almost every other Marvel film, Logan is a movie featuring actual gore. Sure, Wolverine
has stabbed people plenty of times, but the X-Men movies have never shown actual geysers
of blood before. Logan, however, brings a whole new level of realism to superhero fight
scenes, and it gets even grislier when Logan teams up with Laura, an adorable little monster
with a penchant for beheading bad guys.
The duo proves especially effective when they finally face off against the Reavers, the
evil goons sent to hunt down a team of mutant children and their final showdown in the woods
pits modern-day weapons against animal instinct. The two heroes go into full-on berserker mode,
and after handily dispatching their human foes, they turn their attention to X-24, the
younger, stronger version of Logan himself. The end result is one of the most brutal and
emotional fight scenes in comic book movie history and one of the hardest to watch, too.
Mad Max: Fury Road could've easily crashed like any of the other sequels to cult movies
that have hit theaters in recent years. Instead, it cruised to $154 million domestic, $375
million worldwide, and earned ten Oscar nominations and six wins. Not bad for a movie that was
nearly shut down by the studio.
"Oh, what a day. What a lovely day!"
And the reason for the movie's success is simple it's friggin' awesome. But making Fury
Road was no walk in the park; for one thing, the months-long shoot put Tom Hardy and Charlize
Theron nearly at each other's throats. But they at least put that aggression to good
use.
Picking just one fight out of a two-hour car chase may seem like picking a pebble from
the rock pile, but Mad Max and Furiosa's battle has the raw intensity and creative choreography
to make it truly special. As Furiosa defends Immortan Joe's escaped brides, Max fights
for his own freedom, while still imprisoned behind a metallic mask and handcuffed to Nicholas
Hoult's unconscious War Boy. Stunt choreographer Greg Van Borssum put the whole thing together,
while Margaret Sixel edited it to perfection, for which she rightly won an Oscar. Most fight
scenes you watch -- this one you can really feel.
The battle to wear the crown of "King of the Monsters" kinda has to be epic by definition
lucky, it really was. While critics were lukewarm on the movie and the box office drew in a
disappointing $386 million worldwide, critics and fans agreed the kaiju fight scenes in
Godzilla: King of the Monsters were downright awesome.
The climactic clash takes place in Boston after Ghidorah has wreaked unholy havoc, beckoning
Titans from across the globe, asserting himself as the Monster King, and plunging the planet
into chaos. Meanwhile, Godzilla has emerged from his Oxygen Destroyer-induced coma after
getting juiced with a 20-megaton atomic bomb, and he's ready to retake his throne. You can
probably guess what happens next.
Godzilla and Ghidorah battled on screen many, many times before, but this was a truly special
showdown, due in part to the fact that it was brought to life by $175 million worth
of Hollywood SFX. Two-time Oscar-winner Guillaume Rocheron supervised the 1,535 visual effects
shots used in the film, which were dispersed around several VFX shops. To create the god-like
nature of the beasts themselves, the team referenced Renaissance paintings and posed
the monsters like creatures from Greek mythology. The final result? "Epic" is the right word.
The Mission: Impossible franchise is chock-full of fistfights and throwdowns, but no fight
scene was as instantly iconic as Fallout's bathroom brawl scene. All due respect to Tom
Cruise, but the main reason this scene rocks is the muscle-bound, mustachioed Henry Cavill
as Ethan Hunt's fellow secret agent Walker, who even famously "cocks" his fists as if
his biceps were two double-barreled shotguns, about to unload a beatdown.
Cavill said he and Cruise actually trained separately with each other's respective doubles
until the fight choreography was drilled into their muscle memory. The bathroom fight ultimately
took four weeks to shoot, and on the last day, Cavill and Cruise admitted they were
both in considerable pain. Luckily, all their efforts paid off. Fallout received the best
reviews of the series and the best box office returns too, earning $220 million domestically
and $787 million worldwide. Talk about coming out on top.
Check out one of our newest videos right here! Plus, even more Looper videos about your favorite
movies are coming soon. Subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the bell so you don't miss
a single one.