let's talk about ninjas for a second
ninjas were supposed to be messengers
that you know take a a message from one
town
to another town in the shadows and they
don't get caught they're like
freaking kung fu spies
and that's why they make movies about
them hey gq i'm louis tan and today
we're going to be reviewing some
fight scenes this is the breakdown
[Music]
first up kill bill volume one
so yes this is arguably one of the
greatest
fight scenes of all times kill bill the
crazy 88
uma thurman so the fighters here and
kill bill seem very well trained some of
the crazy eight
seem a little crazy and a little messy i
should say the way that they hold the
katana
they're kind of flustered they're scared
and you know but that's part of the
character that they're playing
uma thurman on the other hand seems very
focused
very calculated and very precise
her sword work is impeccable and a lot
of the techniques that she uses
could be used in real life definitely i
don't know if she could fight this many
guys at once
but you know it's kill bill baby
i studied katana for a long time with
seven time world champion caitlin de
shell
and um there's only a few really basic
moves that you can do with the katana
the cuts
they're straight cuts straight across
the line straight down the shoulder
the opposite and that's pretty much the
basic
you know eight different cuts
so the fighting style of the katana is
very unique
in a way that for instance if i'm boxing
i'm gonna i'm gonna slip a punch and i'm
gonna throw another punch it's difficult
to slip
a katana so when you're when you're
blocking with a katana
let's say i'm blocking someone trying to
slice me in the head i'm
up blocking and as i'm moving the sword
their sword away from me
i'm going to strike so it's kind of like
a
a mixture of attacking and defending at
the same time and what's very unique
about this
is when you hold a sword you want to
hold it in this hand like this
and you want to hold the bottom with
your pinky at the very bottom of the
sword like this
and what you want to do is you want to
do a push and pull motion so as you're
pushing you're pulling at the same time
that
is what creates the power and in japan
if you did something wrong
or you disrespected your clan they'd cut
your pinky off everybody knows about the
the you know the yakuza losing their
pinkies right well the reason why they
were losing their pinkies is because
they needed the pinky
to hold at the bottom of the sword and
without that you can't generate as much
power so then they would be
essentially defenseless and in japan
they would test the katanas
with prisoners to see if they could cut
through you or not and if it could cut
all the way through you in a slice then
they would get a stamp of approval
to fight multiple people at once
especially when they're surrounding you
in a circle
with swords yeah it's not likely that
that's gonna happen unless you're uma
thurman
next up paul w s anderson's 1995
mortal kombat
that was awesome all right so this move
you see
quite a lot i don't know what the move
is called to be honest with you i think
it's like a mix of
judo and wrestling but i don't really
know too many people that could do that
but
still very impressive
classic liu kang bicycle kick i mean
come on i've been doing martial arts a
long time my father
is a national champion and i have never
seen
a bicycle kick work in real life
the thing is about torque and force so
once you're up in the air
you can maybe only get about two kicks
in before you're gonna start
gravity's gonna start you know pulling
you down and uh that's gonna be a
problem
how are you gonna generate the torque so
yeah the bicycle kick
maybe you can do two papa and that's it
so if anybody out there
i don't recommend this but if anybody
out there is
flying through the air and doing a kick
like a bicycle kick
and you're going to fall to the floor
you know you're going to fall
there are ways to break your fall so
there's a lot of different
styles of martial arts kempo is one of
them
where they teach you specifically about
how to fall how to break your fall
and how to land on the floor properly
using your arms to slap the ground
to absorb some of the momentum or
landing on a certain part of your back
where it's not going to you know break
your back so
yes there are ways to fall and that's a
very good thing to learn
this movie means a lot to me personally
not just because
you know i'm in the new mortal kombat
but
it just represented an asian american
you know in a leading role that was very
unique at the time
i don't think that there was many of
those that i could really look up to
as a kid obviously we have bruce lee and
jackie chan and
you know but even even bruce lee had to
go to hong kong just to get
noticed before he came back to america
those things are discouraging when
you're young to not be able to look and
see yourself on screen
and it was one of those things where i
always wanted to
make a change and make a difference now
i get an opportunity to do that so
i'm very proud of that and this movie
was one of those big inspirations for me
next up yip man three
okay i gotta stop it right there i just
wanna say i just got to work
and fight with this guy named simon cook
who is fighting donnie yen
in this elevator and that dude is a
beast
so let me just start there
so simon is from thailand and i was just
filming there with him like i said
and he's a great muay thai fighter so
you can see a lot of the muay thai
techniques that he's using
with the elbows and the knees and close
range that is your best weapon elbows
and knees
at close range are the most devastating
thing that you can use so this is all
very realistic whereas don yan is using
wing chun
and wing chun is known for the
intercepting fist the chain
hand the chain punches it's very rapid
fire it's very
linear and it's very direct so what's
cool about
yip man and the film yet man is yip man
is
the t uh one of the teachers of bruce
lee and what yip man would do
is yip man would hold these sparring
matches
i wouldn't call them sparring matches
they're just fighting on top of the
rooftops in hong kong
so he would teach his techniques to the
students and in order to learn these
techniques
properly he would you would actually
fight
another person and as the legend goes
you know there would be different dojos
that would come and they would challenge
them
and they would have these real fights
not to the death but
somebody gets knocked out then that's
that but yeah yep man is
one of the grand masters who taught the
great bruce lee
next up batman
stop right there okay many things to say
about this i'm
very giddy to talk about batman because
batman is a very unique film for me this
is where
my father got his big break my father
who is a martial artist and a stunt man
and a fight choreographer
he taught me the love of this game this
is one of his first
films
so there's a move where batman punches
with the back of his
his fist right i think that batman has
some sort of gauntlets
um on his hands on on his wrists at
least that's what it looks like and
sounds like when the swords were
clashing and he was blocking
and that's a real move so he's defending
and then he's offended
so it looked pretty cool so there's
there's moments in this fight where
they're throwing a punch and he's kind
of like stopping and blocking it with
his hand
that's not really a realistic technique
i would say that gets used very often
i think that's more along the lines of
trying to create something creative in
the choreography but it's batman
i mean who am i i can't critique that
man what am i even saying just
delete that delete it next up we have
marvel's daredevil
i'm gonna stop it right there this scene
is phenomenal
it's very difficult to do what these
guys are doing which is creating
a long piece of fight choreography
that's almost like a play
in order to get this done you have to
memorize every move
and everybody has to be perfectly on
point every single time
that's classic muay thai sweep classic
muay thai
catch the leg kick the other leg
very embarrassing it hurts it's not fun
so in this fight scene they use quite a
bit of different things i saw some judo
throws
i saw some jiu-jitsu chokes
that turned you know he got slammed
against the wall while he was trying to
guillotine somebody
we have some muay thai techniques we
have a muay thai trip we have a front
flip onto someone's back that's i don't
even know what that is that's just
that's just crazy badass there's many
different styles
involved in this fight and i think
that's what makes it kind of unique but
also there was just kind of like that
brawling energy where just people are
just
throwing right hands and he's tired and
he's he gets
blocks and just another right hand and
he's tired i saw him jump off the wall
and do a superman punch
that has been done before in the ufc and
in real life
and that would work so the bad guys get
whooped in this scene
and the protagonist daredevil himself
although he's very tired takes everybody
out
i would recommend for these bad guys in
the future
to attack him maybe at the same time try
to overwhelm him
try to put him in a position where he
can't defend
himself from all angles hit him in the
back of the head
maybe somebody grab his legs while the
other person is striking
you got to use your brain man you got to
be smart about this you're fighting
daredevil here
he's blind he's blind
come on you could do better do better
next up lethal weapon four
this is a situation that could be very
realistic and could happen in real life
where
someone especially with women you know
they get grabbed from behind
or they're being held by someone who's
stronger than them like a man who's
stronger than them physically and they
need to get
out of the situation she kind of uses a
little bit of a
jiu jitsu judo technique to get away and
then she's gone
and i think that's something that it's
very good to learn
not just for women for everyone
so he took the barrel off of his gun
that's how fast he was that's insane
um i don't think that that's very
realistic but it looked
it looked really it looked really good
it looked really believable
so when doing martial arts in real life
and fighting in real life
a lot of people don't even know what it
feels like to get hit in the face
it's a interesting feeling it's
obviously not
a good feeling but it's interesting in a
sense i'm talking about in the ring
it's interesting in a sense where you
feel empowered because you
understand that you're not gonna die and
you're
it's not the end of the world to get hit
obviously
it depends how you get hit and where you
get hit but let's say for instance for
me when i was fighting kickboxing
matches one time
i was in a match finding a guy who was
older than me and more experience
and he did a spinning back fist and it
just connected clean
clean and i just saw white and i heard a
bead
and i just covered up into like a ball
and
tried not to show that i was too injured
but he knew he knew he rocked me
and next thing you know he was jumping
on me and he was trying to end the fight
which he didn't but it was still very
painful and shocking but what it does
teach you is that you can come back from
these things and you can overcome
these moments and you can come back
stronger that's something that i've used
in my life
a lot whether it be just as a man or in
my work as an actor
or in my work fighting it's teaching me
how to
overcome next up wu assassins
familiar face
so when i disarm the guy with the gun
his arm is over my shoulder i put him in
what is
called a kimura lock it's a shoulder
lock where you're trying to
rip the person's shoulder out of the
socket the kimura is used very often in
the ufc and a lot of people have lost
fights to kimura it's a real move it's
from jiu jitsu it's it's a it's a
fantastic
um type of armbar we tried to just put a
little spin on it
so we're trying to shoot as well as put
someone in a kimura
and that is how you take down two people
at once realistically and this platform
that we were fighting on
was an old wood like a wood mill
it is not a fake set this is a real set
if you got hurt on this set you had to
go straight to the hospital get a
tetanus shot there was a few of us that
got cuts and there's just like
old rust everything you don't want in a
fight scene was here
in this location but it looks fantastic
okay so here's a really interesting
thing so now
the fight has changed from this long
stick that he had to now this small
knife do you see how i'm evading the
knife do you see how when i tried to
block he cut my hand
then then he cut my face that's very
realistic
that's how you want to fight with a
knife whatever's in the closest limb in
front of you you're going to take
and i think that was done really well in
this scene
the knife fighting when he's when i'm
moving around the knife all that stuff i
think is very authentic
once the knife is in his stomach and i
knee it in his stomach that was just a
little flare
for fun and finally we have the
new mortal kombat
i'm just gonna stop it right off the bat
and say that this
sand if this scent gets in your eyes
it's gonna be a problem
and it got in my eyes a few times and
man my eyes swelled up like will smith
and hitch
it's not fun it's dirty
okay so in this scene i am fighting max
huang
max huang is playing a character named
kung lao he's a shaolin monk
who does a lot of wushu that is the
style that he does
max huang is part of the jackie chan
stunt team one of the most famous stunt
teams of all times you ain't just
walking into that team
you have to earn your place there
everyone on that team is
top martial artists stunned people in
the world
that move right there is part of cole
young's mma training
it's a wrestling move it's a single leg
takedown he caught a kick and he took
him down
i put a little spin on it but that's
that's what that is so now we have a
wushu fighter
who threw a kick and he got taken down
by a wrestling move
so now cole thinks that he thinks that
he has this in the bag let's continue
when you see kung lao do that with his
hat you know it's about to go down
the poses that we take in the middle of
these fights are very different my
my pose my style was just kind of
straight up
muay thai boxing you know mma guard
style my hands are like up guarding my
chin this hand is here so i could throw
a nice clean jab
and this one is here so i could protect
my face as i'm fighting when it comes to
max's style or kung lao is more of a
wushu fighter
he's more long and wider range
this is just an attribute to these
different techniques in different styles
sometimes
you'll see muay thai fighters with a
long guard as they call it
which is my hand is stretched out a lot
further to keep my opponent
you can jab a little bit quicker but
you're not going to generate as much
power
obviously boxers want to keep their
hands super close to their face and
tight
so they can guard their chin and they
can generate those massive hooks
so funny story there this hat is
is a pretty heavy hat i think it's like
maybe 12 pounds 13 pounds so max is
doing all these tricks with the hat
and it's very strenuous on his neck now
here's this move where i'm throwing
kicks just normal kind of like
roundhouse kicks and he's blocking it
with the hat
but the hat is really hard it's like
made of wood i broke my foot before
kicking a piece of wood another long
story
so when i was kicking that hat all i was
thinking about was
i gotta make this look as real as
possible but if i break my freaking foot
again i'm gonna be pissed
you don't really want to kick someone
with the toe that's that's kind of like
where i i went wrong it was obviously an
accident toes are weak
you want to kick someone with your shin
or you want to kick
a little lower than your shin and try to
get on the top of your foot
and that's that the hat wins that's a
really cool training sequence that's
mma kickboxing and wrestling versus
wu shu and a magic hat
you know who won all right well that's a
wrap
hope you guys learned something i had a
lot of fun thanks for watching with me
till next time