Why Women STINK at Fight Scenes

Ever think you're about to watch one of the best female fight scenes in movie history, only to break out in laughter when the first punch is thrown? I don't mean some high school catfight, I mean a multimillion dollar Hollywood movie with professional fight choreography, directing, and editing.

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THE VIDEOS I MENTION AT THE END CAN BE FOUND HERE:
Tony Jaa's Bone Breaking Fight Scene Proves Variety is Pointless in Choreography:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IGH0qLnRZ4

Jackie Chan's Fight Scene Skill Trees You've Never Heard Of:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7I98SfuyXxU

I'm currently building my Rumble channel. If you want to see more of my stuff before it's uploaded here you can find a whole bunch of great vids on my YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/bigstinkymoose
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How the hell does that even happen? Why do women suck at fight scenes in movies?

If you're learning how to be a successful stuntman or stuntwoman, you need to learn more than how to merely take a punch, you need to learn how to THROW a screen punch.
How come you can watch a fight scene between two untrained actors and the MAN looks like he learned how to throw a punch in movies and the woman looks like even a catfight involves too much skill for her to handle?
There are a lot of things that can give away the fact that you're not the real woman MMA fighter your character is, but once a closer look is taken there's ONE stage combat mistake that I see again and again.
Lucky for you it's also the easiest mistake to remedy. Time to take a look at a piece of the action and give some fight scene autopsy classes.
#fightscenebreakdown
Fight scenes in movies and TV shows require a sense of realism, right? It's not enough to have girls pulling each others hair when it's supposed to be an epic battle scene movie. Any top stunt coordinator and stuntwoman will tell you that the fight choreography doesn't bring ITSELF to life. It takes dedicated actors who are willing to learn martial arts and train the fundamentals of how to make a fight scene look real.

Let's look at Rosa Salazar training for Robert Rodriguez's Alita Battle Angel. In the end she was throwing the perfect movie punches, but when she first started her training for the role she had what I call kitten paws.
Kitten paws are these awkwardly bent wrists that take you from looking like a film rioting, epic fighter to looking like a lucky cat pawing at the air.
These bent wrists are like giant glowing beacons to the audience. Your actors atrocious technique guides the viewers attention away from the fight choreography, detracting from the stage combat.

But real girl MMA fighters know that they only need their knuckles pointing at the target at the moment of impact. With their wrists straight their knuckles are going to be in the right spot at the end of their punches - when they "hit" the stuntman or stuntwoman.

So WHY does Rosa Salazar from Alita Battle Angel have her wrists bent like she's trying to touch her own elbow? She's not at the point where she can do fights or film riot scenes yet - her brain is still too focused on getting her fists in the right spots. But by the end of her martial arts training Rosa Salazar was able to play Alita Battle Angel with the high level of screen fighting / stage combat technique needed to bring the panzer kunst style to life.

But what if you've already learned how to be a stuntman or stuntwoman in Hollywood and you CAN punch? How do you look like you DON'T know how to throw a fake punch for film and TV shows?

Girl fights are a unique beast.
If you're wondering why most of my examples involve women performing the fight choreography, it's because the kitten paws issue is far more prevalent in female fight scenes. Not because it takes women longer to learn how to punch, but because women tend to have more flexibility in their legs and hips, so they're expected to learning punches AND kicks, whereas men are typically only expected to learn punches for stage combat and screen fights.
If a studio needs to film riot scenes they schedule the actors to have rehearsal time with the stunt team. If two actors spend the same number of hours training to fake fight in movies, but one has twice as much to learn, naturally their techniques are going to be around half as good.

Now that you can watch stunt choreography like a movie insider, keep an eye out for those times when actors guide your attention to their bent wrists. That's not a perfect movie punch, and now you know why.

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#galgadot #rednotice #fightscene #alitabattleangel #jetli #jackiechan #donnieyen