4) Do The Fight Scenes Right
Look….the hallway fight in Daredevil was cool, but not everyone was as enamored of the fight scenes in Daredevil as most people were, and in a franchise primarily about martial-artists, the fight scenes can’t just be top-notch; they need to carve out new notches above the top notch.
Be honest, besides the hallway fight, how many of Daredevil‘s fights do you remember? And not “remember that they happened,” more like “remember what happened IN them.” Do you remember specific moves? Shots? Do you remember how they moved the story forward? Were they absolutely essential? Was there anything happening on an emotional level, or was it just two or more guys throwing their fists at each other? Did the way the characters fight tell you anything about their character or emotional state?
All too often in Daredevil, the answer to most of these questions is a stone-cold no. And for Iron Fist, that needs to change. Big time. For starters, think about the way your character fights and what it tells you about them. What style do they use?
In Avatar: The Last Airbender, each of the show’s major faction use an entirely unique martial-arts style based on real-world combat styles. And the specifics of these fighting styles tell us a lot about what those groups stand for. The peaceful Air Tribe, which prefers to avoid combat, use a style called Ba Gua Zhang, which focuses on lots of sweeping movements and flanking and outmaneuvering opponents rather than aggressive action. The more warlike Fire Nation, meanwhile, use Northern Shaolin, which uses internal energy in explosive, outward bursts.
The way characters fight can tell is more about them than entire pages of dialogue, and this is something to keep in mind when creating a series as focused on martial-arts as Iron Fist.
Also, and this is just as important, they need to pay as much attention to the choreography of the camera people as the actors. In classic Shaw Brothers martial-arts films, the movements of the camera people were carefully timed to the movements of the performers they were filming. For a good example, take a look at this scene from The 36th Chamber of Shaolin
Note how almost every camera movement is motivated, and follows the movements of the fighters on screen. When there’s an upward blow, there’s an upward camera movement. This scene has just the right amount of camera movement, and just the right kind. Too much movement and your scene feels jumbled and incoherent. Not enough, and it feels flat.
The camera is also at just the perfect distance. Not too close that we can’t tell what’s going on and not so far that the sequence lacks a sense of immediacy. Also, note how there’s a narrative to the fight rather than just “they hit each other until one of them falls over.” You can see how Gordon Liu (the fighter with the three-section staff) gains the upper hand, using his weapon to slip through his opponent’s attempts at catching his weapon in a lock.
Good fight scenes are like a well written conversation. There’s a back and forth, you can see each character’s perspective and characterization shining through, and it moves the various narratives you’re telling forward. This kind of attention to detail when it comes to fight scenes is essential for a property like Iron Fist.
