Happy Black Friday everyone! I don’t know about you, but this year I’m staying inside and shopping online. Today I want to share with you some visual references, in the form of movies and shows that inspire me when it comes to writing battle scenes.
In the past I shared with you a link to a really good book titled Writing Fight Scenes This book goes over tips on how to write effective and exciting battle scenes. Inside, there are links to movies and shows to show you examples of the great scenes the author is detailing out.
Today, I’m sharing the links that I love, which are oddly not in the book, now that I think about it. I will try to keep it short. It’s the day after Thanksgiving and we are all trying to recover from food coma. There are lots of links throughout the post with videos to watch while you relax. I do warn that these are battles scenes with sharp objects so there will be blood and gore.
The first scene is found in The Witcher Netflix TV Series called the Blaviken Fight. This link has Henry Cavil breaking down this fight scene which is really fascinating to me. That scene had me at hello. If you aren’t familiar with The Witcher you can find it HERE on Netflix I love a great fight scene where the actor actually does the stunts themselves. Henry’s moves are graceful but come with a powerful punch.
My next favorite is in the movie Serenity. This movie spawned from a one season Sci Fi Western named Firefly that sadly landed on the wrong TV network where the majority of the target fans were not, and so it was canceled. It should have been on the SyFy channel. Thankfully others found out about the show and loved it so much that we all got a movie from it. There are two fight scenes in this movie being beautifully executed by the character River Tam.
The Bar Fight Scene This is where we first see River go into battle mode. She is a tiny thing, and I think they mention her weight somewhere near 100 pounds. Her moves are so graceful, she’s so agile, AND deadly. None of her strikes are wasted making her extremely efficient at killing. Don’t underestimate what a tiny package can do. They may kill you.
River vs Reavers – This is my all time favorite battle scene. You can find the battle scene 28 seconds in if you don’t want to watch the other parts. She decides its her time to step up to protect the group and boy does she! Again it’s her grace, and how she handles the weapons. It’s almost as though there are no weapons and its her arms and hands that are the weapons. They are part of her and move with her as one. The moves are so fluid and natural as she takes out a big group of reavers. Just gorgeous. I may have to go watch this movie now. It’s one of my top five movies I like to watch. It’s likely there will be a post just for this movie. Also it has one of my favorite villains. Okay I will stop now.
The next movie is called The Old Guard. If you want to get an idea what the movie is about you can find the link for the trailer HERE Now let’s talk about Charlize Theron who played Andy. I have to admit I went all fan girl on her when I found out she did all of her own stunts and then even found out she got injured during the shooting, but soldiered on anyway, much like her character in the movie. The article about that is HERE
Now the battle scene video. I found a video that shows a grouping of her most impressive fight scenes in the movie. How she moves and handles the double bladed axe is so graceful and smooth. You can tell she knows how to handle it. She’s not tiny like River Tam, but her grace is impressive and she has more power behind the moves as she slams into the bad guys, where River makes it look like fine slicing and dicing. Don’t miss the scene where she cuts a bad guy with a sword with one hand and shoots another bad guy with a gun in her other hand. Does is sound unbelievable and cheesy? Somehow the actress makes it real and very scary. You can find the link to the video HERE.
I hope you enjoyed this post and all of the videos with some awesome battle scenes. Now I’m off to watch Serenity, AGAIN. LOL I can’t help it.
Until Next Time Write Well and Prosper!