Martial Arts & The Movies

This week, I had the pleasure of training a group of UK Journalists who had come over to Boston in order to promote the release of the film, “The Equalizer” – for those who don’t know, or haven’t seen the movie, its set in Boston. As part of their trip, which involved going to various set locations etc. we provided them with some Krav Maga training, demonstrating how real-life violence differs from cinematic violence, as well as some of the similarities. In this blog article I will lay out some of the points we discussed and covered in these sessions.

Firstly the point of a movie is to entertain, and when looking at any fight scene, this has to be remembered above all else. In an action movie, such as the Equalizer, the fight scenes will be a relatively large part of the film, meaning that the fights will have to last for several minutes, rather than seconds. In real-life confrontations, fights can typically be counted in seconds rather than minutes – something which also makes real-life violence very different to combat sports, such as MMA, where for entertainment purposes, fighters are matched by weight etc. and rules set to allow the possibility of the fight continuing for a decent length of time. Movies and Combat Sports are forms of entertainment and if the fights only lasted a few seconds, like they tend to in reality, nobody would be interested in watching them for very long.

When we consider that the purpose of a film, is to entertain, we must accept that real-life may have to be adapted to fit the camera work. A good example of this are shots where a person is standing holding their gun close to their face – this type of shot was first done in the 1930’s as a way of getting the actor’s face and the fact that they had a weapon in a close-up shot. Even an untrained individual wouldn’t hold a gun like this, however it works well cinematically. This often means that in movies, techniques such as disarms are miniaturized, with a lot of the real-life larger movements that are necessary to make a technique work, so that everything remains in the one frame. What this can result in, is that real-life effective techniques make their way on to set, but are then altered, by removing their larger movements so that the camera doesn’t have to keep moving, to keep up with what is going on.

In a fight scene, you want to see techniques; this means adequate space and distance must be kept between those fighting. I can’t think of an action movie, where I’ve seen two individuals end up crashing into each other, wrapped in a clinch, where their hands can’t be seen. In a choreographed fight scene, the fight needs to be kept “clean” to a certain extent, where punches and kicks can be seen to be thrown etc. I remember talking to a Cable TV Sports Director, who had come to cover the UK Judo Nationals, for his channel. They filmed for two days of the tournament, and at the end I asked him if he had enough footage to do an hour show or something similar. He told me he had at max 15 minutes worth of footage, maybe less; all they’d been trying to capture, were the big spectacular throws, none of the smaller trips and sweeps etc. If it wasn’t a clean throw, they weren’t interested – they were in the business of entertainment, they didn’t want to show the scrappy, unclear moments, which are a large part of a Judo match, and it is the same with the movies. The actual scuffles, and clinches of real-life fights don’t have a place in action films, they’re just too messy, and unclear for an audience to make sense of.

There are areas of the movies that we could learn from as practitioners of reality based self-defense systems. Two areas in which we would do well to replicate the movies in, is the use of the environment and improvised weapons. In many action movies, it is not uncommon to see people being thrown into walls, having their heads hit off tables etc. For those of us who don’t do some form of scenario based training, and limit ourselves to the mats, we may become blind to the opportunities that the environment allows. Your fist is a much weaker striking surface to a wall, or the hood of your car, and it makes more sense to use these to cause impact if they are available in your environment. If you have to fight, you should look to arm yourself; lose any idea of a noble and equal fight where you and another adversary fight it out on even terms – the movies have it right in this regard, your attacker will always have the advantage, and the odds will be against you. Arming yourself should be one of your goals, whether it is before or during the fight. Understanding how to improvise weapons is a real-life combat skill you should learn to acquire.

Enjoy an action movie for what it is, and don’t get caught up questioning techniques etc. They are there to entertain – and much of what you will see, comes from the real-world, it’s just been adapted and modified so it is clear and understandable within the frame of a shot. At the same time take away some of the ideas, such as use of the environment, improvised weapons and the use of dialogue - don’t copy movie lines and apply them to real-life scenarios, but understand that most physical confrontations are preceded by some form of interview or verbal altercation. Every experience can be an education for us, if we accept it for what it is.