Fights happen a lot in movies. Not only in actions or martial arts films, but in comedies, romances, and even dramas have their fair share of man-on-man action. And why not, they are a great way to have character’s settle differences, or to show off the skill of a particular character. Not to mention they are entertaining to watch. Now there used to be two types of fights scenes in movies. The kind in which the actors knew martial arts and the kind where the actors didn’t. In the movies where the actors knew martial arts, fights scenes could be a lot more fluid and open, and the director, actors, and editor had a lot more freedom. I speak of these kinds of movies in a past tense because they are very uncommon nowadays and the movie market is for the most part dominated by the other kind, in which large amounts of cutting and tight camera movements have to make up for the actors combat inexperience.
An example of a good fight scene where the actors know how to fight is this scene from The Forbidden Kingdom: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4FuO99pYoQ . The advantage of having actors who know how to fight is that it give more freedom to the editor to create the scene he wants. In this example, you can see how the characters oppose each other evenly, and yet they come from different backgrounds based on their styles. You can tell who is winning the fight at any given moment, and there is even room to throw in some bonuses in there such as the one character using his bag as a weapon, or the animal sound effects when there was a shift in his fighting style.
In a movie where the actors do not have combat experience such freedoms cannot be taken advantage of. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFnmq5PPScA In this scene from the Bourne Identity, it is clear that the actors are going based on instruction from a fight choreographer on set. The camera is much closer to the actors at all times, and there is much less time between the very frequent cuts. The fighting style, something that can be used to express attributes about the character, is non-present in this scene being that the two characters are not able to act through their fighting. In the scene from the forbidden kingdom, the actors were able to alter their fighting styles in a manner that expressed differentiation in their background. The Forbidden Kingdom scene also had wider shots. This is a liberty that was not available when shooting because a closer shot makes less of the actor visible and thus, harder for the viewer to tell that all the actor is doing is one motion for the camera like a block or an arm break before the next cut.
These types of movies in which actors do not know how to fight make up the majority of films today. It should be the responsibility of an actor to learn at the very least basic of fighting if that actor expects to be in a film with fighting as to give the director, cinematographer, and editor more creative freedom. Sometimes less editing and less cutting is a good thing. As scene in one of my favorite fight scenes of all from Oldboy, which is done in a tracking shot with no cuts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRBwvIX7Sao
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