Training, To Rousing Music!

Ezra points to The Five Worst Fight Scenes Ever Filmed. I'm less than impressed. Sure, they're bad. And the third one probably even belongs on such a list. But it's not hard to find things that suck. There's a wonderful principle of evolutionary theory, which is that very few mutations actually result in an organism that works better than the original.

The idea behind this is pretty simple - organisms are crazy complicated, with hundreds or thousands or millions of interlocking bits and pieces, like an airplane. If you let someone with no mechanical know-how into the guts of an airplane, and they made a change to something, the odds that whatever change they made would improve the plane's aerodynamics, or fuel efficiency, are basically nil. In all likelihood, if they made a major change, the end result would be a plane which doesn't fly at all.

Similarly, there are basically an infinite number of ways to make a fight scene which sucks. There are very, very few ways to make one which is really fantastic. One of the amazing things about people is that they can, with comparatively little experimentation, cut through all the noise and find ways of doing things that actually work.

So, I'm unimpressed with a list of things that suck. I would be much more excited about a list of the best five fight scenes ever filmed. This one is an okay start, but I want video.

But, hearkening back to a conversation with Drew not too long ago, I don't want great fight scenes. I want great training montages.

You know the sort; the character, having overcome many obstacles, is getting ready for the final showdown with the baddie. But first, he must prepare. There's often a guru involved, but not every time; sometimes the hero has to fight this battle on his own.

I wish I could say that this example, from Heroes last season, was a spoof. But Heroes took itself far too seriously to actually be a spoof, unless I am totally misunderstanding the series and it is some sort of meta-postmodern Colbert Report sort of thing, spoofing us with its sort-of seriousness. But anyhow, the Hiro scene linked above is sort-of representative of the genre. Needless to say, the original did not include the Rocky music, that was a jolly addition by whoever posted it to Youtube.

Someday, I will make a montage of the greatest training montages. Yes, that's right - a metamontage! For now, I will settle for the five greatest training montages of all time.

Briefly, here's my off-the-top-of-my-head top 4 countdown.

4) Ras Al'Ghul training Bruce Wayne in the ancient art of sword-fighting on a frozen lake in Batman Begins.

3) Dutch preparing to face the Predator in Predator. The mud smearing, the explosive-arrow production, and of course the preparation of a Rube Goldberg-esque death trap in the form of a huge rock hoisted 30 feet in the air. Topped off with the greatest montage ending of all time, as a mud-smeared Governator stands on a giant log, fires a flaming arrow into the sky, and screams his raw testosterone to the universe.

2) Rocky training to fight Drago in Rocky IV. This is, of course, a lifetime achievement award for all the Rocky movies, who set the bar so high for the training montage concept. But this one, as far as I'm concerned, found the bar set by the ones before, and blew them all away.

1) Neo vs. Morpheus in the training program from The Matrix. The greatest 4 minutes in the history of moviedom. Amazing action, and comically over-the-top great lines. "Stop trying to hit me, and hit me!" "I know what you're trying to do." "Do you think that's air you're breathing?"

Your suggestions?