Special Issue edited by Amandine D’Azevedo, Anissa Medjebeur and David Roche (Université de Montpellier Paul-Valéry, Institut Universitaire de France)

This special issue of Mise au point will focus on fight choreographies in films and television series. The focus will be on fight scenes (and not military or police combat scenes) that are based on martial arts, combat sports and self-defense, with or without weapons, in a wide variety of film and television genres such as Westerns, peplums, action, sf, horror, superhero, viking, boxing, wrestling and martial arts movies. Attention will be paid to the parameters that transform a duel or a shootout into an “opera” (in the films of Sergioe Leone), a “ballet” (in the films of John Woo) or Gun fu, or to borderline cases such as “static” choreographies (The Mission, Johnnie To, 1999). Articles will analyze fight scenes as autonomous units and as discrete elements within a given work, and will consider fight choreography as a practice that raises aesthetic, methodological, theoretical, cultural and political questions.

Articles can focus on works produced in any region of the world and at any period in time. Particular attention will be paid to Hong Kong cinema due to its status as the center of a network of influences in the history of both martial arts and film forms. Indeed, Hong Kong studios initiated the circulation of numerous motifs by staging Chinese martials in their pure and impure/syncretic forms (Liu Chia-liang’s defense of classical styles and his disapproval of Bruce Lee, the inventor of Jeet Kun Do, is well documented). The transnational circulation of films but also of actors, choreographers and directors (including Michelle Yeoh, Jackie Chan, Yuen Woo-ping and John Woo) testify to the fact that Hong Kong cinema has been a major influence on Hollywood, Indian as well as African cinemas (Alphonse Béni’s 1985 Cameroon Connection features a character named Bruce Le), in films and series borrowing from Hong Kong techniques and styles of staging and shooting action scenes. The conflicts between martial arts schools, regions (North and South Shaolin) and national styles (karate versus kung-fu) provide a wide array of narrative premises with geopolitical implications, whether in an Asian context (Police Story 3, Stanley Tong 1992; Shaolin Karaté, Norifumi Suzuki 1975; Fist of Fury, Lo Wei 1973) or in a globalized context (the John Wick franchise). The increasing popularity of Mixed Martial Arts competitions in the 1990s has also led cinema and television to engage with contemporary combat sports in films like Ong-Bak (Prachya Pinkaew, 2003) and Warrior (Gavin O’Connor, 2011). By circulating among a wide variety of cultural contexts, fight scenes have become eminently hybrid.

“Fight choreography,” John Kreng states in his indispensable 2008 book, “should not be seen as simply using a martial art or a system or style of self-defense that has been altered for use in the film. Rather, it should be looked at as a theatrical combative art form in and of itself because it is creating an illusion of a physical confrontation that combines the use of theatrics with martial arts to assist and enhance in telling the story of the film” (xxii). An effective fight choreography aims not at efficacy in combat but at dramatic efficacy and is an essential component of the narrative (Kreng notes that Lethal Weapon’s [Richard Donner, 1987] triangular choke lacks visual impact or praises the power John Wayne packed into his punches). Fight choreography evinces the tension between artifice and realism at the heart of any spectacular representation and thus participates in the aesthetic debate between ideals of cinematic realism or illusion. The presence of martial or combat professionals begs the question as to whether or not it is necessary to call on actual practitioners to perform in these scenes. In effect, relying on these artists makes it possible for the cinematography to foreground the profilmic (through the use of long shots) instead of resorting to fast editing techniques or digital effects; in the 21st century, this ethos transpires through the opposition between special effects (the use of cables in Tarantino’s 2003-4 Kill Bill) and digital effects which can compensate for the lack of martial talent but also allow for the invention of new moves and techniques (Matrix, Lana and Lilly Wachowski, 1999). Part of the spectatorial pleasure provided by certain fight scenes may very well stem from the impression or knowledge that the moves executed by the likes of Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan were effected “for real.” Fight choreographies thus rely on a series of extrinsic norms, involving the performativity and fluidity of bodies and including conventions such as the hyperbolic sonic impact of the cinematic punch, kick or gunshot. These norms can, no doubt, evolve throughout the film based on the rules that govern the diegetic world, so that audiences will come to accept that the series of actions are becoming increasingly intense and incredible. These aesthetic standards can certainly evolve throughout the film depending on the diegetic universe, so that the audience will potentially be able to accept a series of actions, each more intense and incredible than the last.

In an audiovisual medium, a fight scene is as much an auditory phenomenon (the sound of punches or gunshots) as it is a visual one, and the very notion of choreography raises questions about the relationship between the body, image, music and sound: do gunshots or punches compose a musical score? To what extent does the notion of choreography remain relevant when body movements seem to precede and even determine sound phenomena rather than express them? Does the analysis of fight scenes require knowledge of martial arts techniques and terminology and the cultural traditions associated with them, as well as the use of tools and methods borrowed from other scientific disciplines (dance studies, sports studies)?

At the most primal level, a fight scene is a state of affairs in which bodies face off, producing meaning and affecting our senses. In visual terms, the moving bodies appear as figures deployed in cinematic space. In the case of a gunfight, the beams of light drawing the trajectory of the shots potentially give rise to their own choreography. Fighters can exploit the topography and resources of a given space, evincing an economic relationship to their immediate environment (Jackie Chan in Police Story’s movies); spatial coordinates can be reconfigured by these violent actions but can also offer resistance to the fighters’ actions. Fight scenes aim to produce a perlocutionary effect on audiences, sometimes by resorting to aesthetics favoring hapticity or synesthesia, in which the movements’ and noises’ volume, intensity and rhythm make us feel the impact and power of a punch or a kick; blind characters like Zatoïchi and Daredevil are apt material for such formal experimentations. Can genres like the martial arts, boxing and wrestling movies be added to Linda Williams’s list of body genres (melodrama, horror and pornography), their common denominator being the motifs of blood and sweat?

Politically speaking, the fighters’ bodies are inscribed in a variety of cultural contexts—for instance, the mastery of martial arts is deemed superior to height or muscle (allowing Bruce Lee to best Karim Abul Jabar or the Shaw Brothers’ Pai Mei and female characters to best younger male fighters)—and participate in the politics of gender (fighting women often remaining unsullied by combat). Tolerance to violence and blood, and the institutional regulation of their representation, also vary from one culture to another, affecting the aesthetics of fight scenes.

Analyzing fight scenes in films and series may very well require additional information (for instance, familiarity with the names of fighting techniques or the cultural traditions associated with a martial practice) and methodologies borrowed from other academic disciplines (sports and dance studies, for instance). The aesthetic and cultural hybridity of fight scenes is fertile terrain for intermedial approaches focusing on the dialogue between various arts and media. The logic of the action sequence has obvious parallels with that of the musical number because both operate as spectacular interruptions in a narrative; the fight scene’s potential to disrupt or link, and the centrality of music and noises to endow the dance/martial gestures with rhythm, require careful consideration. Attention can also be paid to counter-examples in which the fight scene does not constitute a break but is relies on everyday gestures. The importance of tempo and rhythm in these scenes invites us to examine the fight scene’s duration, the way it works to ellipticize or, on the contrary, expand the action, climaxing in a final and potentially fatal hit. Fight scenes may orchestrate gradations in technique and violence both within the sequence and as a series of sequences within the film. Generally speaking, musicals and fight movies seem to require attention to the key significance of the number’s intermeshing relationship with the narrative structure and how the scene can or cannot be isolated from the rest of the movie. The line between fight scenes and musical numbers is a thin one, many movies deliberately toying with the similarities between a martial and a dance move (Sparrow, Johnnie To, 2008), a hit and a dance figure, a duel and a duo (Bahubali, S.S. Rajamouli, 2015), a ballet and a battle, or a confrontation between two rival gangs and a group dance (the cinema of Kanagaraj, for instance, replaces dancing with fights, albeit retaining the usual popular Indian film music).

Proposals including a 300-word abstract and a short bio should be sent to Amandine D’Azevedo (amandine.d-azevedo@univ-montp3.fr), Anissa Medjebeur (anissa.medjebeur@univ-montp3.fr) and David Roche (david.roche@univ-montp3.fr) by February 28, 2026.

 

Selected Bibliography

Bordwell, David. “Aesthetics in Action: Kungfu, Gunplay, and Cinematic Expressivity.” In At Full Speed: Hong Kong Cinema in a Borderless World, edited by Esther C. M. Yau. University of Minnesota Press, 2004, pp. 73-93.

Branigan, Erin. Dancefilm Choreography and the Moving Image. Oxford University Pess, 2011.

Brenez, Nicole. “Pourquoi faut-il tuer les morts ?” and “John Woo par lui-même : la prise et le plan.” In De la figure en général et du corps en particulier. De Boeck Supérieur, 1998, pp. 43-63, 283-84.

Cook, David A. “Ballistic Balletics: Styles of Violent Representation in The Wild Bunch and After.” Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch. Cambridge, edited by Stephen Prince, Cambridge University Press, 1999, p. 130-54.

Coulthard, Lisa. “Fist to Face: Corporeal Listening and the Cinematic Punch.” In The Oxford Handbook of Cinematic Listening, edited by Carlo Cenciarelli. Oxford University Press, 2021. Pp. 357-365.

Coulthard, Lisa and Lindsay Steenberg. “Red Circle of Revenge : Anatomy of the Fight Sequence in John Wick.” In the World of John Wick: One Year’s Work at the Continental Hotel, edited by Caitlin G. Watt and Stephen Watt, Indiana University Press, 2022, pp. 41-62.

Faucon, Térésa and Caroline San Martin (eds.). Chorégraphier le film : gestes, caméra, montage. Mimesis, 2019.

Gaudin, Antoine. L’Espace cinématographique. Armand Colin, 2015.

Gauville, Hervé. Le cinéma par la danse. Capricci Editions, 2020.

Gopalan, Lalitha. Cinema of Interruptions: Action Genres in Contemporary Indian Cinema. Bloosmbury, 2019.

Hanke, Robert. “John Woo’s Cinema of Hyperkinetic Violence: From ‘A Better Tomorrow to Face/Off.’” Film Criticism, vol. 24, no. 1, 1999, pp. 39–59.

Inouye, Kevin. The Screen Combat Handbook: A Practical Guide for Filmmakers. Routledge, 2020.

Iyer, Usha. Dancing Women: Choreographing Corporeal Histories of Hindi Cinema. Oxford University Press, 2020.

Kreng, John. Fight Choreography: The Art of Non-Verbal Dialogue. , 2005.

LeTraunik, Brian. A History of Contemporary Stage Combat. Routledge, 2020.

McAsh, F. Braun. Fight Choreography: A Practical Guide for Stage, Film and Television. The Crowood Press, 2010.

Moine, Raphaëlle. Les Femmes d’action au cinema. Armand Collin, 2010.

Neroni, Hilary. The Violent Woman: Femininity, Narrative, and Violence in Contemporary American Cinema. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005.

Pettigrew, Ian. “Entering the Cinema of Attractions’ Matrix : Yuen Wo-Ping’s Merging of Hollywood Spectacle with Kungfu Choreography.” Asian Cinema, vol. 29, n°1, 2018, pp. 81-97.

Pommerance, Murray, editor. Bang Bang. Shoot: Essays on Guns and Popular Culture. Pearson 2000.

Purse, Lisa. Contemporary Action Cinema. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011.

Roche, David. “Choreographing Genre in Kill Bill Vol. 1 & 2 (2003-2004).” Miranda, vol. 10, 2014. https://doi.org/10.4000/miranda.6285

Schwengler, Olivier. “Exercices de style à OK Corral.” Western : Que reste-t-il de nos amours ? edited by Gérard Camy, CinémAction, 1998, pp. 110-115.

Steenberg, Lindsay. Are You Not Entertained? Mapping the Gladiator Across Visual Media. Bloomsbury, 2020.

Teo, Stephen. Director in Action: Johnnie To and the Hong Kong Action Film. Hong Kong University Press, 2007.

Tomasovic, Dick. Kino-Tanz : l’art chorégraphique du cinéma. PUF, 2009.

Williams, Linda. “Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Excess.” Film Quarterly, vol. 44, no. 4, 1991, pp. 2-13.