*cough* and Welsh *cough*
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I would say it’s more due to a need to drag out the entertainment value. A fight director for once told me something to the effect that in a real fight his job is to end the fight quickly, but as a fight choreographer his job is to extend the fight. With an extended fight you get a chance to create a dramatic arc for the fight itself, in a way that is consistent with the narrative of the movie or play. However many cinematic fights are just long, and lack a dramatic arc, and lack moves that are consistent with the characters.
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This strikes me as another case of hollywood enhancing reality to the point where it’s not longer realistic. This kind of standoff is credible with junk guns, derringers, old .22 caliber pistols and the like – as you might have found in a street confrontation in the 60s or 70s – where shock is less likely and the other guy might get to shoot you back.
But that photo depicts a .45 ACP and 9mm, promising instant incapacitation.
Also very true, as for stage fencing there are also moves such as the envelopment, a flashy parry where the swords make a nice, dramatic arc. The sort of move that would get you killed in real life. I recall using it with a very overdone punch to the jaw afterwards.
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It’s not nonsense, it’s sport. It happens to be martial arts-adjacent, but it’s not martial arts. Anyway, Meyer advocated for the flick as far back as 1570:
“The flick or tag-hit is not actually delivered as a cut, but is rather flicked: it is executed in the middle of combat when one has occasion, namely when you make your weapon snap at your opponent from above or from either side or from below with the flat or foible of the blade, or flick it in an arc over or under his blade.” (Art of Combat 1.14v1, tr. Forgeng)
I mean, I expect some of his rant re: the katana was good old-fashioned European exceptionalism, but some of his arguments regarding the blade shape, weight, etc., made sense. This is why you always trust, but verify.
The problem is that he comes up with so many howlers and is so consistently unwilling to consider facts outside his comfort zone that “you must always trust” Lindybeige is not a good heuristic.
Just read this and thought of you…
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I was looking for a trope example where two guys have guns pointed straight at each other’s heads, point blank, barrel to side of head, and the camera does a full 360 revolution around the situation, to show “tense” the situation is.
I figure in real life one of them fires immediately and that’s that. How on earth do you mentally “negotiate” that situation? It’s not like Mutually Assured Destruction, it’s more like, I’d better fire FIRST or die. For the sake of the movie plot, though, somehow cooler heads prevail, the only time that ever happens in action movies.
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I did this once in a sort-of exhibition match with wooden swords. Only it was the opposite way.
My friend and I were in too close and when we both went to pull back, our swords got stuck. For a brief, distracted moment we were both pulling against each other’s strength.
Through sheer happenstance, I pulled my sword the side and when it slid off, my friend hit himself in the face so hard he almost knocked himself unconscious. He was trying to compliment me and my awesome move and say, “no hard feelings” because he thought I’d pulled some intentional maneuver.
It took a few of us quite awhile to explain to him what had actually happened.
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