

Real sword fights often take only a few seconds or even a fraction of a second, with one solid hit generally being enough to take a man out of the fight (contrast this with Flynning). In Real Life, kendo kata #7 ends this way.Īn increasingly favored method of ending the final fight in a movie already heavy on well-orchestrated brawls, since it plays on suspense rather than sheer action and implies higher stakes than the previous fights against mooks: both fighters are skilled enough that whoever makes one little miscalculation will immediately die, and although the outcome is determined by what technique or course of action each fighter decides on before they clash, neither the swordsmen nor the audience can know for sure what's going to happen until after the blows are struck.Ĭontains some Truth in Television, even if embellished. Another common subversion of expectations involves revealing both combatants to have been injured (or killed). One way to fake out the audience is to have one character (almost always the hero) fall to one knee looking as if they've been hit, or have them suffer a relatively minor wound, but then reveal that he's okay while the other character falls over dead instead. Often this happens at the same time that the victorious character sheathes their weapon, or turns back to face their opponent.

They may start bleeding at this point, or be entirely cut into pieces. One character falls to the ground, defeated or dead. Sometimes this moment can be dragged on for a very long time to build tension. This shot is usually shown for both characters.Ī Beat goes by, with both characters completely still. They are shown in a shot from the front of one character, with the other in the background. If this is an anime, expect the screen to go black and the stroke to be painted by a white or blue streak across the screen.īoth characters land in a crouching position. Alternately there is the sound of steel on steel, but events pass too quickly for the audience to see what happened. The characters move past each other in midair, weapons drawn, but no weapon strikes are shown. Each is shown leaping in a closeup, probably from the waist down, although the leap is simultaneous. Each character is shown in a frontal shot from the other's perspective. On cue – sometimes triggered by an outside event, such as a slowly falling flower petal touching the ground – they break into a sprint toward each other, leaning far forward, hands on weapons. They stand at opposite ends of a very wide, low-angle shot. The aspect ratio is widescreen, letterboxed if the show is shot in 4:3. Two enemies of nearly equal skill meet, about twenty yards apart.
