Your favourite melee/swordfighting scenes in movies and tv?

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Idealect

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What are some good movies or tv programs with decent or melee combat, particularly swordfighting? Good Hand to hand and Animation scenes are very welcome, but they're not quite the rarity that good live action melee weapon scenes are, so I'm roughly looking for decent-to-good weapon melee scenes, and great-to-"the bestest" animation or hand to hand scenes (or both). Non duels are even better as I've found the best scenes tend to be duels. (I'm guessing it's easier to focus on the swordplay in a less chaotic environment)


Here are three I thought had excellent to amazing, to mind blowing, melee-weapon scenes, two are animated:

Die another day

Sword of the stranger

FMA: brotherhood (really long, if you don't feel like wading through it you can always look for highlights on youtube)
 
Errol Flynn was, of course, a master of the screen sword fight, but my favourite from that era is actually Stewart Grainger in Scaramouche, bounding around a theatre. And also the Douglas Fairbanks Jr vs. Ronald Coleman swordfight in the original and best Prisoner of Zenda, for the banter. "Where did you learn such roller-skating?" "Coldstream Guards, old boy."
 
Would the Hammer scene in Old Boy count?

Also, I still rate the Maul/Qui-Gonn/Kenobi lightsaber duel at the end of The Phantom Menace very highly.
 
There are some great fights in The Musketeers series.

Or - how about that scene in Seven Samurai with the top samurai vs the bandits?
 
Rodders said:
Would the Hammer scene in Old Boy count?

Also, I still rate the Maul/Qui-Gonn/Kenobi lightsaber duel at the end of The Phantom Menace very highly.
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or indeed "baseball boy" and "hammer girl" scenes in The Raid: 2 - be warned though if you do watch it is pretty brutal
 
This is close to my heart as I LOVE a good fight scene.

The Hektor-Achilles battle between David Bana and Brad Pitt in Troy is very good - in fact some of the choreography is great.

I love almost all of the 300 battles - the stylistic filming and voice overs just tick the right boxes for me.

For a single battle I think the Rob Roy swordfight is great. When Neeson grabs the sword and you can see the other guy who had been untouchable thinking "oh damn im in trouble".
 
Not my genre generally, but I really like the fights in Fist of Legend.
 
I have a couple of contenders - both completely unrealistic but fun.

The fight between the Bride and Crazy 88 in Kill Bill, and the fight between the Musketeers and the Cardinal's Guard in The Three Musketeers (original version).
 
Droflet said:
Easy. The Princess Bride. The fight between Wesley and Montoya. A classic that put Errol Flynn to shame.
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First thing that popped in my head Droflet. Great minds n all that.

Excalibur - the weariness of a wounded Lancelot and muddy tired Knights in the final battle were awesome.
 
Monty python, the black knight scene.

In all seriousness, Gladiator (2000) film, the duel at the end between Maximus and Commodus was entertaining, not to mention the battle with the Gauls at the beginning, but that's more general combat with weapons, the aesthetics of that movie were beautiful, all though mostly fabricated.

I don't really watch that many movies come to think of it, sorry.
 
Gene Kelly was great in the Three Musketeers, Mirannan! Another of my favourites. And then there's the Tyrone Power/Basil Rathbone duel in Zorro, with the slashing the candle thing.
Basil Rathbone really was a good swordsman, and Errol Flynn was a good stage swordsman, so it really was those two fighting it out in Robin Hood rather than stunt doubles, for the most part.
 
Most of the best sword fights in cinema history have the late legend Bob Anderson behind them: Errol Flynn, Star Wars, Zorro, Lord of the Rings. (Incidentally he claimed that Viggo Mortensen is the best swordsman he ever trained - and his swordplay at the end of Fellowship of the Ring is pretty impressive.)

However, my favourite sword fighting is in Tristan and Isolde, especially the scene where they're competing in the tournament. Not sure who was behind that but it is intense stuff without being overdone.
 
Not a star wars fan but the one scene I do like is when Darth says "Sister, so you have a twin sister!" etc and luke looses it, realises he's loosing it and stops. An amazing scene with a great score. Interestingly it seems that Rey in the new star wars lost it in the same way but I'm pretty sure that wasn't a secret deep message about her being border line darkside like the ROJ scene because if abrahams had that skill he might have understood star trek and not done the horrofic things he has. Oh wait that reminds me, again the sound track makes it, Spock V Kirk in Amok time is the uktimate. It's all about the emotion for me not the coreographed scene.
 
Considering they only had a very limited rehearsal time, it being TV, Kirk and Spock in Amok Time were very good indeed - like you say, Ajid, the emotion makes it great.
And River Boy is right - Bob Anderson was a great fight arranger - and I'll have to look out for Tristan and Isolde now.
 
River Boy said:
(Incidentally he claimed that Viggo Mortensen is the best swordsman he ever trained - and his swordplay at the end of Fellowship of the Ring is pretty impressive.)
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In the scene where Lurtz throws a dagger at Aragorn he actually threw the dagger incorrectly so the scene where Aragorn bats it away with the sword is a live scene and Viggo just carried on with the scene. The knife embedded itself into a tree so the danger was very real.

 
Oh yes, I'd forgotten that. They nearly drowned Viggo as well at one point so I think he earned his wage.
 
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