The last action hero? Perhaps …
Here at the Statesman we often ask people “caught on campus” what they would do if they had an unlimited supply of monkeys.
This question is unfortunately pure speculation because it seems Hollywood already has the world’s only unlimited supply of monkeys and currently has them employed working the camera during every fight scene in every movie.
If you watch action movies these days, I’m sure you know what I’m talking about. Once the hero and a bad guy start fighting, the camera, which has been perfectly fine to this point in the movie, starts bouncing around as if the camera man has either experienced his own personal earthquake or fallen in a fit of convulsions.
As an action junkie, this really bothers me. I paid to see the movie with the soul purpose of watching two people pretend to beat the tar out of each other and this camera angle is really messing it up for me.
It’s gotten so bad that often, you can’t discern who’s punching whom. You can only tell who wins after the fight ends and the camera returns to human hands.
The first movie that I really remember using this monkeycam technique is “The Bourne Supremacy.” I figured it was a one-film experiment that directors would quickly realize was a bad idea.
No such luck.
I’ve figured out why we have this problem. It’s because we have actors like Matt Damon, Charlize Theron and Orlando Bloom playing action heroes.
I have nothing against these actors in general, but they’re not action stars.
I remember the late `80s and early `90s when we had stars like Chuck Norris, Steve Seagal and Jean Claude Van-Damme. Sure we make fun of these guys today because they couldn’t act, but at least they could throw a punch.
Nowadays we have the opposite problem. People who can act are trying to fight and cinematographers have to result to cheap camera tricks to hide their lack of skills.
It’s not just monkeycam, there’s CGI and poorly executed cuts between the actor and a stunt double as well. Admittedly, these tricks tend to be more prevalent in movies so fantastic that no actor could really pull off the required stunts, i.e. “Spiderman” and “Lord of the Rings.”
A few years ago a couple actors from China, like Jet Li, Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung, came over and made some movies with great fight scenes.
Unfortunately, Hung seems to have returned to his homeland and Chan is cracking more jokes than bones.
Li’s next movie “Fearless,” a kung fu epic along the lines of “Hero,” is being billed as his final action film.
Do you realize what this means? Nothing but Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie from now on, that’s what.
Trust me, that’s a bad thing.
But what can we do about it? I’m not really sure. I’m not aware of anyone here on campus with heavy Hollywood connections.
I’d suggest boycotting the movies but as much as I hate monkeycam, I can’t resist a movie with an explosion in the trailer.
I wish I could do more, but even I must admit this world has more important problems that I should focus my efforts on solving. I guess all we can do is stock our personal collections with classics like “Enter the Dragon” and the occasional foreign piece like “Ong Bak: The Thai Warrior” and wait for some new action hero to turn Hollywood on it’s head for us.
Steve Shinney is the features editor at the Utah Statesman. Comments and questions can be sent to him at steveshinney@cc.usu.edu