The final duel
When such a showdown comes, it's always a treat. Cinematic battles between rival armies and sports teams may be impressive, but there's nothing more satisfying than a one-on-one, winner-take-all standoff between two old enemies in close contact. Filmmakers knew it was a success-or-failure scenario. The audience knows that everything they see in the first hour or two will be resolved. In real life, disputes are rarely resolved so quickly or decisively – and that can be a good thing. But in the film, showdowns give us the illusion of an all-out, unhindered path to ultimate victory or defeat. Here are the 10 best – and the 10 elements that make them so meaningful.
High risk
One of the most brutal fights in cinemas is confined to a cramped space — a pair of narrow train cars — but the stakes are enormous. Before punching out the first punch, James Bond and Red Grant engage in a civilized hero-villain chat that is characteristic of Bond: The Golden Gun Man and Dr. Nol contain two notable examples. In this case, their discussion determined that Grant planned to murder Bond and Tatiana Romanova, ruin their reputation in the press, and pass on the Lektor cipher machine to his ghostly superiors. It also determined that Grant was a very nasty piece. In the words of footballer Bill Shankly, their showdown is not a matter of life and death, much more important than that. The makers of the final duel also carefully conveyed their stakes in the competition.
Star wars
A two-hour build-up in The Last Duel? Compared to what George Lucas had us through 40 years ago, that's nothing. Luke Skywalker poses with his lightsaber on a poster promoting the first Star Wars movie, but it wasn't until near the end of the second that viewers saw him playing darth Vader (or anyone else). Their lightsaber battles remain the most memorable showdown in the Star Wars series, thanks to the atmospheric range of its spooky Cloud City location, and the way in which every buzz and crackle of the battle is interrupted by musings about whether enemies really should be allies. Let's not forget darth being (spoiler alert) Luke's father's revelation. But if Star Wars fans didn't, nothing would have mattered so much.
Loki IV
Rocky IV (1985) in Rocky V (1985) vs Ivandrago (Dolph Lundgren)
Winner: Rocky Balboa
The Rocky films all take a step towards the third act brawl between Loki Balboa and anyone he happens to meet in that episode. When the fourth film came out, Sylvester Stallone realized that the stakes had to be ridiculously high, so they were: Balboa not only had to get revenge on the gold medalist who killed his friend Apollo Creed earlier in the film, he was also a soldier in the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. Stress-free. But Stallone has always valued the importance of another showdown part: preparations. Pull a sleigh in the snow! Cut down trees! And your opponents have been using multimillion-dollar computerized sports gadgets. Without ridiculous training montages, Loki movies would be useless, and they didn't.
The Past in the West
The duel between the sadistic Frank and the mysterious man harmonica was soon over: no cunning tactics, no sporty dodges and diving; only one man was faster in the draw than the other. It was still a skilful duel, though, as Sergio Leone took the Western metaphor of pre-dueling confrontation to its immense limit, adding a full seven minutes of tension while the gun was still in the holster. The first is the duelist striding slowly and cautiously into position over the dusty landscape. (See also: Samurai trekking on the mountain of Masaki Kobayashi Harakiri.) Then there's the suspicious Frank and the extreme close-up of the expressionless harmonica, accompanied by Ennio Morricone's guitar sounds and ghostly harmonica wailing. Then, finally, a flashback reveals why Charles Bronson's character is determined to kill Henry Fonda's character. When harmonica was a child, his brother was hanged by Frank and the harmonica was forced to participate. Well, their scoring settings are almost impossible to be more personal, which is one of the reasons it's so engaging. Interestingly, the showdown can be personal even without two people involved: as proof, see Ripley's hatred of the Alien Queen in Aliens, and Brody's hatred of sharks in Jaws.
Kill Bill Volume 2
Most showdowns occur between two evenly matched opponents. Excitement comes from believing that either of them can win (even if you know it could be a good thing). Quentin Tarantino was interested in the concept in Kill Bill: Volume 2. Of all the people Beatrix Driver killed on its way to killing Bill, no one was more like her than Elle Driver. Both were tall blond female members of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad; both had names, Bea and Elle, that sounded like letters. Tarantino often used the same weapons in the same way, photographing them as mirror images. At one stage, he even had them connected with the same kicks and then used a split screen to show them falling down and getting up in perfect parallel. Unfortunately for Elle, Bea has a crucial advantage that allows her to turn a blind eye to her doppelganger...
Blade Runner
Not all opponents are as balanced as Bea and Elle (above). Some movies adjust the formula by pitting the protagonist against a more powerful opponent, so we don't want the heroes to win: we just want them to survive. There are versions of this showdown in The Shining and Terminator, but it's hard to beat Rick Decker and Roy Barty's epic hide-and-seek game in Blade Runner. Rain, darkness, crumbling architecture, Roy's poetic farewell speech... Everything about this series is awesome, but a key aspect is that replicants outperform the exhausted bounty hunters who have been tracking him down. Hauer is like a demigod, and Ford, no matter how many tough guys he's played, is better than anyone else in his seemingly scared, tired, and downright groggy action scenes.
At times, the amazing skill of combatants elevates the level of dueling – few actors are better at swordsmanship than former British Army fencing champion Basil Rathbone. His most influential duel was the one in which he and Errol Flynn dashed and evaded in the castle in The Adventures of Robin Hood, but the most exciting was ruben Mamulian's Mark of Zorro's sword duel with Tyrone Bauer. Captain Esteban Pasquale and Don Diego Vega never strayed from an office, nor did they have any tricks or gimmicks, only long enough footage so we could see that both men knew what they were doing. Such was the ferocity and speed of the whipping blade, and it seemed surprising that both Rathbone and Bauer had left the scene alive. In some shots, Bauer has a fencing doubles, but Rathbone still says in his autobiography.
The Matrix
Some showdowns have an important narrative purpose, not just one person defeating another. They're really about a person proving how far they've come by showing abilities they didn't have before. In Shop of Horror, Audrey II goes from a carnivorous plant to a towering, multi-headed, mean-spirited green mother from outer space. In Sword and Stone, Merlin teaches Arthur how to outwit Mrs. Meme. In The Matrix, Neo's battle with Agent Smith first shows that he is now a Superman martial artist and goes on to show him that he can stop hail bullets in mid-air by waving his hand. The effects and choreography were stunning, but Morpheus' comment summed up the gist: "He began to believe. ”
halloween
In her 1992 book, Man, Woman, and Chainsaw: Gender in Modern Horror Cinema, Carol M. Carol J Clover identifies "The Last Girl," the only female survivor of a murder in a horror movie, before climaxing with "terrorists." Evil Spirits". Sally in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre is an early example, but the last girl to set the standard was Laurie Strode on Halloween. When she and Michael Miles came face-to-face, Laurie rightfully screamed to escape the lunatic who had been stalking her around Hadenfield. But soon she did everything she could, stabbing him one after another with a needle, a wire hanger, and a knife. The fact that she was so skilled at sharp objects but traumatized by the ordeal that John Carpenter and Debra Hill (co-authors of the film) didn't make her the main killer of Halloween II felt like a waste of opportunity. Laurie, on the other hand, has had a fantastic career as the last girl: more than 40 years since they first knifed, she's still fending off Michael during the Halloween killings released this month.
The third person
Of course, they are not always physical. Some of the most vicious showdowns involve only verbal quarrels. In Carol Reed's The Third Man, written by Graham Greene, an American writer reunites with a former friend on the Wiener Riesenrad Ferris wheel in Vienna. Holly Martins fought valiantly, but he couldn't fight the careless, immoral Harry Lime, whose mischievous taunts and mischievous smiles made his evil even more sinister: a blackmailer who was more plagued by indigestion than the death he profited from. He mentions the gun in his pocket, but he doesn't have to resort to violence: like Hannibal Lector's deal with Clarice Starling in The Silence, mind and confidence are all it takes to gain the upper hand.
hot
The Heat claim to be one of the loudest and bloodiest shootouts ever recorded, but the film's climax is a brief scene in which two men meet in a restaurant. According to writer and director Michael Mann, the sequence is based on an actual meeting between a real detective and a bank robber who inspires the character. Regardless of its origins, it's important for audiences to see two New York showbiz legends and old friends, Al Pacino and Robert De Niro, finally perform face to face. (They are all in The Godfather Part II, but never in the same scene.) If different actors play Vincent Hanna and Neil Macaulay, the conversation won't have much of an impact, but sometimes the showdown isn't about the characters being brought to them more than the actors bring them. On notes that are slightly less worthy of the Oscars.