The Fakest Looking Fights Ever Seen In Movies

The Fantastic Four reboot disappointed fans with its wasted potential, but nothing hurt as much, emotionally, as the horrendous final battle against Doom. Thoughts that the film’s budget was being saved for a final climatic battle filled with amazing visual effects were quickly dashed the first time that Doom used his telekinetic power, and it looked like a joke. Critics pointed out that the 2005 film had better effects for Reed’s stretching and Johnny’s flames, but the movie fight that’s supposed to a triumphant for the team is so joyless and dull it lacks any sense of fun or wonder.

Vin Diesel‘s extreme spy film, XXX, puts most of its emphasis on the wild stunts and largely ignores the fighting prowess of Xander Cage. There’s a good reason for that, even in the heightened reality of the film, a movie fight needs good choreography, and in the cartel sequence with Danny Trejo, there are clearly parts cut out. Xander’s legs go around Trejo’s head, pull him up, and in the next shot, he’s falling over a gagged and bound captive, but there’s no fluidity, no firm sequence of events, it’s all just vague punch motions, reaction shots, and explosions.

The Matrix changed movie fights forever by introducing the concept of “bullet time,” a revolutionary special effect technique that set the bar for the sequel. Alas, The Matrix Reloaded failed to reach those heights, and the Neo vs. 100 Agent Smiths scene, treated viewers to one of the worst fights in history. Watch the faces when Neo is spinning around on the pole, as some of the final shots that made it into the movie weren’t fully rendered, turning what should have been an amazing scene into a joke.

Street Fighter has some of the worst movie fights in history and while The Legend of Chun-Li doesn’t reach the depths of the first film, it took all the wrong lessons from mid-aughts action films. Kristen Kreuk strains believability as a martial arts master, while Taboo, the Black Eyed Peas hypeman as Vega, is woefully miscast, causing fights to go heavy on the “wire-fu” to make up for the physicality of the stars. Unrealistic choreography, a running theme in this list, makes it even worse, with pointless flips and movements that don’t even look cool, and the special-effect powered punches look just like those found in Dragonball Evolution, which is to say, they’re horrible.

Christopher Lee is a Hollywood legend, and casting him as Count Dooku in Star Wars: Attack of the Clones was a great get for the franchise…until lightsabers were drawn. The battle with Yoda works well, but in the earlier fight against Anakin and Obi-Wan, Dooku is barely moving, with stiff movements and poor choreography that doesn’t even reach the level of Vader and Obi-Wan in A New Hope.

As far as movie fights go, Star Wars has had some of the best in history, and in Lee’s Sith Lord, some of the worst.

Not only does this movie have some of the worst fights in history, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation commits the cardinal sin of B-grade martial arts films, it’s boring. The first film features fun fights between Sonya and Kano, and Johnny Cage against Goro, while the second makes Scorpion vs. Sub-Zero into a dull slog with wild overreactions. The costumes look cheap, and the slow-motion is poorly executed; everything about this film makes it seem like it was produced on the smallest budget possible, with a proportional amount of planning put into laying out each scene.

Sharon Stone, coming off of a life-threatening stroke a few years earlier, does her best in Halle Berry’s Catwoman, but the boring movie ends with an equally boring fight. The signs were there early in the film when Berry’s Catwoman moves, jumps, and flips exaggeratedly like a toddler pumped full of soda acting out a comic book. Bad choreography, wild movements, and a lack of heft to the blows are recurring issues with bad fight scenes, and Catwoman suffers from all of those problems.

Street Fighter: The Movie, based on one of the greatest fighting games of all time, needed to nail the fight scenes, but the Jean Claude Van Damme film missed the mark completely. The special-effects-heavy final battle against Raul Julia’s M. Bison can be forgiven, but every other fight in the film features blows that look like they miss by a mile. A lack of consistency between shots, no speed, and any sense of urgency makes the fights, even the pit battle against Vega, look like an emotionless slog.

The best-worst movie of all time also features one of the worst fights ever filmed, between Mark and Johnny, with some of the worst punches ever filmed. Amazingly, parts of the fight were real, with blood spilling from an accidental push into the set. For a film featuring the worst cinematography since Manos, it’s no surprise that the climatic fight is just as hard to watch, and it’s impossible not to feel second-hand embarrassment for everyone involved.

A big-budget movie has worse fight scenes than The Room. Combining every issue with poor fights, from bad choreography to over-exaggerated movements, what makes Batman and Robin worse is trying to incorporate the sound effects from Adam West’s Batman series. The campy 60s series used “BAM,” “BIFF,” and “POW,” firmly tongue in cheek, but the George Clooney and Arnold Schwarzenegger film doesn’t go far enough to make them amusing and instead, they’re just annoying. Somehow, the worst parts of the film are when Batman is in his cape and cowl.