Shaky Cam

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Dear jerk.

Dear stupid, stupid jerk. Dear the fresh-out-of-film-school pretentious jerk who invented the shaky-cam.

You took my action movies away from me.

Oh, sure, I hear professor elbow patches in the back of the room. I hear him sneer, his lips curling in disgust around his meerschaum pipe. Action movies are not the domain of the superior intellect, he says. They glorify violence, anti-intellectualism, misogyny, and an outdated notion of masculinity. Better to devote, he says whilst contemplating a tryst lately undertaken with his grad student paramour, the mind to pursuits of subtlety and sensitivity. A man can be measured in the things he values. All of which I agree with, but that doesn't stop me watching Lethal Apocalypse Pew Pew Gun Guy number tumpty-tumpty X when it wanders around.

But I digress. Onto the lecture:

Where was I?

Oh, yeah.

Hey jerk. Why did you take away my fight scenes?

Oh, I see. You wanted to put my right in the action. You wanted me to not be a passive viewer but a participant! Well, thank you so much. Now I can't tell what the ducks is going on until the camera stops pirouetting like a Russian ballerina off the wagon and the Square Jawed Reluctant Caucasian Lead turns to the Useless Female and asks if her delicate constitution was offended.

Look, I'll be the first to admit that most of the fight scenes from my childhood look like this:



It's static. You might as well be watching a wild west shootout at Uncle Buck's Discount Western Jamboree. It needed improving, sure. But is this any better?



Come on, man. You had Jeff Imada, JEFF IMADA, probably the best fight choreographer in movies today and you might as well have chucked a rag doll across the screen.

Anytime someone utters "in the center of the action" I die a little inside. I don't want to BE in the center of the action. Pain hurts, death is pretty fucking final, and I'm pretty sure the actual lives of spies/commandos/ninjas/cops (on or off the edge)/soldiers/etc aren't anything like what they're portrayed on the screen. If I get too close to that, it's harder to maintain the fantasy. That's why the remake of Rambo turned me off so much.

Immersion is all fine and dandy when you're doing works of drama or tragedy, when we need to really understand and sympathize with the characters and their struggles. Alls that's needed in action movies is skill and clarity. By your immersion argument, wouldn't it be more immersive to hire some studio thug to beat up the audience every fight scene.

You want to make movies that challenge audiences perceptions of stuff, go be the darling of the indie film circuit. We pay you to make action movies. Shut the FU and do the job, monkey.