Best battle scene ever filmed

[axordil]

Are we talking most stirring or most accurate?

Great battle scenes can be one or the other, as a rule, since most battles are not all that stirring to be in. Given that, in no particular order, except that if you include the Nóm Nobis at the end Branagh's really is number one with an arrow:

1) Henry V (Agincourt), Branagh
2) Kagemusha or Ran (pick one)
3) Henry V (Agincourt), Olivier
4) Zulu (Roarke's Drift)
5) Spartacus (thank you, Cinerama)
6) Braveheart (Stirling, Falkirk OK too)
7) Lawrence of Arabia (Aqaba)

Criteria: Live action only. Must be land battles (no naval action). No SF weapons (no Battle of Hoth). Fantasy OK if magic not obtrusive (Helm's Deep OK, Pelannor Fields not so much). Must involve at least a thousand combatants on each side, or a lopsided siege (Zulu OK, Seven Samurai not). And of course, I have to have actually seen the movie (Sorry, Saving Private Ryan and Enemy at the Gates). In token of the fact that I know I've missed those and other impressive ones, I'm stopping at seven.

[yovargas]

yov, why did you think it was silly?

I have been intending to answer this, btw...just haven't haven't gotten around to it yet.


PS - I wacthed LOTR again this week. It's still awesome

[Jnyusa]

1) Henry V (Agincourt), Branagh
2) Kagemusha or Ran (pick one)
3) Henry V (Agincourt), Olivier
4) Zulu (Roarke's Drift)
5) Spartacus (thank you, Cinerama)
6) Braveheart (Stirling, Falkirk OK too)
7) Lawrence of Arabia (Aqaba)

Interesting list, Ax! You know, I've seen Branagh's Henry V twice and cannot remember the battle scene at all. What sticks in my mind indelibly are the conversations between Henry and his men on the eve of the battle. (I don't recall much of Spartacus either, even though I've seen it a couple times. Have to rent both those movies again.)

Ran, yes. Also splendid. Throne of Blood, not so hot.
Zulu, yes! What a stunning conclusion.
Braveheart I did not see, and won't.
Lawrence of Arabia ... you know, I was thinking about this one when Frelga asked for cool battles, and I decided that Aqaba was too 'documentary' to fit my definition of ... catharsis .... assuming that catharsis is what battle scenes are supposed to confer. But that Lean did with those battles, not just Aqaba but the intertribal skirmishes, all with real actors and no CGI, it continues to just blow me away. What a commitment to the art.

Jn

[Jnyusa]

And then there's this one ...

http://xkcd.com/109/

[Alatar]

You know whats weird? I can't even remember what happens in the thrid Matrix movie...

[Rodia]

I remember a fight broke out in the audience. Some guy punched some other guy's girlfriend.

And then Neo did some fighting, I think.

[axordil]

You know whats weird? I can't even remember what happens in the thrid Matrix movie...

That's because they rebooted the audience.

[Túrin Turambar]

I’ve never seen Ran, but if Kurosawa could film large-scale battles like he could film small-scale fights then I don’t see how he could be beaten (although my film experience is fairly limited). Still, the tension that he manages to create in Seven Samurai is remarkable. People slip and slide, they fall over, their weapons break, they hesitate, they go to hit and miss, and all up he doesn’t make it look easy. The fighting actually looks real, unchoreographed and believable, which is rare.

[axordil]

If we want to do a thread on best FIGHT scene, Seven Samurai is on my list. I put it up there with some of the ones from the 70s 3 & 4 Musketeers for realism of choreography. But that's a different kind of list, I think. It's certainly a different kind of effect.

[yovargas]

Ugh. I found Seven Samurai so boooring.....

[vison]

So did I, yovargas. Are we cultural Phillistines?

*sadly, thinks usually is *

*brightens up *

*doesn't care, has fun in own culturally Phillistinic way *

[yovargas]

I much prefer to assume that everyone else is wrong all the time.

[axordil]

The movie is on the slow side by modern American standards. Working through subtitles doesn't help that. Given that (and slow doesn't have to mean boring if one doesn't have ADD) the fights are pretty cool.

[vison]

The movie is on the slow side by modern American standards. Working through subtitles doesn't help that. Given that (and slow doesn't have to mean boring if one doesn't have ADD) the fights are pretty cool.

It's not that. In all honesty, the whole warrior/honour/killing people/revenge stuff leaves me cold. No matter how beautifully choreographed and filmed.

One little thing I liked about Helm's Deep was the terrified look on one little kid's face. That tells you everything you need to know about what a battle is really like. The rest was a waste of time.

[yovargas]

I don't honestly remember much about SS but I do remember being totally uninvested in any of the characters and actively disliking some. It's hard to get too into a battle when you don't care who wins or loses

[Athrabeth]

I do remember being totally uninvested in any of the characters and actively disliking some

.

Well, to be fair, a lot of the main characters were supposed to be rather dislikable. I thought that added a real dimension of believability to the story.

In all honesty, the whole warrior/honour/killing people/revenge stuff leaves me cold. No matter how beautifully choreographed and filmed.

For me, that's the beauty of the Seven Samurai. It really is speaking against the "warrior/honour/killing people/revenge stuff" (at least, that's the way I've always viewed it).

I'm generally not a fan of great battle scenes. After the stunningly evocative charge of the Rohirrim in ROTK I lost sustainable interest in the battle relatively quickly. Same with Helm's Deep.......great beginning, a few great moments, but overall, it just went on far too long. And Jackson never managed to capture the horror of each battle's aftermath.......the emptiness and loss, the dirty work of dealing with the mountains of corpses. Tolkien doesn't linger on this either, but the terrible price paid is always acknowledged.

I think the battle scenes in Master and Commander are some of the best I can recall (although they don't fit Ax's criteria ). They are uncomfortably intimate - sudden bursts of almost claustrophobic brutality. And Weir does not neglect the "price paid".

[axordil]

It really is speaking against the "warrior/honour/killing people/revenge stuff" (at least, that's the way I've always viewed it).

Exactly. Kurosawa was not a violence-loving romantic. The big battle scene in Kagemusha especially comes to mind...visually dazzling and chilling even as I think about it twenty five plus years after the last time I saw it.

[vison]

*sigh*

It seemed like glorification to me. "Look!!! Look how awful it is!!! Look!!!! A fountain of blood spewing onto the snow . . . how artistic. But how awful. Yes, awful. Horrible. But look, how beautifully filmed. All in artistic black and white . ."

I guess I don't get it. I am, after all, a cultural Phillistine. But I wonder if I am a single "l" Philistine or a double "ll" Phillistine and I'm too lazy to go look.

All these guys that make movies that are supposed to show how awful war and killing really are: they've made enough. Let's have movies full of Pink Fluffy Unicorn Bunnies dancing through green meadows full of Yellow Daisies and laughing children and pretty birds in the sky. But wait . . . . What is that big bird? It's awfully noisy for a bird, isn't it? It's awful big. Oh, Mummy!! Look, flames coming out of that bird!!! Ewwww. Gross. Look at Johnny, Mummy. Why, that big bird burned him all up!!!! Can we have us tea now, Mummy?

Yes, yes. War is Hell.

[Athrabeth]

Yes, yes. War is Hell.

But the Seven Samurai isn't really about war. It's about a little village that hires a rather scruffy bunch of ronin to protect their crops (and their women) from being pillaged by an even more scruffy bunch of bandits. I think we're supposed to empathize with the villagers, who just want to get on with the business of living their lives and ridding themselves of these dudes with swords (including their "rescuers"). The ending is wonderful, IMO, with the peasants pretty much ignoring the three surviving "hired guns", laughing and singing as they plant their rice, while the samurai basically muse on the futility and emptiness of their lives as fighters. I guess I just don't see any "glorification" of violence in this particular movie.

vison, how do you feel about The Magnificent Seven? Does it bug you as much as The Seven Samurai?

[axordil]

BTW, Kurosawa didn't use black and white in SS and other early films just because it was "artsy." Color film stock was beyond the budget of Japanese studios until the mid-60s. He didn't have a choice, as I understand it.