This Movie Trope Should Die. (But Keeps Getting Back Up)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 1 ส.ค. 2024
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Don't you love how characters in action movies take however much (or little) damage as the plot demands, regardless of how much (or little) sense it makes? They get bashed, slashed, stabbed, and shot but arbitrarily either drop like flies or act like nothing happened.
So here's a rant about common inconsistencies and lack of internal logic in fighting scenes that confuse and irk the viewer, with examples from Spartacus: Blood and Sand, Universal Soldier 4, and the old Rocky films. Good old plot armor, eh?
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What Unholy Tacticool Mall Ninja Edgelord Trash is This?!
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** Time Stamps **
00:00 - Logic, consistency, and expectations
00:30 - 01:48 Spartacus: Blood and Sand
01:48 - 02:59 Online "plot armor": Private Internet Access
02:59 - 04:17 Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning
04:17 - 07:34 Crazy machete fight (wounds don't matter)
07:34 - 09:03 Rocky Balboa: Professional damage sponge
09:03 Last Action Hero / closing thoughts
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RPG Ambient 4 (The Dark Woods)
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Solara (nostalgic synthwave) by White Bat Audio (Karl Casey)
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Outro:
"Highland Storm" by The Slanted Room Records
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Rocky V did bring up the brain damage suffered by Rocky from his fight with Draco. I got your point though.
How does Private VPN handle IP tunneling and tracking?
I'm making a scifi with plot armor built in via every character being Astral projecting, which negates tedious damage like falling, suffocating, small traumas, and really only ends with a character death when they no longer have the focus and energy in them to hold themselves together, and lose their astral form. This has the result of character deaths only happening in big climactic moments when they basically accept death.
I'm curious what you think of this, and what effect this may have on the tension of the story
@0:50 Borrowed clip from Mortal Kombat X.
Rolemaster did damage better than DnD because the criticals could outright kill, could result in bleeding out unless you were helped, or could just result in big negatives that meant it was easier for the foe to hit you even harder. Thus, there were high stakes.
The downside was that it was hard to be heroic. You weren't going to take one a horde of foes - heck, you were very unlikely to have even a long duel. And yet there were long duels in reality, and some of the best fantasy has had the hero with ridiculous wounds and yet they keep fighting.
So it's a tradeoff, and I have never been satisfied with either one.
Also it's interesting to see the US Government moving to criminalise possession of a VPN. I assume other Western countries will be pressured into conformity.
VPN's are a scam. The NSA would never allow anyone to actually remain anonymous.
Skall, you don't understand. He had a flashback to his dying friend and gained immense power. It's not plot armor. it's perfectly logical
That, and such things do exist in actual fights. Plot armor exists as well. Winston Churchill had it on at the time he got into a carriage accident.
Ah, so it was anime nakama power-up, not plot armor. Yeah, I'd say it's reasonable.
u sir have 69 likes
@@linkskywalker5417 Winston Churchill? What about Hitler, if you were to list to someone who knows nothing about him all the assassination attempts on him and tell him that every single one of them failed they would say something like "Really? ALL of them? Yeah, right, and pigs fly too"
@@linkskywalker5417 Being lucky and having plot armor are two different things. If it happened in real life then by definition it's not plot armor.
when a character gets beat up to the point of barely able to move, but then he gets angy and is suddenly even better than when he started fighting at full strength
That's more of an anime trope.
yeah but in most Anime at least you get the excuse of : "magic gets stronger with your emotions, not your muscles".
And when it is not that, it is more a stretching of the limits of whatever willpower can do in crises.
@@arx3516 most of the time in anime though magic or other similar powers like chi or chakra or whatever is involved and they are highly influenced by emotional state and determination and whatnot, total bs of course, but at least its something.
I love when this is subverted like in SPOILERS
End of Evangelion with asuka's final stand against the mass production Evas. And Akira Fudo in Devilman Crybaby, where he's at his mightiest, fights more verociously, still gets critically injured and loses. It wasn't ever about the victory, it was a protest against evil.
Imagine the struggle being both former military and a medic while watching action movies. The "oh just shot in the shoulder" trope knowing where veins and arteries are.
Most of these people have never seen a bad nose bleed. 91W A 1/64 3ID.
Or going on to perform WWE style moves with that arm after having the shoulder joint destroyed.
The one that really bugs me is not getting the uniforms right, or having them use jargon that no one ever fucking says. Like, FUCKING GOOGLE SOME SHIT YOURE MAKING A MULTIMILLION DOLLAR MOVIE
When i see shitty uniforms in a movie Im essentially just expecting it to be bad from then on cause if they cant be bothered getting that right, theyre probably lazy as fuck when it comes to everything else.
@@TheHaughtyOsprey 68W 2bct 1cd
I imagine it's awful, as a nurse it's pretty rough too.
This is why I liked Dredd (2012) especially. Dredd wasn't just taking blows and going through the movie more and more bloodied, but instead through superior training was able to keep himself safe until the very end where he actually took a shot. And then it's not made out to be something he could just shrug off but instead needed first aid. And after that there wasn't much big fighting, so it wasn't beyond reason to see him get through it.
Yeah, one can imagine him struggling if he had had to fight someone serious afterwards. It also helps that the injury was accurate in that it went cleanly in and out because it was a piercing round. NORMALLY in-n-outs tend to leave big exit wounds that require significant tending to in comparison to the entry wound, but piercing rounds by comparison leave not significantly bigger exit wounds
The movie was amazing anyway... criminally overlooked.
I watched the 3d version back when it was first in theatres and damn was it amazing. Got the dvd as well and its a shame there's been no further movie adaptations of the comic series.
Extremely underrated movie. Did not get the respect it deserved when it premiered. This one demands sequels, damn it!
Also, a fantastic soundtrack that is great for use in RP games 😄
This is one thing I loved about the Daredevil series that was on Netflix. Matt was not invulnerable. As a fight progressed, he would slow down, get sloppy. Every hit took a toll. The longer the fight lasted, the more exhausted he became. After a fight he needed medical attention. It was brutal.
Daredevil is a joke
I loved how realistic the fight scenes felt in Daredevil.
@@TheLevrion the hell are you talking about? Its one of the coolest shows on Netflix.
I'm pretty sure Disney will kill some part of that realism, but a man can dream.
Well, Daredevil is by far the best Marvel show we've had so far... even though Disney/Marvel had very little/nothing to do with it. 🤔 Maybe that says something... not that what Netflix tends to make is usually much good either.
Bladed weapons scale off how much armor the opponent is wearing. You slash at a steel breastplate: instakill. Stab a naked torso: no problem. They survive, beat you and heal in 2 hours..
There is a video out there somewhere of a guy 'reviewing' a film, iirc one of the Narnia ones, and picking out the stupidity. Someone wearing full plate armour and getting extinguished by a slight sword cut became so common rather than pausing and explaining, he just put on an announcers voice and said 'Light Sabre' every time it happened...
@Debbiebabe69 wasn't it shadversity that did that?
@@expl0sives4day58 Yea thats the one. Shad reviewing Prince Caspian. Just found it.
@@Debbiebabe69 Lightsaber looks weird when its seperated into two words, even though its more grammatically correct. lol
Also do not, under any circumstances, wear a helmet that covers your face. If you do, then any hit, no matter where, is guaranteed to kill you. Now, you might be worried about getting hit in the head if you don't wear a helmet, but you shouldn't. The worst you're likely to get is a slash across the cheek that'll make a cool scar later.
Funny, that you mentioned Rocky IV. I recently saw a interview with Stallone where he tells the story of how he asked Lundgren on set to hit him as hard as he could for real. Stallone ended up in hospital for nine days. Makes the headblocks even more ridiculous 😂
And it was a chest blow, where the physician thought he had been in a car accident and hit his chest with the steering wheel... Dolph could hit hard man...
also that shot was used in the movie and it was one of the first ones used
No?
@@ratatoskr8190 i heard it in a video on that movie
He did something similar with Hulk Hogan when training for Rocky 3. He soon regretted it not telling Hogan to do moves full out instead of as a "work".
"Mind you, I'm not expecting much realism . . . but what I do expect is consistency and internal logic" I feel like if people on the internet could learn this phrase, online discourse about fiction would become a lot less painful.
I love how every skallagrim video manages to be unique yet skallagrimy at the same moment
This one was great! hahaha
Skallagrimmy is my new favourite adjective
Exactly my thoughts. Not saying that ADHD is always the best, but I think it makes it almost impossible to not have a personal way of expressing yourself, especially in longer forms, like topical videos or essays. It makes it hard to script and stay on scrip because you don't just get the appropriate association that you need to tie things together, but Skall has been doing this for so long now that we basically only get the golden part of the association tsunami.
Essentially what I'm saying is that if you don't want to be the next WatchMojo, hire an editor or script writer with ADHD.
skallagrimmy
skallagrimy sounds like it's covered in grime
Truth. ✅
“The only hit point that matters is the last one”
On the flip side, it's actually incredible how much punishment a human can endure, and keep being an active combatant. We're pretty tough, especially when hopped up on adrenaline. (We're actually not alone in this, I've seen animals that are missing huge chunks of their body, suffering major trauma, just keep flooring it like they were uninjured). I'm bothered less by the wounds not mattering so much in the fight (though it gets me every time how in a slasher movie, some waifish teen girl who looks like she weighs a buck ten at most, gets a 10-inch blade into the gut or back, and then just keeps on trucking and flailing around) than I am them not mattering later.
People in action, fighting for their lives, can sustain incredible trauma. Then, when it's over, they spiral into shock and the injuries start being felt, and it all catches up and they can very quickly fail even if seen to. I want to see more of that, the cost of such incredible feats. Some of those wounds, you might be able to fight through, but in the weeks or years later, you might never be the same.
I was thinking the same thing. I've read accounts from the Crusades of men fighting for a bizarre amount of time after being *seriously* wounded. Like, losing an arm, riding into some building and helping whoever's inside hold out before they fall unconscious from the blood loss. Modern militaries sometimes suggest aiming for the pelvis if possible to prevent an assailant from walking. Obviously once you're injured by a lethal weapon you're on a countdown to death and aren't going to be very useful, but killing someone quickly is really goddamn hard and people can still be dangerous in the meantime.
@@colbyboucher6391 There's lots of accounts from the wars in India and the Napoleonic wars where people fought on with clearly lethal injuries, and even killing other people while they were basically dead men walking. Matt Easton did a video some time ago (like almost 10 years now), wherein there was an account of an Afghan man who had borne another to the ground. While they were wrestling over his weapon, the man he was fighting called for aid and another man came and impaled the Afghan fellow through the torso, but he kept fighting, with the man's sword *still in his body* . His opponent, managed to retrieve his weapon, and struck him a blow through the scalp, stopping between his eyes, to which the Afghan man cried "Oh god!" then died.
He has another about a fellow who received a terrible blow from a heavy sabre, which cut through his arm and into his chest. The man dispatched his foe, and at least two others by cleaving their skulls (he was up on a wall), and then was rescued and went on to survive.
It's wild what people can pull off in the thick of things.
I was gonna come make this point lol I'm a fan of muay thai/leithwei and the amount of punishment they can endure is absolutely insane. I'm talking full force elbows to the temple, knees to the jaw, things that would down your average person. Granted that's a skill they've trained sometimes since childhood, but still, not nearly as ridiculous a trope as one would think at first
you can endure suffering, but if your knees are broken, you won't walk, if your muscles are too damaged, they won't work
There's an interesting scene close to the beginning of the movie The Northman, in which the Berserker invaders go into a slaughter in a small village and after it's over they're all dry heaving and can barely move due to exhaustion and injuries
A small note about the sword cut to his back at the start; because gladiator fights were expensive, you wanted the fight to be long and entertaining, so they would use blunt swords. They were still sharp enough to cut, but the injury wouldn't be very deep, so the cut to his back not paralysing him is plausible
Remember the first season of "Game of Thrones" where Ned Start get a leg injury, has to lie in bed for days, and then has a limp all the way until the end?
I remember a movie where Steven Segall's character spends years in intensive hospital care before fighting back .
"Hard to Kill"
a month in Intensive care and you might have to spend 6 month in learning how to walk again.
to be fair, he does rehab himself in the movie after IIRC.
Steven seagall having realism is funny
I would argue Rocky deserves a little more credit than some of the others as he too often has to spend time in the hospital after his fights and is shown suffering serious, life altering injuries.
A thing about Skall's comment about hit points: in early D&D, where HP originated, HP were never stated to just be the ability to take more punishment. They were explicitly stated to be a mix of slipping blows, divine favor, and plot armor. They never were, "High level fighter can take fifty direct hits from a sword." It was "high level fighter can slip your blows and has plot armor."
In earlier naval wargames it did at least partially represent actual damage, which made sense. A battleship is modular and can often keep trucking through a gigantic hole in its side or two. Translating those mechanics to meatbags meant making them more abstract.
interesting to know
I guess it's up to the game master to come up with the more coherent/adequate narrative for the character, situation, and type of story.
@@petitio_principii Let me offer a a very simple answer for high fantasy: don't care.
In my Cyberpunk RED game, we make every bullet that hits count. That's a nasty, lethal game where even a seasoned Solo can get cut down by a nasty unlucky shot.
In our VtM game, every corpse, every wound is a chance for secrets to get out. We walk on eggshells and maybe twice in the whole campaign did actual violence break out.
In our PF2e game, hahaha hitpoints are funny, now we're 16th level and the Sorceress is summoning her dragon so let's keep having fun here.
Forearm machete block - not advised.
Last Action Hero is SOOOOO good! It was way ahead of its time. I genuinely think it would have been a massive critical and box office hit, had it been released today! Great video, Skall!
It's so sad, cause they were planning on making a whole universe with other action heroes and stars.
Yeah. I remember it didn't make well in theatres and didn't get much attention from the critics but I think it is a good parody on all action-film clichés. It was sort of a way for Schwarzenegger to laugh at himself about all his previous films.
The Last Action Hero was making fun of movie tropes more than a decade before TH-cam existed and almost two decades before CinemaSins and their "Everything Wrong With ..." series.
I wrote a paper in uni where I basically argued that Last Action Hero is kino.
IIRC it released in the same season as Jurassic Park.
Fight scenes are cooler when injuries sustained either before or during the fight play into what the characters are able to do in the fight, and they mean more when the injuries last or at least have to take some time to heal after the fight, which could cause problems for the next fight.
Agreed!
My Hero Academia does that! The main character "deku" f-up both of his arms everytime he uses his power to a point where he started to use the power with his legs instead. He was told that he might lose the use of his arm if he continues to punch people while wrecking his arm each time.
Daredevil is so good for this
Actually at the edge of my seat everytime he barely defeats hundreds of goons only to have to go against the big boss completely fresh
I like how in the punisher series he looked like hammered dog s#1t the whole time.
Or when a character ends up being unable to continue fighting, even after winning via adrenaline.
Die Hard is one of the most beloved action movies because, while he still takes a somewhat unrealistic amount of damage, John Wayne is very clearly getting progressively more injured and more exhausted over the course of the movie. You can do plot armour without it being dumb lol.
…Wayne?
@@tregggabbard6917 Ffs I said the wrong name didn't I? Whats his actual name again?
edit: John Mclane! Fuck that sounds similar in my head
@@fearedjames It's okay, it forced me to picture the events of Die Hard but with John Wayne as the hero and it was awesome, so thanks lol
@@fearedjames sometime I misremember the character's name as John McCallister, kind of fusing it with "home alone," which is sort of a PG version of "die hard" in a way.
I got a concussion last fall and now every time I watch an action scene I’m much harsher as a critic judging what the character is capable of doing after an injury 😂
I am still waiting for someone to look at how every person who throws a knife in a movie/tv show, always hits and drives the knife deeply through the ribs or other bones, killing the person
And they throw any knife, apparently one can just grab a kitchen knife and throw it. Sure. Lol
@@meishuu Do you now have a wall of all the common kitchen knives to train throwing them every single day?
Yeah, IRL it only takes a master knife thrower a few decades to be able to do that on the reg. Even then it's tough to do it consistently.
@@meishuu I mean most kitchen knives are pretty easy to throw.
@@nooneofimportance2110 And yet when we were kids we grew up doing it without much practice at all.
I saw this trope come in clutch in the movie blackthorn where the mc gets shot in the gut when some bandits attack his ranch and he crawls on the ground groaning while the bandits kill his wife and family. THEN he stands up like nothing happened and the scene continues as one might expect it to.
Bloody ridiculous.
Cool, have him bleed out and die. Much better storytelling right? No? Shut up.
The example in Last Action Hero was played as a low key critique of movie damage. It made sense to me because they were pointing at how ridiculous movie magic is in this regard
Not onlythat,i really love how in the real world how he isteally nice, very chull, and enjoys an akward but nice meal. And how he enjoys nothing going on.
And the kid is , well breaks the fantasy of the always badass. And its sweet and wholesome. He is allowed to be a real person
Maybe its even a commentary how arnie seems to enjoy comedy way more than action?!
Or masculinity percieved in the face yeah i like chilling wholesome , you dont, whats wrong with you.
It might be about masculinity rolemodels and that people arent stereotypes. And the real world, is mundane but like apreciate it.
Or itsa commentary on arnies action comedy switch. Or both
The movie was way underated. And even just arnie having fu
@@marocat4749 I think it was underrated because much of the audience thought it was an unsuccessful action movie rather than a parody of action movies.
I especially love the machete to the shoulder and forearm. I mean really, I don’t care how much extra “toughness “ you have , having half the muscles in your forearm severed is going to completely destroy your ability to use that hand. Not to mention the blood loss. Same with the shoulder, good luck using the upper body after that.
Fun fact. My dad had his bicep hacked off by a 12 inch blade and still proceeded to beat the guy unconscious. Apparently still had a grip on the guy when the ambulance arrived. The guy was jailed for an earlier murder and the attempted murder of my dad. My dad also had scars on his legs from a shotgun attack and a head scar from a crowbar. He worked in security.
I badly hurt my finger over a month ago and when it happened my nail went black and I literally couldn't grip with my whole hand for almost 5minutes, I'm sure that a machete should do the trick lol
i guess everybody has different defenses, like how tenanbum said in bioshock:
"why was this one born strong and the other weak, why is this one smart while the other stupid?"
I got a small nick to the base of my index finger, I hit nerves and legements and still years later only have 80% range of movement and numbness in my finger even tho I had immediate surgery (if I didn't chances are my finger would be mostly paralyzed with no feeling)
I threw a throwing knife out of anger and it deflected in my direction I put my hand up to defend my face and the only sharp part of the knife (near the handle) got me down to the bone.
Lol I'm just remembering now how some of my family didn't understand why I was still into arms after my injury and then telling me not to practice throwing anymore, I felt I had to get back to it but I will never lift a weapon in anger again unless it's for protection.
Just a side-note, regarding the cut on the inner thigh. There's a rather harrowing story of Mauro Prosperi, who in a desert race in 1994 got lost in a sandstorm. Basically, the only reason he survived was that his blood had thickened too much from dehydration so it coagulated instead of flowing freely.
So, if you're making a super soldier whose muscles are all super super strong *anyway* you might as well thicken their blood.
Doesn't change how it makes the fight pointless and it lacks any reason to even exist, besides movie spectacle.
doesnt matter anyway when Universal Soldiers are basically science created ZOMBIES. to "kill" one you basically have to throw it into a wood chipper
Isn't that what space Marines have, genetically modified blood so it congeals faster when exposed to air
Space marines
It worked for his specific case, in his accident, but wouldn't that overall stress out the heart even more and made transferring of oxygen and carbon dioxide even harder (guess)?
@Camilo Vazquez uhh extra fancy heart and lung (space marine)
The only realism I ask for is that combats actually look like they're trying to hit one another.
It's funny and frustrating when in a fight, the enemy has the protagonist crawling on the floor and instead of pinning them down from behind and/or otherwise finishing them off, they choose to throw the protagonist to the far side of the room where they now have the time to get back up and fight.
@@josecarlosmoreno9731 I also don't know if it's worse if they just toss them on the floor, or if the hero gets slammed spine first into a brick wall at 40 miles per hour (60kph) and is just winded.
@@josecarlosmoreno9731 I don't mind that if the enemy is say toying with the protagonist or is overly cocky. I'm more talking about fight scenes where they are clearly aiming for each other's blades not their bodies.
The Star Wars prequels come to mind, there they literally wait for the opponent to finish a twirl or spin before attacking.
@@slyfer60 the Star Wars _sequals_ get a lot of stick, but I thought the fights in TFA were good - they looked like people who weren't very skilled with lightsabers trying to murder the fuck out of each other with lightsabers.
@@iapetusmccool The Force Awakens fights were a breath of fresh air. I also like the detail of Rey's fighting style. A lot of overhead strikes and jabs impling that she's more used to a longer weapon like her staff.
This is relevant to one of my favorite details in the road warrior. Max gets shot in the knee in the previous film and instead of doing the typical movie thing where everyone forgets about it, they have max wearing a leg brace years later after the injury. In a franchise so careless about other details they take injuries pretty seriously.
The director of the films, George Miller, was some kind of doctor before he made the first Mad Max, so it makes sense he would notice the minir details like that.
I really liked the scene in Shooter with Mark Wahlberg where he takes a bullet to the abdomen and for the quarter of the movie basically he's fleeing and attempting to plug the wound all the while getting weaker and slower until he is able to get it removed at which point he's knocked out in bed resting from the surgery much more realistic and suspenseful then most action movies.
I always remember in the original 1960 Stanley Kubrick Spartacus film one scene of gladiatorial training in which they did a fairly good job in explaining different areas of the body one could slash with a sword to get injuries ranging from an instant kill to a slow drawn out kill.
Also, actual gladiators wouldn't normaly go for deep cuts or mortal blows. Imagine if every MMA match today ended in a kill. There would be no more fighters
@@bloodangel19 Yeah I basically could attribute the Spartacus one to the gladiators playing with him to make more of a spectacle. I mean it's a 4v1 so you figure they're not going to want to end the fight in an immediate lethal blow. Part of their goal is to draw out the fight and play to the crowd.
@@taragnor yeah they were giving him a stern beating to make the crowd roar. They were like WWE wrestlers. Plus the guy was in good condition, you can't waste a good barbarian like that, you can fix him and make more money outta him. That's how a ludus was run. While slaves were a somewhat cheap comodity in Rome, they weren't that cheap to train and equip
@@bloodangel19 Slaves weren't even that cheap, especially in the period Spartacus was alive in, before the end of the republic and Rome's massive expansions outside Italy and what few colonial outposts it had.
All that sounds reasonable, especially in a more historical consideration. Then again we should not over-use that to defend and justify the spartacus scene, because the main narrative of the entire series is "every fight is bloody deadly"
This reminds me of a fight scene in either Transporter 2 or 3 where Jason Stathem fights some Russian behemoth who hits him in the face multiple times with a 2x4 and he just takes it. Even as a teen I was like, no that's bullshit lol.
There's a specific trope I've noticed in recent action movies where characters get impaled in the abdomen or virtually disemboweled and then just walk it off. Even leaving realism aside, this is the kind of injury that in the language of film is meant to translate as a kill or at least "non-trivial injury", but apparently these days it's becoming as insignificant as the old "shot in the arm".
Really, you would think tvey are at least out of comission and out if any condition to fight.
Even in an action movie.
Helicopter crashes are just how people get to the ground.
Yeah, the biggest scrutiny i usually have is the muscle severing. I can see slashes potentially not having enough depth to fully sever something (many of these movies show above average people), but many of them show people getting shot or impaled through the legs, arms, and shoulders, and somehow their muscles just still work. Like i can believe someone overcoming pain through adrenaline, maybe even sustaining a head injury, and still be able to fight, but the full severing of muscles really makes me lose immerision in current films
yup. many directors have no idea of how muscles work.
Even worse in JoJo’s where characters get bits of their flesh torn off in every fight only to mysteriously be completely fine the next episode
Yeah, both Jojo n Spartacus are exaggerated type of action nonsense, where you really shouldn't use logic. The huge blood spurts and gruesome injuries are there just for the style of it. It is pretty stupud, I agree, but it's also fun.
once it gets past part 3 it's not mysterious at all, healing stands exist.
It got so bad that protagonists’s teams require healers, and even then that does not mean much given they still regularly take life-ending injuries or at least injuries that would make it impossible to move.
The worst offender in anime is Saint Seiya, where it is explicitly established that phydically saints are still normal human beings, and tyeir durability is that of normal people, while at the same time it is also explicitly stated that they can destroy atoms, punch at light speed and hit with the force of an exploding galaxy. It is true that they all wear magical armors that protect them, but some times you see the protagonists taking hits well after their armors have already been destroyed.
Hey remember when granpa died for several minutes and then got some blood transfused and was COMPLETELY FINE?!
I love Jojo
A hero who can't lose is a hero who sucks the tension out of a situation.
Yet power fantasy anime fans love such heroes for some reason. Anos Voldigoad and Ayanokouji are two examples of heroes (I use the term somewhat loosely) who can't lose.
@@linkskywalker5417 Leon Kennedy from RE4 specifically. Just an anime character who defies physics. I wish weebs could keep their anime shite out of everything under the sun.
Sorry for the long rant. I would say that the trope’s effectiveness heavily depends on the story’s narrative focus. For example, there are many cases where you have this overpowered character who is capable of saving the day and can’t lose a fight. However, he or she can’t get to the fight on time, loses something else in return (like their sense of humanity and/or the public’s favor) either directly or indirectly due to their power or is simply not the true protagonist. It really depends on how far the writer goes down this trope of the hero never losing. An alternative idea if one wants to go down the route of a character who truly never loses would be focusing on where the character used to be (a past where the character did lose; explaining why the character does not lose now) and/or highlighting the crazy method in which a character does not lose. Though for the latter idea, such a character would align more to a slice of life comedy than an action show/film.
@@GhostRS3411 They can still lose at their goals 🥅 , which *is the important thing.*
I'd say that statement requires quite a bit of added context.
For example, in a story in which the meaningful conflicts are not resolved through force, an unbeatable warrior wouldn't be at much of an advantage, no matter how hard he can cast fist.
Alternatively, a story where the character is unbeatable due to trickery, the process of carefully dismantling their opponent's strengths and finding the weaknesses is the main source of the story; In such a piece, the main character is merely the narrative device with which the world is introduced, more than anything.
In short, an unbeatable hero is only a detriment to the story when said story centers around conflict resolution through the means in which said hero is unbeatable.
Yeah, this is my only real problem with the TV show Cobra Kai. The inconsistencies where sometimes a basic strike leads to near incapacitation, but sometimes the kids throw each other through glass trophy cases and broken furniture and they just bounce right back to their feet ready to keep fighting.
That and the fact that every character acts insanely dumb at all times
I see what you did with the title. The trope that never dies because the trope itself has the thickest of plot armor.
There is a viable explanation on this whole issue. When you throw a 20 in a death saving throw when your hp goes zero and you do not suffer massive damage you will regain one hp.
You fight exactly as well with 1hp as if you had maximum and the plot demands some roll forging at times.
It'd be hilarious if after a full minute of two dudes wailing on each other, throwing a small rock brings their HP to 0 and they just explode.
@@Appletank8nah, you need to get their HP to -10 to make them explode. (At least in Baldur's Gate)
Exactly! People always forget about this.
Literally a huge part of why I'm not a fan of D&D 5e. I'll take Mythras any day.
th-cam.com/video/6darJMyrAE8/w-d-xo.html
this trope isn't gonna die unless the writer wants the trope to die
I think it's movie executives that are the problem rather than writers, "This is good, but it needs to be spiced up a bit." "Add a machete to the fist fight." "Have the protagonist get knocked down by the other, armed, fighters. That way the audience will think he's going to lose. Then have them turn it around!" "The audience will love it!" "The critics will love it!"
You literally vote with your wallet for these sort of things, if you just *have* to see the latest action movie regardless of the tropes then you're going to keep seeing the tropes that sell tickets. Whether they are actually a detriment to sales or not.
I guess that implies that movie critique has to compare movies and rate ones that think deeper than "will this look great on the big screen?"
This joke has layers. Bravo.
That's why I avoid writing damage to the head, spine, or crucial internal organs.
Plot armor has plot armor.
@@Sylfa The problem is that you can't truly know if a movie is shit or not without watching it - critics are often full of shit and can't be trusted to review whether sugar is sweet.
The anime Goblin Slayer handled this really well, I think. When the main character almost dies and has his "heroic second wind", even after drinking a potion he isn't running around fighting at full strength. Dude can barely walk, and has just enough energy to choke out the boss--and even then, he can't finish the job, just distract and intimidate the enemies so his allies can turn the tide. He fought through his injuries, but in a way that someone who's actually injured would have to fight.
Just adding:
A little content warning for Goblin Slayer, it covers some pretty horrific stuff. There are two versions, go with the more censored one, please. There is SA, and other stuff in both but the less censored version is worse. Just warning so people won't go in blind! I really enjoyed Goblin Slayer overall however, so I do recommend it if you don't mind the horrific happenings.
just read the manga
Yes, the goblins do things to humans that the Russians have been doing in Ukraine. They are evil and cruel.
On the flip side, many main stream entertainment villains don't do anything villainous any more. It's like having a murder mystery show forbidden from having murders.
@@macmcleod1188 yeah modern villains are a joke
@@macmcleod1188 Goblin slayer was a bit excessive though theres a way to have that stuff and have it add to the story but not show every detail of it.
I 100% agree.
Whenever something happens in a movie that that would seriously injure or kill the character, I say they shouldn’t be getting up from that and it borders on comical when someone can get demolished by 30 dudes and just walk it off.
The one piece of media that sticks out for doing this right to me, is hajime no ippo (at least the anime, haven't read the source). It's a boxing anime and hits and mid fight injury play a huge roll in not just the outcomes, but the entire pace and story of the fight. A lucky shot early could be enough to slow down the better fighter and have a very close match against someone a bit less skilled, or an initially overpowering weapon could get taken out by injuring that arm. They kind of ignore this once they get further into the story (past season 1) which is frustrating and then it comes down to bloodlust and fighting spirit, but the good 75 or so episodes before that are great.
In defense of the show, I think the blood is largely a metaphor for pain. So that explosion of blood was meant to visualize the pain of the attack, since there's no way to actually show that visually.
His facial expressions, the body moving, theres alot of better ways to do it rather than mindless blood
I don't know, I can tell when someone is in pain without having to see explosions of blood. They wince, they cover the areas that hurt, they move more slowly, etc. I can understand if you say it's a metaphor for pain because you might be on the whole "green colored drapes are a metaphore for life" tangent of a literature professor, but definitely NOT because it cannot be shown, because it actually can.
This makes sense for comics (or something filmed in comic style, I guess) where the character physically showing the pain would need entirely too many drawings. But for a movie or show it just wouldn't make sense when they can act out being in pain.
I think the problem with the struggle being to be there but not having the hero take real damage is that a hero who isn't taking damage comes off as being invincible and having the untouchable plot armor.
While the amount of damage taken in most action movies is ridiculous and clearly would be debilitating or fatal normally, we excuse this because it's entertaining and even though the hero shrugs it off, it still causes our "Oh shit" reaction because we understand what it's like in reality.
Gets stabbed in the lung, "I'll be fine."
Gets shot in the heart, "It's just a flesh wound."
Gets arms chopped off, "Tis but a scratch!"
Gets blown across the room, "Just a few broken bones and concussions, nothing to worry about."
Gets nuked, "Its fine, I just hid in the frigde."
Another good example on the horror movie side of things is the new Scream 6 movie. I love it and I'm very happy with it, but man, the characters just spent the last third of the movie getting stabbed. But they all keep walking and running and fighting. Even the character Chad, who got turned into a frickin pin cushion and got stabbed like 7 or 8 times in the chest, SOMEHOW managed to survive. Same with another character who got her guts perforated was walking around at the end of the movie, when it had been established that she needed to be in a hospital not 2 hours before
Of course Chad was fine.
He is Chad, after all.
The latest John Wick movie is VERY egregious with this trope. Not only from the injuries sustained throughout the film seem to be more lethal than anything he endured in the previous movies, but the way Wick reacts to the injuries he sustains at the END of the movie, is so inconsistent.
For Universal Soldier, I think it is partly due to the fact that their bodies are technically in a constant state of regeneration. Their limitation is they can over heat, but takes them to get much hotter than the average person to have a problem; however they can push themselves to that limit by being overworked.
In Spartacus' defense they stopped with the blood explosions after some episodes. I noticed this because it bothered me too.
Yep it actually gets really good with the drama too. And crixus, is thebest.
I do love how ridiculous those first two seasons are with the blood and stuff tho. Reminded me of 300.
I thought of it as since the romans were usually the audience like us or atleast onlookers to fights, we see from their comical perspective leading the combat to become extremely dramatized and romanticised like their own narcissistic facades.
I loved Last Action Hero for calling out all these tropes, even making fun of the real world.
"Hello? I've just shot somebody, I did it on purpose. I said, I have murdered a man, and I want to confess!" "Hey shut up down there!"
@@McCheese-xc9ig That's precisely what I was thinking of! Thanks, man!
They released that movie for free on TH-cam, I just watched again myself
Awesome pf pic! Loved Olgierd as a character
@@manuj2868 Thanks. It's IMHO one of the best games ever made and I love their storytelling and attention to details, such as Olgierd's Kontusz. I kinda want to have one myself. It just looks epic.
I think John Wick did this pretty well, because every injury slows him down until he has time to rest and recover
The first movie does it incredibly well. The 2nd, 3rd, and 4th do it terribly.
@@lupedust8931 The worst thing is that they invented bullet proof suits...
@@lupedust8931 (misses shot, *shot hits next guy coming out of corner*
(gets shot 3 times in the torso) *proceeds to take out entire army while holding hand on chest*
*kills 8 men armed with machine guns* **with pencil**
The “Rob Roy” duel is scene pretty cool in that way (aside from other ways). I mean, Liam Neeson‘s character moves slower and slower after every wound to the point where he barely moves at the end of fight.
PS: “Last action hero” is great.
That internal consistency is VERY important. You can have characters take certain amounts of damage, but as long as everyone follows the same rules, it should be fine.
For example, Jojo's Bizarre Adventure has some insanely grievous wounds, but most of the characters just walk them off except for the ones who are supposed to be weak.
I would argue that the French Marshal Nicolas Oudinot under Napoleon was a real life main character, the dude got wounded 34 times 12 of which bullet wounds. But thats not the normal i guess.
That person existed, but i guess thatsmore weird history than the norm.
Also give that man a movie.
Yeah look up a video on the Victoria cross recipients done by Jeremy Clarkson. He’s talks about a number of guys with horrendous, debilitating wounds and trauma but having to carry on.
You should look up the cowboy Wild Bill
That UniSol critique gives me some ideas for enhanced humans who are so tanky that even another similarly enhanced can't take them down despite their superhuman strength. Could be pretty funny if two of them end up fighting and realize very soon they can't even hurt each other. They just look at each other awkwardly for a bit, then leave and agree to pretend it never happened.
Makes me think of an article I read many years ago about a military drug experiment about prolonging performance after massive body trauma, the problem was, with no pain threshold it proved useless because they would not be able to identify if they were hurt or not.
I feel like if you hit the point of super strength in a modern context
The solution to super toughness is to just have them toting around .50s like it's nothing
It would still be bonkers to watch if they have to go that far to deal damage
"Blade of Immortal" has a very similar fight to what you just described.
The fight ends only because one of them wants to die and gives up and lets the MC win.
ps.
there is Manga, Anime and live action Movie as well
Also in super hero movies/shows, their strength is very inconsistent. Spider-Man seems to forget he has a spider sense unless the writers want to focus on it. I remember Jessica Jones' power was also very inconsistent.
I think my least favourite example is Dr. Strange in Infinity War. Literally defeated some interdimensional entity by rewinding time a couple of times in his own movie, but can't go back 30 seconds to before Starlord slaps Thanos awake.
The way I go about it personally, in my own writing, is that serious injuries are *incredibly* serious, and outright magic and drugs are needed just to keep people going. For example at one point my protagonist gets thrown through a wall and it completely pulverizes his back. He isn't moving until he pops a magic potion to fix him- but it only goes so far as to get him back on his feet. In another fight at the end, he doesn't have them and a similar injury ends up resulting in his death.
8:28 Stephen Seagal is very insistent that he not struggle in films with things like using stairs or fighting standing up
Also that he never, ever, under any circumstances, show a facial expression.
Also speaking, for some reason. Hell say half of his lines, but get someone else to say the other half, in the same movie.
A good movie duel is the Deluge (I know you covered it before). The head wound is especially realistic if you read the 18th century sword wounds compendium. A cut that does not go through the skull bone is highly likely to scatter bone fragments at high speeds into your brain, like a bone shotgun inside the skull, ending the fight immediately. And the characters avoid plot armor, yes even drive the plot forward and making a character developing moment by not managing to hit each other the whole duel.
This happens in the og Karate Kid and it has bothered me for a long time. I mean, my boy Daniel basically gets his knee bended backwards by Johnny's Elbow of the People, and then thanks to Miyagi's japanese magic he can perform this elaborate kick that requires standing with one leg and then striking with the leg that had the knee destroyed.
I believe someone also pointed out that kick would have been illegal and should have gotten him disqualified, but I'm no rules expert on karate.
Daniel is seen struggling to support weight on his leg and looses 2 points to Johnny cause he is unable to fight properly. Also during the Crane Kick he stands on his good leg and the kick is a quick swap so he briefly supports himself with his bad leg while striking with his good leg.
@@umbranoctis4348 Head contact is permitted. When Daniel is getting the rules explained to him at the start of the tournament, the head is specifically mentioned as a place he can strike or be struck on to gain a point.
What many people don't talk about was the fact the tournament was open to black and brown belts only. Daniel had zero belt progression or certification, and would not have been recognised by the karate federation as a certified black or brown belt. Thus disqualifying him from competing and forfeiting the trophy to Johnny as he was second place winner.
@@krampusklaws2238 Ah, thanks. I probably got it mixed up and that was the disqualification that other person was talking about. Him not even being qualified to enter seems like a more serious breach of rules.
There was a great episode on the HBO series Barry that's basically one long comedy-of-errors fight scene, where the guys are getting exhausted and fighting for air and trying to rally all throughout. And it's pretty funny, to boot.
One of my favorite tropes is... I don't know how to call it... Let's call it the "hero finds an opponent whom he respects and is respected by, even though they are just about to fight to the death". Like in The Raid 2. When the protagonist is exterminating all of the mafia by pure fist, but then he finds someone who fights really good like him. This opponent also knows that the protagonist fights really well, so when they are about to fight, they don't just jump at the other like enraged hyenas, just like the protagonist has been doing this far. No. They both see eye to eye in that this fight is different. They begin to fight like they are in a tournament, slowly escalating in intensity till the winner is the one still on his feet.
Like that scene in the Princess Bride, with Inigo Montoya?
@@QualityPen To be fair, Inigo Montoya was out to punish that guy. Killing him outright wouldn't send the message. He wanted the Six-Fingered Man to see his face, his anger and show how helpless he is against Inigo. He took his father, so he took his hope and dignity. I thought it was great.
reminds me of joe yabuki vs rikishii toru
@@Lux_Onyx I think he meant at the beginning when Inigo Montoya fights the Dread Pirate Roberts.
In that Inigo and Westley were going to kill each other but upon realizing each other’s skill their fight turned more into a sparing match with more intensity.
Where did all that blood explode from when Spartacus was hit at the base of his skull? That's a huge problem in itself.
Losing so much blood in an instant would just knock you out right then and there.
I presume from his back, considering that art of his body has just been *ripped open by a fucking sword* moments earlier....
One movie I found did the damage stuff accurately was The Northman. Main character got stabbed before the final fight and actually fought like he was suffering from a stab wound. Then he got hit again and fought like he was hurt
Here's the thing though... Sometimes a person can get shot 14 times by a .45 and not even flinch while other times a single .22 shot will instantly kill a person. Or in MMA we'll see one guy take 10 consecutive haymakers on the chin and walk it off only for another to get put out cold by a halfhearted jab.
The unavoidable reality is that the human body is both insanely resilient and also horrifyingly fragile at the same time so at least for me personally this sort of stuff doesn't usually get under my skin... At least until they immediately heal those 14 bullet wounds in the next scene transition...
Bat man is the epitome of plot armor
When poorly written, sure.
I give up the twilight kid is not batman I will never accept
@@RS-xq6je goddamit I hate it when people call Robert Pattinson the "Twilight Kid", his career isn't summarized to one bad role. Give him a chance man he's one hell of an actor, check out The Lighthouse. His performance in that movie is simply divine
@@RS-xq6jeIf that makes you feel bezter, he seemed to hate the role too and talks how the hell that creep he plays could have serious fans.
>That scene in Batman vs Superman where he's surrounded by dudes that all resort to trying to bludgeon him with their guns: 👌
Fantasy healing mechanics can work well in drawing out a fight, if the rules are carefully considered for how far the healing can go. Stormlight Archive comes to mind where injuries can be healed provided you have Stormlight, but the more you need to heal, the more Stormlight you will use up.
Alternatively you czn go the sekiro way where people do die from severe wounds but literally have a second (and third) breath thanks to magic,which mean that the problem is not killing them but killing them *three times in a row* when they generally have a very solid defense
Warhammer fantasy RPG. Damage accumulates, you can take and deal crit wounds losing limbs, die from infections, blood loss etc.
Gain insanities from the things your experiencing and seeing with “traditional” remedies- water/Ice baths, blooding, mercury injections, locked up, beaten, leaches, electrical etc.
Little in the way of “miraculous” healing. More quackery, poultices, time, butcher surgeons, stuff above etc.
I also like how storm light enhances the users strength, but if it's used to heavily they just collapse in exhaustion after
One movie that does this well, _even though the fighting itself is extremely cinematic overall,_ is the Princess Bride. Acrobatic swashbuckling abounds, but the unrealistic part is the flashy fighting that goes on for minutes _without any injury occurring._ When injury does happen, it matters, and in some cases remains relevant even between multiple scenes.
This reminds me of a point that Critical Drinker made about CGI battles. It has basically the same problem, if the fights aren't realistic we have no idea how dangerous an attack is or who's winning. So it may look flashy, but it lacks tension.
I love the magic item "Plot Armour" from Vainqueur the Dragon.
Best plot armour ever.
Mabey this is why people love fight scenes I write. Injuries always matter and typically make sense. An example being a dude taking a major cut to the lower leg spending the rest of the fight sitting down or crawling from cover to cover to shoot, throw rocks after he's out of bullets, and so on. This is in the same fight where a wizard animates the floor boards into what they proclaim as a "Floor *KRACKEN!*" but not even that ends the fight because while it is a LOT of boards with nails in them, it's still boards with nails in them and only really effects the people who are within reach of it... Which can't be that many because ya know, the Wizard's team is using the floor too.
Chuck Norris once wrestled a bear, an alligator, and a tiger all at once. He won by tying them together with an anaconda.
Been awhile since I saw a Chuck Norris meme; thanks for the giggle!
@@adreabrooks11 I know well over 100 of 'em! I guess I'll start doin videos of them on my channel... 5 in each video! LOL
I mean you can argue the backslash and shield bash didn't maim because the gladiators were toying and playing with their victim. Aka he didn't slash the spine on purpose just wanted to do a shallow cut. But ya he wouldn't be able to stand up without falling down after that blow to the back of the head.
No one. No one wins when a movie franchise gets to # 4. (Except in rare conditions)
Enjoyed your take on this, and I'm definitely in agreement. Having any kind of fights in media where injuries just... don't seem to matter? completely throws the stakes into confusion.
That was one thing I liked about a fight in the tv show, Black Sails. That show as a whole was a ride, but there was one fight in particular where Jack Rackham is fighting the captain of another ship. He throws his wine in the captain’s face and then proceeds to swing his sword. His misses the first time, and then lands a hit that appears like a mere glancing blow. The fight then proceeds with the captain gaining the upper hand for a moment and punching Rackham a few times. It looks like Rackham is going to lose until the captain succumbs to the blood loss and bleeds out. That glancing blow in the beginning had struck a major artery. Rackham himself is messed up from being punched, but he comes out the winner just from landing one small and insignificant looking cut that did major damage.
The worst culpret for this right now is the latest John Wick, they put all that effort into the proper choreography with Yen, Adkins and Reeves and every time someone's hit, stabbed, slashed or shot they just shrug it off, it made a pretty good action movie into something absurd 😒
The worst part and the only one I remember going "oh no" was a dog got thrown into incoming traffic before it rolled off the bonnet and bared its teeth, we were all like "what the hell??" 😄
There is also John Wick taking three falls that should have killed him - the nightclub fall, the one outside of the apartment where he is playing a videogame, and the one down the steps to Saint Coeur.
My favorite part of heroes winning despite serious injuries is exactly the tension that comes with having to cope with major loss of function. That is *exactly* the reason why their eventual victory is so satisfying. Ruining that by glossing over major injuries with plot armor is just shitty filmmaking imo.
Like good is the enemy make a believable but stupid mistake, leave an opening ot similar.
That canbe written in.
This doesn't just involve battle injuries but medical procedures as well. The infamous one to me is the C-section in Prometheus and the protagonist is then running and doing action scenes 15 minutes later.
Was funny watching that scene with my mom who got livid having had a C-section delivering me and always compared it to having lava poured on her stomach.
I like Skallagrim being nerdy and am always up for more Skallagrim being nerdy.
great video, great opinions and great cinematography and editing! I really like these more spontaneous and outdoors videos, the soundtrack also really helped to make it light and relaxing to watch.
Honestly just walk it off and you're fine. Back in my day I walked 50 miles to school with a severed spine, broken jaw, sliced collarbones and liters of blood loss. Kids these days are just too pathetic.
That's what my boys' PE teachers said, lol! That's why I'm transitioning!! 🤣😅😂😆
Oh this is a BIIIIG pet annoyance of mine as well.
In particular, in regards to CONCUSSION. "it's just a slight concussion" or variations on that has been said in so many movies and books and used to dismiss injuries like, it's nothing really. You're ok in a few days, or even a few minutes.
In the REAL WORLD? Even a light concussion tends to result in months of unpleasant and individually very varied symptoms, and most concussions take 1-3 YEARS to fully heal, even light ones.
...
OTOH, to be fair... My best friend is the kind of guy who, if someone hits him in the head, he just gets angry(or even just mildly annoyed if they're too much of a weakling). Worst case, he goes berzerker on their arses.
Not kidding, that happened once, he literally waded into a throng of 15 or so and just put them all on the ground in a minute. After picking up the guy that hit him in the back of the head, ABOVE his head and throwing him sideways at said throng.
So, it's not like there isn't people at all that cannot take such hits and just keep going.
But NORMAL, it is NOT.
A related trope that bothers me is when the injury matters, but only for the rest of that scene. And then the hero (or bad guy) slaps on a bandage and suddenly the injury doesn't matter any more. So for example, we will find out 'Yeah he got a broken rib in that fight, let's wrap it up' and in a scene supposed to take place later that day, we see them moving like they're uninjured, or they'll get shot in the shoulder and be unable to move their arm until the next day when it's supposed to be all better. In some ways that is even less realistic, because at least during a fight, the adrenaline will perhaps let you fight despite the injury. Once the adrenaline is gone, you are going to feel it more.
If your muscles or tendons are cut, good luck with using that arm or hand...
Sometimes those fight scenes can be extremely ludicrous (house if the dead where the preppy girl who has never held or used a sword goes blow for blow with a 400 year old pirate), but I take a lot of the fight scenes as telling a story within a story.
As much as I hate to defend that awful movie, the main character DID state early on that the girl had studied fencing, so in fact she HAD used a sword before (or close enough). That's how she was able to contend with the undead pirate. That was one of the few somewhat decent things about it.
Reminds me of the trope in shows where if someone is blackout drunk, someone just dumps a barrel of cold water on them and theyre immediately sober lol
I'm reminded of the arena fight in Rome HBO where Pullo fights off several gladiators. Even though Pullo and Vorenus are pretty OP for just 2 guys, Pullo takes relatively few injuries and still is very winded and exhausted by the end. Vorenus likewise takes 1 injury in the arena and still almost dies. Neither of them are taking near-fatal blows in the whole fight and fight choreography wasn't the selling point of the show but it still felt climactic and impactful.
Its something that bothers me too. I'd rather the damage be so severe that it makes all parties really consider fighting.
it was more common in 80is action movies. Minion do a mag dump with a AK74. not even hiting anything. then the hero shoot him in the head. with a snubbnose revolver.
Even in real life, humans are somehow squishier and tougher than you'd think. Someone could die in minutes to a slash on their inner thigh or a single blow to the temple while someone else could fall from a tree with minor bruises, survive a metal pipe being lodged through their head, and tank multiple gunshots and recover.
There's an XKCD comic (well, a graph), How Worried You Should Be When Various Things Happen to You, in real life vs the movies
Nosebleed? irl not a big deal, in movies it's a death sentence
Getting knocked out by a punch? In movies, you'll just wake up after a short rest, _irl it can be a death sentence_
There is one thing that can explain these tropes, besides plot armor of course: Fighting Spirit! According to my sources this can do awesome things like let you shrug off injuries AND boost damage output/ speed. In that first example the dude clearly just has FIGHTING SPIRIT in spades!😂
Another reason why the Indiana Jones movies are some of my favourites. Indie might dodgy bullets and pull off some pretty wild stunts, but he can't dodge a punch to save his life and he's believably exhausted by the end of most fights and other stunts that happen
This video was great. Excellent background scenery, excellent foreground scenery, (nice shades and jacket) and a great discussion on plot armor discussing some very well loved movies. Thank you for doing what you do, Skall!
I watched Hitman the other day & there's a part where one of the detectives gets his ribs broken, but he continues to investigate & chase Agent 47 & act like nothing is wrong. I've fractured my ribs twice & I could do absolutely nothing but lay on my back for at least 3 months & during that time I could barely breath. So I feel your figurative pain lol
Spartacus was internally consistent. Throughout the entire show Gladiators actually suffer from wounds and are defeated if only they start beliving that they can loose. So this scene? Makes scene in context. It is logical, just not human logic but someting akin to Warhammer 40k Ork logic. Spartacus by this point is connected to Gladiatorial Waagh (raging d***k?) field; As long as he believes he is loosing - he takes damage; as soon as he believes he is winning he can defeat his opponents and ignore his wounds. If two gladiators fight it is about their respective Waagh power and belief in victory. Entire series is very consistent if understood like this. (this is a joke)
Great! Roasting awful movie tropes!
and then some idiots try to block a machete with their forearm and start wondering why they are missing a limb immediately after the block
Yea my parents let me watch these kinds of movies from a really young age. But they asked me numerous times "Hey, do you think that is possible? Or is it fictional?"
From cartoons all the way to films like universal soldier.
Thus I knew from an early age not to smash someone in the head expecting them to grow a horn or to see tweetybirds....
Now I watch movies and go "That doesn't make sense... That doesn't make sense... Why the hell does that single action revolver have infinite ammo,no recoil and double action?!"
With the budget of most films you'd think they could bring in someone with the most basic of gun knowledge...right? As well as hand to hand combat....