page_title: Stage combat
section_title: On film
hierarchical_section_title: Stage combat / Types of choreographed fights / On film
caption_attribution_description: English: Poster for The Three Musketeers (1921) starring Douglas Fairbanks.
context_page_description: Stage combat, fight craft or fight choreography is a specialised technique in theatre designed to create the illusion of physical combat without causing harm to the performers. It is employed in live stage plays as well as operatic and ballet productions. With the advent of cinema and television the term has widened to also include the choreography of filmed fighting sequences, as opposed to the earlier live performances on stage. It is closely related to the practice of stunts and is a common field of study for actors. Actors famous for their stage fighting skills frequently have backgrounds in dance, gymnastics or martial arts training.
context_section_description: Cinema inherited the concept of choreographed fights directly from the theatrical fight. Douglas Fairbanks in 1920 was the first film director to ask a fencing master to assist the production of a fencing scene in cinema. A second wave of swashbuckling films was triggered with Errol Flynn from 1935. Renewed interest in swashbuckling films arose in the 1970s, in the wake of
  The Three Musketeers (1973). Directors at this stage aimed for a certain amount of historical accuracy, although, as the 2007 Encyclopædia Britannica puts it, "movie fencing remains a poor representation of actual fencing technique".
  The Star Wars films, the fights for which are choreographed by Bob Anderson & Peter Diamond (Episodes IV, V & VI) and Nick Gillard (Episodes I, II & III), tend to portray its lightsaber combat using swordsmanship techniques drawn from existing martial arts, but performed with fantasy weapons such as lightsabers or the Force, whereas the action featured in The Lord of the Rings also choreographed by Bob Anderson employed fantasy weapons and fighting styles, designed by Tony Wolf.
  During the 1970s and 1980s, Bruce Lee, Sonny Chiba, Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung became famous for both choreographing and acting in martial arts action films, and were influential in the development of stage combat on film. Hong Kong-based fight choreographer Yuen Woo-ping is known for his work on Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and the Matrix trilogy, in which the often unrealistic fighting techniques are complemented by directorial techniques such as bullet time. Ching Siu-tung is particularly noted in the field of Hong Kong action cinema for his use of graceful wire fu techniques. By contrast, films such as The Duellists, fight directed by William Hobbs, Once Were Warriors, fight directed by Robert Bruce and Troy & Ironclad, fight directed by Richard Ryan are widely famed for including gritty, realistic combat scenes. Ryan is also known for his creativity in devising styles such as Batman's in The Dark Knight, Sherlock Holmes 'prevision' style in Guy Ritchie's two Sherlock Holmes movies.
caption: Movie poster for The Three Musketeers (1921) starring Douglas Fairbanks.
exif: {}