Dear Michael Bay, Joseph Nichol, J. J. Abrams, and the rest of the practitioners of the quick cut school of action scenes, you all suck. Well, okay, with the exception of Nichol you don’t entirely suck. But let’s face it, James Cameron and Christopher Nolan have the same job, and they’re much better at it than you are.
Cameron and Nolan, though they’re not the only ones, are capable of staging action sequences that are coherent and compelling enough that they’re not afraid to let some shots last more than one second. Hyper fast cuts, often comprised mostly of close shots that allow the viewer to see nothing but a hand or a face, can work well in martial arts movies where there is a premium on lighting fast speed. But not all action movies are martial arts movies, and the school of the super fast cut has become a crutch used to support otherwise bland action sequences.
Much like “morphing” effects in the wake of Terminator 2 and “bullet time” effects after The Matrix, the quick cut action sequence has become an overused habit of mediocre action films. These days it is no longer the mark of edgy, cool filmmaking. It is the mark of hacks, of directors and editors who cannot conceive that the attention span of the audience might not be measured in tenths of a second.
Set aside your natural apathy for the coherent storytelling in Avatar and Inception, and just watch the action sequences. They are a symphony of tricks and techniques, from slow motion and wide angles to your preferred methods of quick cuts and massive explosions. The events conjured in those movies are spectacular enough to be lingered over, and their directors are confident enough of the entertainment value of such spectacles to give the audience a moment to appreciate them.
Relatively pedestrian things like car chases (Terminator 4, and the reprehensible Transformers 2) and bar fights (Star Trek) cannot be made bigger than they really are with shots that last just a few frames. Which is not a knock on car chases and bar fights; they’re fun to watch in movies, always have been, always will be. But no matter how hard you shine a penny, it’s not going to turn into a nickel. Let the car chases be car chases, and the bar fights be bar fights, and stop hiding them behind pointlessly intricate editing. Thank you.
