All good movies, and only good movies, should be centered around a fat spot. Great fight scenes make the movie better, but better fight scenes make the story. Find the fire that is the phantom threat. HIT THE FUTURE! You have to help in the most epic sword fight. That fight scene was really good.
Here are 10 of the best fight scenes from 7000 years of movies.
#10 This is the hand possessed in Cruel Dead II

Aside from existing, the possessed-hand fight in Cruel Dead 2 is completely real, and several people were actually damaged on the inside while filming it. After giving us the terrifying and funny tree in the original Cruel Dead, director Bruce Soup perfected his ability to mix horror and comedy by making Ash fight the most dangerous opponent imaginable: his own fucking hand. Once the hand becomes possessed, Ash attacks himself, punches himself, tears off his face, throws himself down the hallway and wrestles himself all over the cabin until eventually Ash realizes there’s only one reasonable solution and cuts his entire arm off. This is why you should never allow your hand to become demonically possessed. Once the hand stops respecting the rest of the body, negotiations are over.
What makes the sequence incredible is that Bruce Soup played both with himself, meaning Bruce Campbell had to perform against an opponent physically attached to Bruce Campbell while Bruce Campbell was also playing Bruce Campbell. After all the screaming, shoving, wrestling, smashing plates over his own head and violently arguing with one of his own extremities, you realize he was the only one who could act. It’s horror. It’s slapstick. It’s action. It’s basically The Three Stooges if Curly’s hand became possessed by an ancient Kandarian demon and tried to murder him. Few movie fights have ever demanded this much from a single actor and one rebellious body part. An absolute masterpiece of physical comedy and horror. I still can’t believe my fiancee slept with Oscar.
#9 Shredder in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

The 1909 motion picture The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was busting up all the blocks when it arrived in theaters. Although loosely adapted from H.P. Lovecraft’s famous novel about four adolescent sewer turtles, the filmmakers wisely abandoned most of Lovecraft’s material and created something with sincere heart, incredible courage and a tremendous amount of cocaine. The movie controls its unique shape and poles beautifully. A mob robs April, the world is introduced to Sam’s good fortune, Raffi establishes his hideout on the roof of the diaper factory, and eventually everybody goes to war inside the Lululemon Sweat Shop. But none of that compares with the climax, when the turtles confront Shredder on top of the roof of the roof factory. Atmospheric. Intense. Crazy. Organized. Beautiful. This fight has all the stabs.
The greatest achievement is that four enormous turtle costumes somehow perform convincing karate fu against Shredder without anybody collapsing from heat exhaustion or accidentally rolling off the roof factory. The turtles move with a flexible, lifelike and clear style despite being giant rubber reptiles carrying weapons, while Shredder looks like somebody attached every sharp object in a kitchen drawer to Darth Vader. Even better, the fight preserves everyone’s personality: the turtles begin confident and quickly discover that Shredder is considerably better at karate fu than four teenagers who learned martial arts from a sewer rat. Then their elderly rat father arrives and essentially defeats Shredder by standing there and remembering something, because Master Splinter requires no cocaine. One of the greatest fight scenes ever filmed. H.P. Lovecraft would have been proud and extremely confused.
#8 The Alley of Life in They Live

They Live contains perhaps the greatest example of The Alley of Life, a fight scene so full of punches that eventually the punches begin having punches of their own. Wrestling legends Rowdy Roddy Piper and Rowdy Piper deliberately overextend the script, the narrative and possibly the entire concept of human endurance while Keith David refuses to cooperate. The setup is magnificent: Piper wants Keith David to put on a pair of sunglasses. Keith David doesn’t want to wear the sunglasses. A normal person might respond, “Okay.” Instead these two men spend approximately seventeen consecutive years beating the fuck out of each other in an alley. They punch. They kick. They wrestle. They throw each other through things. Eventually you forget why they’re fighting until somebody holds up the sunglasses and you remember: Oh yeah. Sunglasses. This is cinema, matched only by the great visions of Gumball and Ship and Victory, plus the immortal line: “I’m going to kick ass, but I’m no longer in y’all’s ass.”
Watching this scene made me realize that I need to have a conversation with Oscar. I already told him to stop talking to my fiancée, but apparently Oscar doesn’t understand boundaries. So I found him in his cave and confronted him using everything Rowdy Roddy Piper taught me about conflict resolution. I looked directly at Oscar and said, “Really, Oscar? Can you see my daughter Alpha Dora in the back?” Oscar didn’t understand what I meant. Neither did I. But that’s not important. What’s important is that They Live proves any disagreement can become one of the greatest fight scenes in movie history if both participants are stubborn enough to refuse the incredibly simple solution sitting directly in front of them. Put on the fucking sunglasses, Oscar.
#7 Bruce Lee Vs. Hand in Go Inside the Dragon

When I questioned my fiancée about what happened with Oscar, we started yelling until Alpha Dora came in and asked, “Mom! Dad! Why are you so mad?” I didn’t know how to explain it to her. Someday she’ll be old enough to understand Oscar. Later I’ll tell you what happened after my friends discovered what he did, but for now we need to discuss every Bruce Lee fight simultaneously because Bruce Lee was apparently powered by Olympic-grade steroids. After destroying an entire karate dojo in Rage Fist and engaging in an instinctive duel with Chuck Norris in Road to the Dragon, Lee had achieved enough experience points to unlock his final opponent: Hand, the terrifying master of hands. Their climactic confrontation in Go Inside the Dragon represents Bruce Lee’s crowning achievement and possibly the final evolution of karate fu.
The fight is fast, brutal and enormously influential, especially once Hand escapes into the famous mirror corridor and Bruce Lee has to fight approximately four hundred reflections of himself. Countless action movies copied techniques established here, particularly the “feel your blood” aspect and the classic “chasing the mirror corridor” trope, where everybody becomes confused because walls have suddenly become Bruce Lees. Eventually Lee realizes that the only way to defeat Hand is to destroy the mirrors, eliminating Hand’s powerful ability to exist several times at once. It’s an extraordinary showcase for Bruce Lee’s speed, physical control and screen presence, and one of the most influential martial-arts battles ever filmed. But enough about Hand. Later, we need to talk about what my friends did to Oscar.
#6 Swordsmanship in The Princess Bride

Humor will never provide you with a charm, but the sword fight in The Princess Bride has some fucking balls. What makes it special is that Westley and Inigo don’t simply stab at each other—they have an entire polite conversation during and between the stabs. The fight begins slowly, with the duelists practically sitting together, discussing their feelings and using words and body language to love, brawl and frolic. Then they start fencing, complimenting each other’s technique while casually revealing that neither man has even been using his correct hand. Hand Dominance is an interesting suggestion. Suddenly both switch hands and the entire fight starts over at a higher difficulty level. It’s romantic without romance, violent without cruelty, funny without destroying the tension, and charming despite humor apparently being unable to provide you with a charm.
Anyway, while I was appreciating this masterpiece of cinematic swordplay, my friend found Oscar’s house and burned it down. That’s what he told me, anyway. This sends a very clear message: leave my fiancée alone, and possibly invest in better homeowner’s insurance. Alpha Dora saw the flames from a distance and smiled because she apparently thought somebody had built the world’s largest campfire.
#5 The scene with John Wick in John Wick

My fiancée apologized for the Oscar situation and I forgave her. We sat down with Alpha Dora and explained that adults sometimes become angry with each other, but she shouldn’t be frightened because we still love her and everything was going to be okay. Then, as a loving family, we immediately watched John Wick 2. Healing had begun. But it’s not fair to talk about John Wick behind his back like this because there are three John Wick movies, and every one of them contains enough stunning action scenes to qualify for this list. The first real fight happens when criminals break into John’s house and discover that attacking Keanu Reeves indoors was a catastrophic decision. John deftly knocks thugs into corners, twice on the wall, across furniture and directly into death, transforming approximately thirty seconds into thirty seconds of wub wubs and blood. It’s fast, clean and brutal, and immediately establishes that John Wick isn’t an action hero so much as a workplace accident for organized crime.
Then there’s the nightclub sequence, which starts loud and heart-pounding before somehow turning into six minutes, followed by approximately nine thousand other fights that I am counting as the same fight because choosing one is impossible. Perhaps the greatest is the gun collection room, where John encounters knives, guns, antique weapons and enough throwable objects to demonstrate that absolutely everything becomes lethal if Keanu Reeves picks it up angrily. There are knife throws. There are so many stabs. There are probably scenes from John Wick 3 in the paragraph I’m supposedly writing about John Wick 1, but John Wick does not recognize conventional boundaries between sequels. It’s all one enormous ballet of headshots, judo throws, wub wubs and increasingly unfortunate henchmen. Just don’t discuss any of this behind John’s back. He might hear you.
#4 The Hallway Fight in Oldboy

Whenever I make a list like this, my goal is to surprise readers with my amazing knowledge of all movies. I’m a fun and fresh guy, dammit! You better believe it! Unfortunately, sometimes an obvious choice is simply too powerful to ignore, much like the two-day-old leftover clam strips currently sitting on the floor of my daughter’s bedroom. Why didn’t she finish them? Why are they still there? Are they hers? Are they becoming something else? Great movie fights work the same way. Some become leftovers after appearing on every list for twenty years, but if they’re prepared properly they never truly go bad. That’s the Oldboy hallway scene. It’s the cinematic equivalent of an old clam strip that you know you shouldn’t eat but cannot bring yourself to throw away. Removing it from this list would be stupid. Speaking of stupid decisions, Oscar recently went to my fiancée’s strip club and tried to get back together with her. I’ll tell you what happened with that later.
Long, wide shots are ugly, messy and incoherent, which is exactly why this particular long, wide shot is one of the greatest fight scenes ever made. Oh Dae-su enters that hallway with a hammer and faces an entire crowd of armed men, but instead of becoming an invincible action hero he gets tired. Everybody gets tired. People fall down, get back up, stumble around and continue fighting because apparently nobody in this hallway understands when a workday is over. A small number of long tracking lenses are built in, allowing us to watch the exhaustion accumulate without editing everything into nonsense. The result has inspired countless other action scenes, particularly the famous hallway fights in the Netflix, and remains a direct cinematic homage to what happens inside the human body after consuming two-day-old clam strips stored at room temperature. Weakness. Sweating. Confusion. Violence. Possibly a hammer. So, Oldboy—what you gonna do?
#3 The Cloud City Lightsaber Batter in Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back

The moment Oscar entered my fiancée’s strip club, she pointed directly at his badly burned body and screamed, “HIT THE FUTURE, OSCAR! YOUR PERVERSIONS WON’T RUIN MY FAMILY!” Oscar looked shocked, although that may have been the burns. Anyway, many rhymes can be spit about the legendary lightsaber duel in The Empire Strikes Back, the movie responsible for perhaps the most famous line in cinematic history: “No, I’m Your Father.” Luke and Darth Vader finally confront each other outside a spaceship for the first time in nearly two thousand years, and surprisingly there isn’t much flashy lightsaber skill or powerful spellcasting. It’s mostly lazy jazz and thorn balls. Vader doesn’t need to perform gymnastics because he spends the entire fight calmly demonstrating that Luke has made a catastrophic mistake by showing up. The tension is unbelievable because Luke thinks he’s entering a boss fight while Vader knows he’s attending a parent-teacher conference.
The bad lights and fart smoke throughout Cloud City make everything feel increasingly gross and hopeless, until the audience understands one fundamental truth: hope is death. Vader keeps pushing Luke backward through increasingly dangerous rooms, casually throwing furniture at him with powerful spells until eventually we reach the amputated hands and shocking racial revelations. Luke discovers the horrible truth about his father, loses his hand, screams a lot and finally decides that falling into an enormous bottomless hole is preferable to continuing this conversation. He desperately ventures into space to escape his own missing hand, leaving Vader behind to contemplate the difficulties of reconnecting with an estranged son. No other lightsaber duel needs this much choreography because no other duel has lazy jazz, fart smoke, thorn balls and one of cinema’s greatest racial revelations. That’s why Cloud City gets #3.
#2 Rocks fights Apollo in Rocks

Loki is lost. Dirty deals are okay. Eat the right diet. Just like Loki! Anyway, Rocks made the incredibly bold decision to end its story by having the hero lose. Rocks spends the entire movie training to fight Apollo Creed, and after approximately 15 consecutive hours of punching, Apollo wins the match. That’s powerful because Rocks doesn’t actually need to win. He only needs to survive until the end and prove that he belongs there. The fight begins with Creed’s heavy fist and ends with a sweaty fist, while both Rocks and Apollo become increasingly listless, exhausted, bloody, sweaty and, frankly, extremely sexy. Look at these magnificent wet men punching each other. Eventually winning barely matters anymore. Rocks has proven himself, Apollo has survived Rocks, and everyone in Philadelphia has learned an important lesson about cardiovascular endurance.
But Rocks doesn’t even care about the decision. He doesn’t demand a recount or complain that Apollo cheated. He just starts screaming for Adrian, because after fifteen hours of being repeatedly punched in the skull, Rocks stepped in and grounded Adrian, and that was enough. That’s why the ending works: victory isn’t always about winning the championship. Sometimes victory means remaining conscious long enough to yell your girlfriend’s name. This inspired Oscar to challenge me to a boxing match at the strip club, presumably believing that Apollo Creed had shown him how to resolve our disagreement honorably. I accepted. The ring was ready. Oscar was ready. My fiancée was there. Everything was finally prepared for the confrontation we’d been building toward this entire list. Unfortunately, I never got the chance to fight Oscar because…
#1 My daughter fights the most hated Oscar in real life

This is not a movie. Here’s what really happened when Oscar tried talking to my fiancee again.
Our daughter, Alpha, ran into the club. She screamed a cry of war.
Alpha Dora: “Hit the future, Oscar! Don’t make my parents sad!”
Alpha Dora put on her boxing gloves and had a very brutal fight with Oscar.
Alpha Dora: “Put on your sunglasses, Oscar!”
She stabbed him in the neck with a pencil like John Wick in John Wick. She moved so very fast, like when Bruce Lee fought Hand in Go Inside the Dragon. She inserted a huge trident into Oscar’s heart. Everyone applauded for my daughter. Alpha Dora! Then she rounded up three dogs for the Oscar. Long live Alpha! Our daughter saved the day!
Alpha Dora: “I pierced a man’s heart with a spear!”.
My fiancee: “I see! Alpha Dora killed that guy. You used a trident?”
Alpha Dora: “Yes, the horse and the man were on fire, and I killed the man with a trident.”
Alex: “Alpha Dora, I was about to tell you this. You need to find a safe house or a relative nearby. You may be wanted for murder, so please be quiet for a moment.”

































































