Road House director Doug Liman comments on the film's CGI fight scenes after retreating to the technique inside and outside the industry. It serves as a remake of 1989 Road House Liman's movie, starring Patrick Swayze, was released on Prime Video earlier this year, and Jake Gyllenhaal took on the role of Dalton, a bouncer in a violent Florida bar. Reviews for 2024 Road House received mixed reviews from critics, and the film's use of CGI during fight scenes—placed to appear as if the fists were actually connecting—proved to be a particular sticking point.
In a recent interview Empire The magazine explains the decision to use Liman VFX techniques so heavily Road House the fight scenes reveal that this stems from a reluctance to be artistically limited in terms of where he can place the camera in the scene. In addition to explaining how the visual effects are performed, each effect consists of multiple shots stitched together, the director also confirms that this is how he will shoot the battle scenes going forward. See Lima's comments below:
I was really excited about the idea of doing Road House because I liked the story and I thought Jake would be awesome, but on the other hand, I can't spend two hours filming fake bar fights. I'll just miss it. It's not the highest desire to be like, “I'm going to reinvent how fights are filmed so I don't bore myself,” but when you make a movie like Road House, there's going to be a lot of bar fights. . How do I make it interesting for me as a filmmaker?
Part of why shooting fights is a little boring for me is that you're limited in where you can put the camera and where you can put the edits because people aren't actually punching each other. I thought, “I just want to put the camera where I can put it if they hit each other as a director. I'm going to put the camera here, so how do we make the fist meet the face?” This required the introduction of visual effects.
So if Conor McGregor is punching Jake Gyllenhaal, I'd do a first pass where you can clearly see that Conor isn't actually punching Jake, but that's the shot I want. Then we do a second pass where we take Jake out and put a pad where Jake's face is and Conor punches the pad for real. Then do another pass where we take Connor out and put Jake in and hit Jake in the face with a pillow. And then a fourth cut in slow motion that sees Connor's fist and Jake's face making contact and his face being deformed. And then you put it all together.
Now that I did it, I could never go back. I watch other movies and it seems so fake to me.
Road House's Controversial Fight Scenes Explained
Why Doug Lima's decision was controversial
The Road House the remake only has a 59% on Rotten Tomatoes, indicating that it has issues beyond the VFX used in the fight scenes. However, the fight scenes were singled out in many reviews for looking a bit jarring or unconvincing, but critics weren't the only ones to take issue with the technique. Action movie legend Scott Adkins took to X, formerly Twitter, to share a positive take on 2024 . Road Househowever, he took issue with the use of VFX, claiming that “Swayze didn't need itIn the 1989 film.
Adkins was recently spotted as part of the cast
John Wick: Chapter 4
but he also acted in such films
Day Shift
(2022) and
The Expendables 2
(2012).
Although there have been advances and changes over the years, movie fight scenes have been done using basically the same techniques for decades. Cameras are placed in specific positions to hide the fact that actors or stuntmen are not actually touching each other, and editing and sound design are also used to help sell the effect. It is certainly commendable that Lima tried to improve this process by using modern technology to give him more freedom as a filmmaker and to present the fight scene to the audience in a way that they have not seen before.
However, in practice Road House's CGI fight scenes were hit or miss. It's unfair to generalize about the technique, because many of the effects in the remake looked very believable.but there were others that seemed unnatural or manipulative. As this technique is being used for the first time there is still a lot of room for improvement and Road House 2 it may look better from this point of view. For his part, Liman will obviously use this battle scene method Road House franchise and more.
Source: Empire