Jackie Chan’s Video Game-Style Fight Scene Skill Trees
What do video games like World of Warcraft & Diablo III have in common with Jackie Chan fight scenes? They all love to take something simple and build upon it in tiers, creating skill trees. If you play Diablo and WoW, you already know what skill trees are and how they work, but how does Jackie Chan manage to insert them into his fight choreography in his best martial arts movies? It’s time to delve deeper than a standard fight scene autopsy.
Admittedly, not every Jackie Chan kung fu flick contains a gorgeously executed skill tree. The guy was born in 1954, so it’s understandable that now and then he’s just going to play the old classics and phone it in, like he did in The Forbidden Kingdom when he fought Jet Li. But when he goes full Einstein mode, he creates works of art like the action sequences in Armour of God 2 — Operation Condor.
The Jackie Chan fight scenes in Operation Condor start with something simple, like kicking a gun out of a bad guy’s hand. This is the root of the skill tree. The first branch on the tree will be something like kicking a gun out of a baddie’s hand, the gun landing on the ground, and Jackie Chan going to retrieve it with some cool parkour move. Toward the top of the skill tree will be move advanced, high skill moves like kicking a gun out of a baddie’s hand, catching it mid-air, and using it to knock the enemy out all in one smooth motion.
If we compare Jackie Chan vs Vidyut Jamwal fight scenes we can see how detrimental it can be using the same big move in every movie. Having your fights feel the same in every movie or having them feel unique every time is the essence of this Vidyut Jamwal vs Jackie Chan comparison.
Will Jackie Chan vs John Cena in Snafu (2022) use skill trees? Man, I hope so. I want to see some advanced fight scenes in Snafu with John Cena, not watered down choreography like The Forbidden Kingdom (2008) brought to the silver screen. In Armour of God 2 Operation Condor Jackie Chan creates a clear repertoire of moves that are the base of the skill trees, and each successive use of one of those moves is HIGHER on the skill tree than the previous one. A video game like World of Warcraft or Diablo III will have the move be slightly different, and either do more damage or be better suited for different circumstances.
So the 1st time he does a front roll it’s over an enemy who is lying motionless on the ground. Simple The 2nd time it’s a diving roll while avoiding an enemy strike. Pretty difficult! The 3rd time is a diving roll OVER an enemy roundhouse kick, landing so close to the edge of a platform that his heels are hanging over the edge of a deadly drop. What the heckin’ WHAT? That’s crazy difficult! Talk about an S Tier move! Even a Yuen Biao fight scene would have trouble pulling that off.
Jackie Chan (جاكي شان) is a mad man! Can you imagine Jackie doing that vs John Cena in a Snafu fight scene? I would flip my poop emoji all over Shadiversity if that happened! I don’t know if he’ll use skill trees in upcoming kung fu films like Five Against A Bullet.
I highly doubt Once Upon A Zodiac will showcase that level of martial arts choreography because Chan is only billed as a voice actor for that one. But when he’s a star like in Five Against A Bullet, the best way for him to create something genius level is to use a fight scene skill tree. Will the Jackie Chan (جاكي شان) vs John Cena fight live up to the Jackie Chan vs Yuen Biao fight scenes of the 80’s? A man can dream. And in that dream my fight scene autopsy still rips that fight to shreds.
Wanna see some captivating examples and learn more about this? Watch my YouTube video about this aspect of fight scenes!
BTW here are the vids I talk about at the end:
