Looking forward to seeing this :).

While I agree with Joss that many of the Buffy fight scenes were 'phoned in' I think that some of the Angel fight scenes stand right up there with this one as some of the best. Angel vs Faith in Sanctuary and Angel vs Connor in Spin the Bottle spring to mind.

editing because it was in Five by Five ... not Sanctuary. duh

[ edited by resa on 2009-07-24 14:50 ]

resa | July 23, 22:07 CET

I like the fight on the docks in Consequences where Buffy summons the power of a man in a blonde wig.

doublemeat | July 23, 22:50 CET

What if the man was weedy and unfit?

Progressive_Stupidity | July 24, 00:58 CET

Perhaps I'm the only one on the planet who feels this way, but I wasn't too impressed with the fight in that episode. Once they got outside, it was worlds better, but in that kitchen? It was all choppy, shot too tightly and I couldn't see squat, especially with stuff obstructing the view all the time. The scene outside was much better. Much more brutal and effective.

kungfubear | July 24, 05:08 CET

I sort of considered the kitchen and alley fight to just be one big fight scene really. I was pretty darn impressed with both but yeah, there were some exceptionally brutal moments with that car. (The interior one mostly impressed me since I couldn't help but think about how much effort would have to happen to reset for coverage or after every take if they got multiple stabs at it.

That said, yeah, it did impress me about as much as the Angel ones, particularly around season four. I swear that Apocolypse Now-ish or one of those practically felt like an entire act was dedicated to a fight scene.

orangewaxlion | July 24, 06:38 CET

I was more impressed by Ballard's fight in the house than the kitchen scene.

Also the Angel/Lindsay fight in You're Welcome is probably my favourite ever Jossverse fight.

Simon | July 24, 06:46 CET

I thought it was a great fight. But Tahmoh totally freaked me out with his aggression face and disrobing. I think that juxtaposing that with Mellie's scene at the apartment was an interesting thing to do. It was the first scene that made me feel really really creepiness from Paul (unfair but true).

curlymynci | July 24, 07:21 CET

Yeah, the Ballard/Boyd fight is my favorite of this show, because it's more interesting thematically and it's just about as brutal and nicely shot as this one. Although this fight is more originally choreographed and considered for just the fight is slightly superior. It has a big-screen quality to it that I've rarely, if ever, seen in a tv-show.

So, yeah, the fight scenes on Buffy and Angel might've been less impressive on average, but there were fights pretty much every episode and with Dollhouse, not so much, meaning it's no surprise that they were more workman-like.

Great fight scenes from Buffy/Angel, from the top of my head, were the Angel/Hammilton fight (although that was just a little over-the-top as well) or the Buffy/Faith fight in Graduation Day.

But at the end of the day, the fight scenes mean much, much less to me than the emotional backbone of the story, although it's nice to have them as great as they have been in Dollhouse so far.

GVH | July 24, 08:13 CET

I think the best Jossverse fight is easily Buffy/Faith in Graduation Day. I still watch that and am absolutely blown away by it. I doubt anything will ever surpass my love for that smack down. It’s just so brutal and I love the tension. It’s enhanced by a season’s worth of story leading up to that point.

IMO most of the fight scenes in Btvs were top notch. I think the stunts were best in s2-s4 and kinda went downhill in s5-s7 but they were never terrible. I think it was very obvious there was a change in the stunt team after s4 and I liked the earlier stunts better because it was faster and had a lot more wirework. Ats surpassed Btvs in the stunts by Ats s3/Btvs s6.

The fight in Man on the Street was brutal and awesome and I loved the Boyd/Ballard fight in Briar Rose. I hope we get more fights this season. The story should come first but the fights give it that extra dose of excitement.

vampmogs | July 24, 09:00 CET

Fave fights: Angel/Faith from "Five By Five", and Buffy/Faith in "Graduation Day". The former does a great job of making you believe these are really two super-strong people, and the latter is some of the best blending ever of action and dramatic tension.

Although it's amusing that Joss thinks Tamoh would make such a great Terminator, when he (Tamoh) spent most of the clip getting beaten up by Eliza :)

damaged justice | July 24, 10:14 CET

What about the Angel/Spike rebar fight in 'Destiny'! That was awesome!
As was the Buffy/Angel ('Becoming pt2').
I did love the Angel/Faith, Buffy/Faith, Angel/Connor ones too.

Also, the Xander/Harmony slap fight from 'The Initiative' - hilarious!

Shep | July 24, 12:08 CET

That's it! My favorite fight is the the Xander/Harmony slap fight from 'The Initiative'. I laugh everytime I watch it (and tend to rewind and watch it a second time because it is so much fun)..guess I'm not much into the fight scenes :)

Passion | July 24, 14:51 CET

Not a fight scenes fan, but This Year's Girl / Who Are You were great to me.

Brasilian Chaos Man | July 24, 15:33 CET

I really loved that fight scene. It was tense and dramatic and had them make smart but not distractingly clever use of stuff around them. I hope they do more fights like that.

Sunfire | July 24, 15:50 CET

Agreed! In seriousness though, it's a tie between Buffy/Angel Becoming Part 2 and Buffy/Faith Graduation Day. In the former I just couldn't believe they were fighting this way, it was very stressful. In the latter, Season 3's tension was leading up to this. This tension was almost sexual, or am I being a gutterhead?

luv4whedon | July 24, 17:29 CET

Series 2-4 of Buffy had the best fight scenes of any show, and better than most movies. The Jeff Pruitt/Sophia Crawford stunt team up produced some of the finest hand to hand combat scenes outside of a Hong Kong action movie. Halloween, Innocence, Becoming 2, the awesome battle in Anne, fantastic multipoint fight in Dopplegangland, Revelations and basically any Buffy/Faith showdown, Graduation Day, The Freshman, Harsh Light of Day, the awesome stylised kung fu of the buffy's day dream in Beer Bad, This Year's Girl, Who are You, and Primeval all have incredibly visceral energetic fight scenes.

So the stunt doubling isn't all it could be, but they shoot these things in like 10 days, and Eliza's stunt double was pretty obvious on Man on the Street also. I didn't rate it much as a fight scene, but mostly because I couldn't see much past all the kitchen equipment.

Season's 5 onwards had some good fight stuff, notably Fool for Love and Conversations with dead people, but it became slower and had more wire based acrobatics and less visceral in general.

The fights on Angel were a different kettle of fish, in that they were grander and more "super powered", but good powerful stuff.


oh, and the Buffy/Angel sword fight in Becoming Pt2 would probably qualify as greatest of all, but for the very very non-Angel resembling stunt double.

[ edited by bivith on 2009-07-24 19:28 ]

bivith | July 24, 19:25 CET

Thought this scene was great, sort of like the Bourne scenes in its choppy, gritty groundedness (I like balletic screen violence too but it just wouldn't fit Dollhouse at all). And I totally get the Terminator comment, there's something in the way Tahmoh moves (and moves things) that has a sort of slightly clipped, almost mechanical inevitability to it (again, remimnds me of the operatives from the Bourne movies in the way it's so focussed it feels slightly inhuman).

Fights in Buffy/Angel rarely did much for me (partly cos the doubles really were glaringingly obvious) but then they were far from the focus anyway. Angel/Hamilton and Angel/Faith were both pretty good though.

Saje | July 24, 20:15 CET