Why 90s Action Hit Harder

Indexé : 2026-05-21

[00:00:00]There was a 10-year stretch where action movies were actually the best they've ever been. The fighters were trained for years before they even ever held a gun.

[00:00:09]The cameras stayed wide, the cuts were slow enough to actually see what was going on, and the people on screen were doing the thing, not selling the thing.

[00:00:18]It started in Hong Kong, it ended in a green screen lobby in Burbank. This is why the '90s was the last great decade of action cinema.

[00:00:32]>> [music] >> If you want to try and understand why '90s action looks the way it does, start with the bodies on screen. Jackie Chan was 38 when he made Police Story 3, 40 when he shot the factory finale of Drunken Master 2. [music] He'd been doing this since he was 7 years old at the Peking Opera School, and by the early '90s, he was at the absolute peak of his powers.

[00:00:57]Physically still able, technically peerless. The same is true of Jet Li. By 1991, he'd already done numerous films and had just moved on to the Once Upon a Time in China franchise. [music] By 1999, he was proficiently trained and extremely experienced on screen, having just done Once Upon a Time in China, and was a real-life wushu champion. By 1994, he was making Fist of Legend, [music] which is a remake of the Bruce Lee film and somehow didn't embarrass himself.

[00:01:27]Donnie Yen is in Once Upon a Time in China 2 in 1992, [music] Iron Monkey in 1993, and Wing Chun in 1994.

[00:01:36]He is 28, in better shape than most [music] actors will ever be in their lives, and he is sharing the screen with [music] Jet Li.

[00:01:45]That is the Hong Kong half. The Hollywood half is older, slower, and louder, but it has its own thing going on. Stallone in Cliffhanger and Demolition Man, both in 1993, was doing more physical work than he had [music] to. Bruce Willis carrying Die Hard with a Vengeance and The Last Boy Scout on the strength of a one tired eyed look.

[00:02:09]Wesley Snipes in Passenger 57, and then by 1998 in Blade, fully martial arts trained, [music] fully committed. Keanu Reeves was a surfer in Point Break, but then a bus driver in Speed, and at the very end of the decade, a programmer in [music] The Matrix. But it was around about here that the migration began with Lethal Weapon 4. Jackie Chan crossed over with Rumble in the Bronx in 1995.

[00:02:31][music] John Woo had already crossed over with Hard Target in 1993, and Jet Li arrived with Lethal Weapon 4 in 1998. [music] A Hong Kong star planted into a Hollywood franchise, and the franchise [music] made room for him because it simply had to. The whole second half of this decade is a slow leak of Hong Kong's best choreographers and sensibilities. Slowly all seeped into American cinema. By 1999, it had all arrived.

[00:03:03]>> [music] >> The factory finale of Drunken Master 2 runs about 22 minutes long. Jackie Chan crawls across burning coals on his hands and knees. He gets an industrial size alcohol bottle poured down his throat.

[00:03:19]He fights Ken Lo, a real kicker with [music] real reach in a real space in long takes with a wide lens. There is no doubt about what is happening on screen.

[00:03:29]There is no edits to hide the moves.

[00:03:31]There are no cheap camera [music] tricks. The fight is the fight. This is the difference. In the 90s Hong Kong, [music] the choreography is the storytelling. In 90s Hollywood, at its [music] best, the choreography is being respected for the first time as a form.

[00:03:49]In In James Cameron is shooting Terminator 2.

[00:03:53][music] The truck chase down the LA River, the mall shootout, practical, tactile, executed with stunt people who came up in the '80s when there was nowhere to hide. They just had [music] to do things practically.

[00:04:09]And then in 1995, Michael Mann is shooting Heat with Marines training his actors in tactical [music] reload drills. This amazing bank shootout, holds, wide shots, so you can see and read which characters are where and [music] on which side of the street and where the cover is.

[00:04:26]You can map it out in your head >> [music] >> whilst it's happening.

[00:04:30]John Woo, a pioneer of '80s action movies, brings the Hong Kong template directly across in Hard Target and then in Face/Off.

[00:04:39]>> [music] >> The choreography is the same, long takes, body choreography, dual pistol staging.

[00:04:45]But now there is a $100 million Paramount budget behind it. Meanwhile, in Hong Kong, Jackie Chan keeps [music] escalating. Fish and lion wire work on the hovercraft in Police Story 4, a cement mixer in Mr. Nice Guy. And Jet Li, back in Hong Kong for Black Mask in the same year, he's doing [music] Lethal Weapon 4. The choreographers are the through line, Yuen Woo-ping, Sammo Hung, Corey Yuen. These names are doing the work in two places at once by the end of the decade.

[00:05:14]>> [music] >> Hollywood has borrowed them for their Temple movies and all the Hollywood directors of the '90s grew up watching these guys movies and now they want them >> [music] >> for their movies. Now, compare that to what happened next. I have another car.

[00:05:35]In 2002, the Bourne template arrived.

[00:05:37][music] Handheld camera, two frame cuts, performers who could not actually [music] fight, masked by editing. And by 2008, the Bourne franchise, heavily influenced by the Bourne franchise, abandoned the Brosnan era staging for something [music] close to incoherent.

[00:05:53]And by 2014, Taken 3, [music] influenced by both Bourne and Bond, was using 15 cuts to show how Liam Neeson climbs a fence.

[00:06:03]However, [music] this was 30 years ago. A wide shot of an actor who can actually fight.

[00:06:12]>> [music] >> John Woo's camera in Hard Boiled moves like it knows what it's filming. [music] The tea house opening in 2 and 1/2 minutes, the hospital climax in 20. He uses the wide frame to give you the geography, where the bad guys are, where the columns are, where the exit is. And he holds the shot until the action has landed. Michael Mann does the same thing with a different emotionality attached to it. This scene in Heat is perfection.

[00:06:43]The bank shootout is wide, often with a long lens, and the editor stays out of the way. You can see who is shooting from where. You can see the cover, you can see the running. In Hong Kong, the wide shot is directors like Liu Chia-liang in Drunken Master 2, Yuen Biao in Iron Monkey, want the audience to see [music] the move. The frame is built around the body, not the other way around. Compare that to the modern habit of locking onto an actor's face during the fight. The '90s, both sides of the world, framed action by giving the body [music] the screen. The face is the pause, the body is the sentence. By the end of the decade, the framing language is fully fused. The Matrix, shot by Bill [music] Pope, choreographed by Yuen Biao, uses the Hong Kong wide on a Hollywood scale set.

[00:07:33]The dojo fight, the subway fight, the lobby. Every move is visible. Every edit serves the move.

[00:07:48]>> [music] >> Here's a fight scene from Drunken Master 2. The shot is on screen for 4 and 1/2 seconds. [music] You can see the leg come up. You can see the block. You can see the counter. You see who wins the exchange. Here's a fight from The Bourne Ultimatum 15 years later. Same length of exchange, give or take. Cut count 32. You cannot see who is winning. You cannot see what the move is. You cannot even see who's fighting, really. The editing is the fight, which means there actually is no fight. This is a topic the '90s does best, because the '90s is where editing for the action was at its most disciplined.

[00:08:30]The cut serves the move. The cut serves the geography. The cut serves the punch landing on the body, and not on a different body in a different shot. John Woo's hospital climax in Hard Boiled is a 20-minutes-long [music] shot. It feels like five. It contains hundreds of cuts. Every single one serves the purpose of showing you the orientation of the room and the position [music] of the protagonists. And this is so you always know where Chow Yun-Fat and Tony Leung are.

[00:09:01]And, of course, the baby. But, also you get to see things like the door and how many bullets are left. Stanley Tong's editing in Police Story 3, the train chase, the helicopter ladder, Michelle Yeoh putting a motorbike onto a moving train, is [music] dense, but coherent.

[00:09:17]The cuts go where the eye is already going. Yuen Woo-ping's editing in Iron Monkey is even tighter. The pole stage finale runs about 3 minutes long, and the audience never loses where the actors are in the space. In Hollywood, the same discipline was in effect.

[00:09:33][music] In Heat, Pasquale Buba and others are cutting men's wide intact. In Face/Off, John Woo bringing his own editor across from Hong Kong helps tremendously. And in Speed, Mark Stevens cut in one of the cleanest action films of the decade where every beat of every set piece is legible.

[00:09:52]Even the lighter material respects the eye.

[00:10:03]The Rock in 1996, Michael Bay's first big-budget swing edited by Richard Francis Bruce, is fast but the geography survives. You always know which corridor of Alcatraz you're in. But this is also where the warning shots start. Bad Boys in 1995, Con Air in 1997, Armageddon in 1998.

[00:10:23]The MTV cutting school is being born here and in pieces.

[00:10:28]The cuts are getting shorter, the frames are getting closer, the editor is starting to hide the choreography rather than reveal it.

[00:10:40]And this is born out of the sudden boom of music video directors in Hollywood with Michael Bay being the key instigator. Michael Bay's Armageddon has by some counts an average shot length of two and a half seconds across its action sequences. That is fast even by today's [music] standards.

[00:11:00]And most of those cuts do not serve the action at all. They serve the trailer.

[00:11:06]And that is the line. That is where one school of editing ends and another one begins.

[00:11:13]The '90s is the last decade in which the disciplined school is dominant.

[00:11:18]The 2000s belong to another one.

[00:11:22]By 2007, you have The Bourne Ultimatum and the entire industry is borrowing from its language.

[00:11:29]By 2008, it is James Bond. By 2014, it is Taken 3, where Liam Neeson climbing over a fence becomes a film school case study in how not to edit. The directors of the '90s were influenced by the Asian filmmakers of the '80s. Now, in the 2000s, the directors are influenced by the Hollywood filmmakers of the '90s.

[00:11:51]Big bangs, quick edits, and popcorn filmmaking. 7 seconds, 15 cuts, one man going over a fence. It's hard not to keep coming back to this particular moment in Hollywood history. However, there is a recovery happening now. John Wick in 2014, Atomic Blonde in 2017, and every Mission Impossible since Fallout.

[00:12:13]They are proving that the old school still works. They are proving how rare it has become. But, it took an industry 15 years to remember what it had in 1994.

[00:12:26][music] The decade ends >> [music] >> in a lobby in Burbank.

[00:12:36]The Wachowskis hire Yuen Ping, the man who choreographed Iron Monkey, Once Upon a Time in China II, Drunken Master II, >> [music] >> to train their cast for 4 months and then choreograph the entire film. That is the moment Hong Kong fully arrived in Hollywood.

[00:12:54]The dojo fight uses the Hong Kong wide.

[00:12:57]The lobby uses John Woo's dual pistol staging. [music] The subway shot, the kind of body choreography that Fist of Legend used 5 years earlier. It is the highest point of the decade [music] and in a way, it's end.

[00:13:10]The Matrix is also the film that licenses green screen, [music] wire work, and CGI as standard tools for action cinema.

[00:13:21]After The Matrix, you no longer [music] have to do the move. You can just render it.

[00:13:27]That is the deal the '90s offered and then closed. Practical mastery, >> [music] >> then a doorway out of practical altogether.

[00:13:38]Everything that came before it, the Hong Kong stunt [music] teams, the long takes, the wide frames, the actors who had been training since they were children, the editors who held the cut until the move had landed, was the last decade of action cinema where the [music] audiences trusted to see the work. After this, the cuts get shorter, the frames get closer, the bodies get older, the young ones cannot do what the old ones did [music] because nobody trained them the same way.

[00:14:09]And this is why '90s action hit harder.

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