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Kenobi Vs Vader Exemplifies Star Wars (& Hollywood's) Action Problem
The underwhelming Obi-Wan Kenobi finale Vader rematch & confusing episode 3 Jabiim battle are just symptoms of a larger problem plaguing Hollywood.

Kenobi Vs Vader Exemplifies Star Wars (& Hollywood's) Action Problem

The lackluster fight between Obi-Wan Kenobi and Darth Vader in the Obi-Wan Kenobi finale is symbolic of a larger problem plaguing Hollywood fight scenes in recent years. Even before Obi-Wan Kenobi premiered, Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy was promising the Obi-Wan vs. Vader rematch would be the “rematch of the century.” It was a high expectation to set, and audiences expected the fight to deliver.

A fair portion of Obi-Wan Kenobi was set up as a cat-and-mouse game between Kenobi and Vader, with Vader as the cat, and Kenobi the mouse. Both were preoccupied with thoughts of each other and their shared history; even a decade later, the old wounds had still not healed. They finally came face-to-face in Obi-Wan Kenobi episode 3, but it was clear their duel in that episode was just a precursor to the real rematch coming in the finale.

While the Kenobi vs. Darth Vader rematch in the Obi-Wan Kenobi finale had its exciting moments, however, it was overall underwhelming due to certain narrative and visual decisions. While Ewan McGregor and Hayden Christensen gave it their all and injected more than a little bit of emotion into their exchange, the action itself fell short. During their battle, the episode inexplicably kept cutting away to Reva’s storyline and then back to the fight. This unquestionably undermined the momentum and tension of the Obi-Wan Kenobi vs. Vader battle, something that never should have happened with the most anticipated Star Wars duel in years. It’s a sign of a bigger problem.

Hollywood Has An Action Problem

Unfortunately, this is a growing trend with fight scenes and battle sequences in modern action movies and TV shows: shaky camera work and constant cuts reduce fights to boring blurs of motion rather than dynamic moments in a narrative. Again using Obi-Wan Kenobi, the episode 5 battle between the Empire and the refugees in The Path’s stronghold on Jabiim was maddening to watch. The best fights tell a story through the action, but the battle on Jabiim was largely a mess. The camera never lingered long enough on any one person or individual fight to get a sense of what was happening, immediately jumping away after just a second or two. The haphazard blocking of the battle also didn’t help as it was hard to orient oneself in the scene to understand the layout of the fight and where everything was in relation to each other. Chaotic and poorly-directed fight scenes aren’t just a problem with Star Wars, however, but across the board.

Hollywood has an action problem. Think about the last truly memorable fight in a Marvel movie. Most people will immediately pick the highway fight in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, as the best fight in the MCU, perhaps the elevator scene from the same movie. A few may throw in fight scenes from other Marvel movies, such as Avengers: Endgame or Shang-Chi, but the overwhelming responses will almost certainly be centered on The Winter Soldier. The problem is, The Winter Soldier came out in 2014; 19 more movies have been released in the MCU since then. Audiences would be hard-pressed to come up with any truly spectacular fights in the DCEU, period. Most franchises are not much different, both on the big screen and on TV. That is not a great track record for creating memorable combat scenes in genres that are centered on action.

Too Much Content Means Fewer Experienced Showrunners

Hollywood is absolutely awash in a sea of content right now, and is an industry powered by franchise IP, which almost always revolves around action. As proprietary streaming services proliferate, more movies and TV shows are getting greenlit than ever before–and it’s making action worse. There’s far more content than experience out there, especially on the streaming and TV side of things. In a positive, it’s providing long-overdue opportunities for more showrunners and directors to get their feet in the door. It also means that there are a lot of people right now being put into showrunning positions and directing entire shows who don’t have any business having that level of responsibility yet considering their lack of experience. But that’s where Hollywood is at right now, with too few people with veteran experience able to fill all the showrunning and directing openings available.

This is especially a problem in television, as there used to be a clear apprenticeship pipeline in TV. When there were fewer networks and cable channels, and shows lasted 20 episodes a season or more, staff writers had years to learn the ropes. Staff writer led to head writer; head writer led to showrunner. By the time a writer was promoted to run a show, they’d had years of experience and learned all the vast logistical knowledge required of a showrunner along the way. That pipeline has broken down with the explosion of streaming. Staff writers are jumping right to showrunner. The industry is awash with back alley stories of unstaffed writers who have landed showrunner gigs simply off a pitch. That’s how desperate Hollywood is for content right now.

TV Directors Are Also Being Affected By Industry Changes

It’s a problem with directing, too. A frequent way aspiring directors cut their teeth in TV and film is to shadow the director on set for a time. It’s a solid way to learn the ropes. Then one might get their chance to direct an episode or two here and there, and gradually build up their resume. But the COVID-19 pandemic upended everything and now there are fewer opportunities to get that vital shadowing and apprenticeship. Directors rarely stick with one show for an entire season, too, for various reasons. With full-season network and cable shows, it’s because the schedule is so tight that one episode is being shot while the other is already in post and the next is in pre-production. A director can’t oversee all of those things at once, so they handle one or two episodes at a time. Meanwhile, action-oriented limited and miniseries often require a large amount of VFX in post. As with network shows, a director may handle one or two episodes and then focus on post-production while another director is shooting the next episode. It makes it difficult for directors to truly get a feel for the production.

Aspiring Directors Learn A Lot – But Not How To Block & Shoot Action

These days, it’s not necessary to go to film school to understand how to be a director. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, as film schools have overwhelmingly failed to change with the modern times and their courses are lacking. Directors are not taught, for example, how to block and shoot action sequences–and it shows. Blocking, in its simplest definition, is the directions for how the actors and the cameras are supposed to be positioned and how they’re supposed to move. It is an incredibly important skill. Good blocking orients the audience in space so they understand what’s happening and where. Blocking sets a roadmap for where any scene will begin, and where it will end. Blocking ensures that an actor isn’t accidentally standing between their costar and the camera in a scene where the costar has lines. And great blocking can tell a visual narrative itself; for example, in a scene where the power dynamic between two characters shifts, the one losing ground may move farther away from the camera while the one gaining control moves closer.

Unfortunately, few directors learn or understand how to properly block fight scenes and battle sequences without extensive experience. This is especially noticeable in television. Because of the conveyor belt nature of shooting episodes mid-season, speed is of utmost importance. Unlike on a film set, a TV director and their camera crew don’t have time to set up multiple shots. The director better make sure to have their blocking down in order to make fights as dynamic as possible with minimal or no camera movement. But if a director doesn’t understand the language of action, fight scenes can’t be filmed to their fullest potential. It gets even trickier with TV directors making the jump to film and vice versa; each is blocked and shot quite differently.

Hollywood Is Using Fewer Second-Unit Directors

The film side of the industry is also experiencing a shift. Traditionally, film shoots utilize second units led by the second-unit director. The second unit is exactly what it sounds like–a second team and camera crew who work separately from the main unit. Sometimes, the second unit is deployed to do the necessary but mundane work, such as pick-ups, crowd shots, establishing location shots, etc. But more often, the second unit is tasked with shooting “specialized” scenes, such as action and fight sequences. Often, the second-unit director will also be the film’s movie or fight coordinator, as they intimately understand the language of a fight, and so they intimately know how to block and film action scenes. In fact, quite a few second directors started out as stunt coordinators for this reason–it’s certainly how John Wick director Chad Stahelski did.

Despite being a crucial part of tentpole film productions that are more and more often relying on special effects and action, fewer films have been employing second units. There has been an overall decline in the number of second units being used on film productions across all major genres and across all budgets over the past 20 years. The action genre is not immune to this. In 2000, roughly 63% of all domestically released action films used second-unit directors; by 2018, that number had dropped to 51%, with a low point in 2015 dropping all the way to 41%. (via Stephen Follows) It’s not entirely clear why this is the case, whether it’s tied to budgetary reasons or because more directors now want to oversee and control every aspect of their shoot without having to collaborate with a second-unit director.

Whether it’s for these reasons, more, or none, it’s undeniable that, outside of a few genuinely dynamic IP, the action genre and action hybrid genres are suffering in the areas in which they should be strongest. Big battle scenes are chaotic messes. Hand-to-hand combat scenes are too often inexplicably shot from the waist up or have so many quick cuts the audience can’t even see the fighters’ moves. And all of it relies far too much on handheld shaky cam as a cheap visual cheat to manufacture a feeling of intensity when the skill to shoot action in a dynamic way is lacking. Obi-Wan Kenobi‘s final duel may have been the most frustrating recent example of this, but it’s certainly not the only one. Until Hollywood understands it needs to train its directors to understand fights as well as they understand character moments, the action genre as a whole will continue to be held back.