Actively boring
I haven’t seen 2005’s infamously long KING KONG. At least, not all in one sitting.
I have seen several clips from KING KONG, though, because there’s a bunch of monsters in it and the modern media ecosystem lets me just zero in on clips of the good stuff on YouTube or wherever. And so, one day I found myself watching a scene from the movie in which Kong fights a bunch of dinosaurs. I love monsters, and I love monsters fighting.
And I had to force myself to sit through this relatively short clip. When I finally made it to the end, my first thought was "Holy hell, is this what the whole movie is?? How did people manage to get through three hours of this???"
This scene is putting on a clinic for how to make a fight/action sequence boring and dumb, in a way that’s fairly common and often goes unpunished in theatrical releases.
So, how does a monster fight scene with virtually non-stop action and constant energetic editing end up feeling like it’s dragging on forever?
First, let’s watch it so we’re all on the same page - no context necessary:
Done?
Rad.
In a nutshell, the problems here come down to consequences and progression.
Let’s start with that first part.
Consequences
Almost nothing that happens in the dino brawl matters.
I don't mean that in the sense of "this extended action sequence is narratively inconsequential to the larger story"; I mean that, from moment to moment, the things that happen don't affect what the characters can do afterwards.
For most of the scene, Kong and the dinos trade blows - and pretty savage ones, at that. These huge dinos land full-force bites on Kong's limbs and joints, but Kong’s movements or behaviors aren’t impacted by them (he just grunts or roars in pain briefly). The dinos also take several haymakers themselves, get thrown into each other, get their heads slammed on the floor, land on their back on solid rock, and none of this fazes them at all.
The problem here isn't that this is an "unrealistic" amount of punishment for these creatures to be sustaining - any fight or action sequence in almost any modern movie is going to involve characters trading fight-ending injuries like they’re video game characters (though some films, like A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE and ATOMIC BLONDE, deliberately buck the trend and try to depict violence done to the human body in a more realistic way). The problem here is that these creatures are actually not sustaining any punishment whatsoever, until they die.
The first dino is killed when Kong picks up a big rock and bashes its head in, which takes literally only 1 second to transpire from beginning (Kong finds the rock) to end (dino dead). This rock isn't involved in the choreography before or after that single second. The second dino is dispatched similarly: Kong smashes its head against a rock wall (with I guess more force than all those other times he smashed their heads into solid rock beforehand), in another 1-second shot that again comes out of nowhere. The final dino’s death is the climax of the scene, so it at least takes longer than 1 second - we’ll talk about that a bit later. Aside from the injuries that instantly kill the dinos, they don’t seem to particularly care what Kong does to them. They are just as active, just as fast, just as aggressive, and just as single-mindedly fixated on risking their lives for a person-sized snack as they were at the beginning of the fight.
Kong’s situation is even worse, because Kong is supposed to be fighting at a major handicap. Not only it three-on-one, but one of his hands is busy holding the woman he’s trying to save. But, again, it doesn’t hinder him. There’s even a wild moment where he needs both hands to hold onto a cliff, so he just switches to holding her with his foot, like he’s playing hacky sack. This fight is positioned to show us what a badass Kong is, so we shouldn’t necessarily expect it to really wear him down too much - but he doesn’t even seem to struggle at all. He just sort of…tumbles around. For almost 7 minutes.
These combatants are made out of rubber. Nothing they do matters. When the movie decides that one of them should die, it abruptly cuts to a 1-second shot of that happening with virtually no choreographed build-up, which is the filmic equivalent of "oh yeah and by the way" - communicating even more loudly that these deaths are completely arbitrary, i.e. not arising from anything done previously. When nothing has consequences, then nothing has impact.
Which leads to the second issue, which I can now better explain: There's no progression.
Progression
Let's switch to a scene from a different movie for a hot sec.
Here’s a great action scene from the end of 2018’s MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: FALLOUT - again, no context needed:
(Quick note: Unlike the scene from KING KONG, this clip stitches together footage.. In the movie, the action in the helicopters is intercut with other characters fighting through a different problem. We aren’t talking about the editing or the overall pacing, though, so this version still works for us.)
In this clip, the hero (played by Tom Cruise) is trying to catch the bad guy (played by Henry Cavill) before he escapes. How does the hero go about doing that?
Well, the bad guy’s helicopter has already left, so our hero has to climb into a second chopper as it’s taking off. When he gets inside, one of the goons attacks him. The pilot sees this, and draws a gun. Our hero sees that, and shoots the pilot. Without a pilot, the helicopter starts to spin out of control, so our hero now needs to finish off the first goon very quickly or they’ll both crash and die. He does so, stabilizes the chopper, and catches up. The villain sees him, and pulls out a machine gun. Oh shit! Now our hero has to get away from the hail of bullets without dying. But descending that quickly causes his helicopter to lose control again, so…
Do you see what’s going on here?
Each development in this sequence either advances the hero or the villain closer to their goal, in a lasting way that the other character then needs to respond to. Those responses then, themselves, advance one of them closer to their goal, and so forth. There’s a clear line from one action to the next, and each one changes the relative status of the opponents in the scene.
This sequence was honestly the best part of MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: FALLOUT, and I say that despite the abundant eye Cavill throughout the movie.
Sorry, I mean Henry candy.
Sorry, I mean shotgun biceps.
This is what I mean by "progression" in this context. The characters are able to accomplish things that bring them closer to their goal, which forces the other to respond. Not only is this less boring, it also allows for escalating tension, as consequences build up (e.g. the damage to our hero’s chopper gets worse over time; the villain’s constant gunfire means they eventually run out of ammo; etc.).
Let's compare that to the scene from KING KONG. The dinos want to eat the pretty blonde lady and Kong has to stop them, but neither side really gets closer or farther to their goals throughout the sequence.
Theoretically, there is "progression" - or at least, a superficial impression of it - because there is a moment-to-moment sense of characters reacting to each other (for instance, Kong has to switch which hand he's holding the woman in to get her out of harm's way), but these actions don't actually advantage either side. Yes, one of the dinos bites Kong's ankle and drags him off a cliff and into some vines - but is the situation any different in the vines? Not really: There’s still a dino biting the air in front of a screaming woman, and Kong and the other dino are still trading blows like Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots. Everyone’s in the same positions within the overall action. There are changes in scenery, and changes in choreography, but no changes in any character’s status until the very end.
The final leg of the sequence - where Kong squares off against the last remaining dino - is the only part that feels like a coherent action sequence. It’s relatively short and simple, but even in it, you can see the basics of everything missing from before: The dino charges at its human target. Kong takes advantage of its aim, and intercepts it, grabbing it by the jaws. The two roll around briefly as the dino tries to escape, but Kong ends up on top. Having established a decisive advantage, Kong kills his opponent. Consequences and progression. This final minute could’ve replaced the entire sequence.
The grammar of action
In her analysis of a fight scene from 2019’s THE WITCHER (also starring Henry “Reload my fists” Cavill), stage combatant Jill Bearup breaks down the sequence into what she calls “phrases”. A phrase is a unit of fight choreography which can have multiple individual moves or edits, but still has a clear beginning and end. Notably, when a phrase ends there is a moment of stillness - where the combatants can communicate, break apart, circle menacingly, etc. She uses the term “phrase” to draw a comparison to music, or conversation - and I think this extremely apt.
To bring everything together, let’s apply Bearup’s framework to the above two scenes. The below image shows a timeline of the scene from KING KONG. The pink stripes are the phrases in the fight (and line up roughly with where they appear in the clip and how long they last). The dark line in the middle represents who’s getting closer to their goal - the top is Kong’s goal (save the girl), the bottom is the dinos’ goal (eat the girl). We start the scene with her about to be eaten, with no help in sight:
A visualization of who is “winning” the contest over the course of the scene from KING KONG. Chart by Mani Cavalieri
This sequence in particular is hard to break up into phrases because the characters virtually don’t stop moving for most of it, but I think there are still a few points where we notice an “end” to a unit of action, giving the audience can process what they’ve just seen, and after which something new happens. For instance, from right after Kong kills the first dino (1:57) to when they all land in the vines (3:07) there is a whole lot of biting and wrestling and juggling of screaming women - but I grouped that all as a single phrase because the action is pretty non-stop throughout it, and there is a clear break at the end of it where everyone adjusts to the new situation and prepares their next move. You could break it up slightly differently - this isn’t an exact science - but this helps us make sense of the action. Because man, there is a lot of it.
Looking at the “Who’s getting closer to their goal?” line: We can see that there’s a lot of shifting of status at the beginning. Blondie is nearly eaten by dino 1, then Kong shows up. While he’s busy with that dino, she’s nearly eaten by dino 2 - less scary, since she’s already in Kong’s hand, but they cut it pretty close. After Kong gets some distance from his scaly opponents, dino 3 shows up and nearly chomps on Blondie, but Kong once again pulls her away. Each of these near-deaths has been progressively less threatening, because it’s now repeatedly being established that Kong will pull her away from danger at the last second. So even though there’s some big scary jaws snapping within arm’s reach of our damsel in distress during the whole third phrase (when Kong is tussling with all 3 dinos), the dinos are never actually any closer to achieving their goal, and the “conflict graph” is flat. It gets a little bump when Kong smushes a dino, but then there’s another very long phrase (ending in the vines) where there’s a ton going on, but none of it moves the needle. Eventually, our gal is slightly more imperiled when she’s separated from Kong, but not for long. The overall conflict curve is really flat, both overall and within phrases.
Now let’s give the same treatment to FALLOUT. Once again, the top goal is the hero’s (catch the bad guy), and the bottom goal is the bad guy’s (escape or kill the hero). We start with the bad guy’s chopper already having left, and our hero racing to the one as it takes off:
I’m really stretching Jill Bearup’s definition of “phrases” to apply it to a scene where no-one is engaged in direct physical combat, but as a way for us to break the action of this sequence into chunks, it works very well. Chart by Mani Cavalieri
It’s immediately apparent that there’s a much more dynamic progression in this sequence. It’s a fairly standard one, too: Our hero gains some ground early (takes control of a chopper), then the villain applies some pressure (guns down our hero), and things get worse and worse until our hero does something dramatic to turn the tables (diving into clouds for relief from the gunfire, only to ambush the bad guy when returning). Just before the end, there’s one last threat to the hero’s outcome (the gunfire damage from before is causing the chopper to fail), but they push through.
Not only that, but within each phrase, someone’s status is changing. Something is getting better or worse the whole time, and each phrase changes the situation between the two opponents. For instance, when the bad guy is gunning at our hero from 2:36 to 3:24, we see the gunfire get progressively closer, eventually hitting the chopper and dealing lasting damage to it. It isn’t just bad for our hero, it’s progressively bad. If that moment kept going the way it was going, we know exactly what the outcome would be. By contrast, many of the phrases in the KING KONG scene were mostly or completely flat. If any of those moments kept going, we don’t have any idea what the outcome would be. We’re stuck waiting for the filmmakers to tell us who wins and why. That may sound like tension, but tension lapses to boredom if you let it get stale.
Attentive readers (or contrarian readers wanting to defend KING KONG) may have noticed that I’ve kinda been comparing apples to oranges here. These two scenes appear at very different points in their respective movies, and have very different goals. The dino brawl happens relatively earlier in the overall narrative, and its goal is to establish that Kong is a badass and wants to protect the girl. The helicopter chase, meanwhile, happens near to the end of the movie, and its goal is to resolve the final conflict (or at least get us closer to it). It’s true that establishing things often takes some more time and repetition (as you are creating a new understanding in the audience’s mind), whereas resolving things that were already established can progress more quickly.
This is all true, but the same narrative conventions underlie both sequences - because they’re the basic narrative conventions for conflict in general.
In most scenes involving conflict, you want to advance the conflict - so either some of the participants wins/secures an advantage, or all participants have learned something/been changed by the effort (thus ensuring that the next iteration of their conflict will be different). Put more simply: Someone either “wins” the scene, or it has some other impact.
This lens also applies to units within the scene. If you break up a scene into beats, for instance, each beat functions similarly: one or more characters tries to advance their position, and it is either successful or thwarted. This logic applies just as much to a fistfight as it does to a conversation, just as Bearup observed - a verbal exchange works just like a violent one, narratively.
There’s something to be said for the value of spectacle, as opposed to strictly focusing on narrative progression. But audience attention escapes the gravitational pull of spectacle pretty quickly, relatively speaking - and so, even when indulging in spectacle, it’s often important to be progressing something. Advance the conflict, or escalate the spectacle, or deepen our understanding of something. Change something as we keep watching.
You can take a captive audience for granted when they’re stuck in a movie theater, with a significant social cost to just getting up and doing something else. But if you drag some of that footage into the light of a home viewing experience, it withers. And that isn’t just (or even mostly) because those big loud monsters need to be rendered on a huge screen - it’s because instead of relying on solid fundamentals for conveying action, it’s relying on the captivity of the viewer.
