Martial Arts in 'Batman Begins'

[arnisador]

I watched the HBO First Look specail for 'Batman Begins' this afternoon. If I heard correctly, the fight choreographer said they used KFM as the basis of his open-hand martial art, as they were looking for something different that would seem to be Batman's own unique style. It looked to me like a form of silat when demonstrated by the choreographer's assistant, but it was a brief clip and so it was hard to be sure. Does anyone know what style it was?

There is also swordwork, which I assume is a different style.

 

[arnisador]

The 'fight arranger' was David Forman, a.k.a. Leonardo from TMNT. He describes KFM (?) as a 'new' martial art.

The IMDb site lists Robert G. Goodwin as martial arts arranger and Erik Betts ("Red and Green Power Rangers" and Panther on "WMAC Masters") as assistant martial arts arranger, but the special gave Mr. Forman as fight arranger; the site just lists him as 'stunts'. Looking at the IMDb site, Mr. Goodwin may have done the swordwork choreography.

 

[Randy Strausbaugh]

KFM= Keysi Fighting Method, a JKD off-shoot which is popular in England. Very little on the web about it.

 

[Moogong]

Batman's non-striking techniques always resembled aikido in the comic books. It's going to be interesting to see how they do the fight scenes for this "darker" version of the bat. Hopefully they will go light on the wirework and "matrix-fu".

 

[MA-Caver]

It always seemed to me that Batman had studied a wide variety of Martial Arts, since he doesn't have any superpowers of his own and thus learned H2H and all those "wonderful toys" to make up for it.
Not bad for a guy who in later years fought not only some of the meanest villians in comic history but also fought Predators and Aliens.

 

[arnisador]

We saw it today. The way the fight scenes were shot, it was hard to follow the action well enough to see which techniques were being used in the hand-to-hand scenes. But, it was an excellent film nonetheless!

 

[Spook]

I completely agree!! I was a little bumed the fight scenes were a little difficult to follow, but it was still a great film.

 

[Genin Andrew]

Batman Begins is a great movie, I was very impressed. I thought it bought alot of credibility back to the movie franchise after "batman and robin" *shudders* dont get me started... I'm a huge Batman fan but the way they showed and talked about the "ninja" stuff annoyed me a little, but i cant slander it for accuracy and realism,It is about a guy dressed as a bat!:ultracool

It was a very well done Batman movie, GO SEE IT. I'm seeing it again today.

-Andrew

 

[BruceCalkins]

We saw it today. The way the fight scenes were shot, it was hard to follow the action well enough to see which techniques were being used in the hand-to-hand scenes. But, it was an excellent film nonetheless!

I have to agree 100% here. I just went to see it with Star Wars III and the fight scenes seemed too blended. and to up close camer angles.. Kinda Like Sagal's Movies are getting. Compair the new stuff with the old movies like Above the Law and you can see the techniques much better in the old ones.

 

[Andrew Green]

I completely agree!! I was a little bumed the fight scenes were a little difficult to follow, but it was still a great film.

Usually this has to do with the actors not being able to do much that looks good without a shaky camera and close ups

In this on I think it was a little of that, but also this was a batman movie. It's almost supposed to have a blur, a bunch of "smack"'s and then a bunch of beat up people and no real idea as to exactly what happened...

 

[arnisador]

I think it was meant to add to the mysticism of it all, but for me it was annoying not being able to follow the action in detail! Still, the movie looked great.