How Creed 2 Helped Pave The Way For Transformers: Rise Of The Beasts Stunts
When it comes to staged, hand-to-hand combat, there are many disciplines from which to draw. There's karate, Muay Thai, Wing Chun, Jujutsu, Jeet Kune Do, Gymkata and so much more. There are many action stars who specialize in certain offshoots of martial arts, which ensures that fight scenes, so long as they're well choreographed, will never get old.
The key to a great piece of film combat is, of course, the human element. Even though these performers aren't actually hitting their scene partners (or, at least, shouldn't be), they sell each blow like a great pro wrestler takes a bump. You wince when you see Jackie Chan take a spin kick to the kisser or Michelle Yeoh absorbing all manner of punishment before she delivers a counteroffensive flurry to her adversary. But how do you convey that bruising, rib-cracking impact when you're depicting a couple of CG robots trading haymakers?
Michael Bay made it work in his "Transformers" movies by turning the Optimus Prime-Megatron brawls into limb-rending, life-or-death brawls. Seriously, go back and watch those movies. They're conceptually brutal, especially because Optimus rarely scores a decisive victory. They're the mecha equivalent of Dan Dority and Captain Turner murdering each other in the middle of a muddy street in "Deadwood." No one wants that. Nor do they want CG Jackie Chan antics, which, to their credit, live or die on the physical peril involved.
Even robots have the eye of the tiger
The sweet spot is a slugfest à la the Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots many Gen X-ers grew up with. Basically, you want to mimic a fight from the "Rocky" franchise. Fortunately, "Transformers: Rise of the Beasts" director Steven Caple Jr. possessed said experience, so he knew just how to pull these sequences off.
In a May 2023 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Caple was asked if his helming of "Creed II" came in handy while staging the mechanical melees in the latest "Transformers" movie. Turns out, it was indispensable. "I actually brought on the same stunt team," he said. "['Creed II' stunt coordinator] Danny Hernandez reached out and introduced me to this guy named [fight coordinator] Shahaub Roudbari. I just wanted to make sure we had some really cool fight sequences in there."
The obvious impediment was the lack of flesh and blood. Caple corrected for this by amping up the degree of contact because, well, you could land every blow with maximum, non-cheated impact. As he told THR:
"When you're making a 'Creed' film, you have to fake the punches. No one could really get hit, or at least you hope they don't. But on this one, you could really punch the hell outta your robots. You're trying to make people cringe even though everything they're seeing on screen is fake. So that is the goal."
Autobots and Decepticons gotta get it on 'cuz they don't get along
This is not without precedent. When Shawn Levy directed his robot-boxing hoot "Real Steel," he brought on former world middleweight champion Sugar Ray Leonard to devise fighting styles for the various combatants in the movie. The attention to pugilistic detail worked. Though Hugh Jackman and Evangeline Lilly brought a palpable human element to the "training" of robot fighters, there was a realistic quality to the bouts that rose above pre-vis hackwork. You could sense Leonard, Marvin Hagler, and Tommy Hearns in those fight scenes.
Having directed a "Rocky" sequel alongside Sylvester Stallone, who sacrificed his body more than once in the pursuit of pugilistic verisimilitude, Steven Caple Jr. understood the value of feeling a punch cut right through you. Will anyone remember "Transformers: Rise of the Beasts" two years from now? Probably not. But in the moment, they just might feel it. And that ain't nothing.