She knows Wire Fu.
Dale: The guy got into a little, you know, stance. And I'd just seen that movie,
Crouching Tiger or whatever, and I thought...
Judge Frasier: You thought he could fly?
A Live-Action
Special Attack assisted by the fact that the actor is tethered to the ceiling.
A (comparatively) easy way to make a fight scene more impressive is to use fine wires to support the actor during acrobatics that would not be possible for a normal human:
long lateral jumps, jumping "off the air", being thrown back by an explosion, or even hanging suspended. Wires can also be used to slow down an actor's movement without the undesirable side effects of
Overcranking.
Wire Fu is an important device of the entire
Toku genre and of cinematic genres such as
Wuxia.
Also called "Wirework" (though that term is more general; "
Wire Fu" usually refers only to the use of wirework for fight scenes).
Expensive and time-consuming, it is often now replaced by computer-generated effects.
Examples
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Comics
Card Games
- The Munchkin card game set "Munchkin Fu" has a style card literally called Wire Fu. It gives a +6.
- But prevents you from wearing armor.
- There is also a monster -5 debuff "with visible wires"
Films — Live Action
- Wuxia films use Wire Fu to perform exaggerated feats of qinggong. For example, the film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Hero, and House of Flying Daggers demonstrate perhaps the ultimate achievement in Wire Fu that Western audiences have seen.
- Wire Fu is noticeably absent in most Jackie Chan films; Chan insists on doing all his own stunts and eschews this technique. This has come an end, however as Jackie Chan has gotten older.
- The Matrix is this trope's CMOA in the west.
- Just about every single Jet Li film. His training just makes it look really good.
- Spoofed in Wayne's World 2, during a fight between Wayne and Cassandra's father featuring leaps and flips with curiously flat trajectories.
- Never one to leave a dead horse unbeaten, Mike Myers used this in Austin Powers: Goldmember with Fat Bastard, who — to make sure he was ready to fight Austin — shouted "I hope my wire-fightin' team's r-r-r-r-ready!" He is defeated when one wire snaps, leaving him stuck in the air.
- The teaser trailer for The Other Guys spoofs this by having the two main heroes striking a flying kick pose and firing guns before hitting each other in midair and swinging from their wires.
- Averted in the "corridor fight" scene in Inception. When the one mook falls down a side corridor when gravity shifts to the side, the stuntman's fall was slowed by regular wirework, as were the parts when gravity completely stops. However, for the fight between Arthur and a mook when gravity is spinning out of control, the director went for an even more expensive and time consuming solution, building an entire set inside a huge metal cylinder that could actually be rotated. But it was completely worth the effort, as the result looks infinitely better
than any Wire Fu. Because it IS real.
- Heroic Trio seems to have been filmed with multiple wire-rigs working at once since practically every character knows wire-fu... and it is glorious.
- There is a really out-of-place instance of this in Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life, when Lara confronts the black market smuggler Chen Lo in a cavern. They engage in a martial arts battle, and at one point Lara jumps on the heads of Terracotta warrior statues as Chen Lo smashes them beneath her feet.
Live Action TV
- Garo has a lot of wirework, surprisingly well done considering the heavy suits worn by the stuntmen and actors, and the fact that it's a TV show. Combined with chroma key and CG, some spectacular fights are produced. The Skyscraper fight in Makai Senki has to be seen to be believed.
- Power Rangers, in every episode. Surprisingly, Super Sentai (and sister franchise Kamen Rider) use very little Wire Fu in comparison.
- Used quite ludicrously on one episode: the Yellow Ranger is surrounded by Putties, leaps into the air, hovers for a few seconds (surely there was some Chroma Key involved here), falls back down to Earth, and then beats them up. The jump accomplished nothing, but the Red Ranger then compliments her on her "good move".
- On another occasion (possibly from the very same episode), an out-of-costume Blue Ranger leaps into the air and lands with his legs around a Putty's head, killing it. That's right, he killed a guy with his crotch.
- Many fans consider this to be Power Rangers, Super Sentai and Kamen Rider director Koichi Sakamoto's Director Trademark. It's especially apparent in Kamen Rider Fourze (he directed the whole series), which is handwaved by the fact that the Fourze suit has a jetpack. Likewise, Kamen Rider Double has basically no Wire Fu until The Gaia Memories of Fate which was directed by guess who...
- Fight scenes in Angel made use of this in contrast to Buffy, where people only went flying into the air when kicked up there. One commenter on the show speculated that it was specifically moving to Los Angeles that granted vampires the ability to jump really high.
- Buffy did make at least one use of wire fu that was gratuitously conspicuous.
- Xena: Warrior Princess makes copious use of Wire Fu in almost every episode.
Puppet Shows
- The Pili series from Taiwan. Wire-fu puppets. Very awesome wire-fu puppets.
Theatre
- Batman Live is full of Wire Fu, all of which is used beautifully.
- Cirque du Soleil's Amaluna has "strap fu" fighting in its two aerial straps acts, especially the second one with the Valkyries. KA also has a battle of this type.
Music Videos
