WARRIOR Post-Release Thread - Page 3

Quote:

Originally Posted by Anorexic Starlet 

Plus, I already said this before, but I would have loved to see Tommy fight Koba, prior to losing to Brendan to up the believability factor.

I don't understand why so many people seem to be keen on that idea. How could it have possibly worked? Part of the appeal of the Tommy and Brendan match-up was that Tommy was almost immediately knocking out every opponent he had, so you knew that when he fights Tommy, this will be the one and only time things go differently for him. This makes it more intriguing as you wonder what different way Tommy could win (if it all).

There's no way they'd make Koba just another one of those guys Tommy beats handily after the way Koba had been built up, and having Tommy earn a hard-fought victory against Koba would have just taken away from his mystique going into the fight with Brendan. Semi-finals with Tommy being paired with the guy he embarrassed at the gym while Brendan goes against Koba were much more logical from a storytelling perspective.

There would be no emotional impact to the opponents being switched. The ones with the history needed to be put together. Koba and Brendan didn't have personal history, but Koba's reputation and Brendan's wife's fear from seeing Koba on TV gave that fight enough extra intrigue.

In light of what we saw of Tommy (an absolute beast in the cage) and what we knew of Koba (undefeated, fearsome) the audience really has to suspend disbelief to believe a 30-something schoolteacher can come out of retirement and beat them both one after the other. Having Tommy- who hadn't spent more than a minute in the cage thusfar-- survive a tough bout with Koba would have made Brendon beating Tommy more plausible.

Don't forget, Tommy is essentially the ultimate villain in this movie.  He's the villain we love, but the ultimate mountain the hero has to climb at the end of the day.  There's a reason Tommy never has a fight that lasts longer than twenty seconds before that final fight, and it has less to do with realism(the MMA as depicted in this movie is HIGHLY dramatized over the real thing) and more to do with making the Tommy fight incredibly scary and intense. 

I just assumed that Tommy would have a much harder time beating up his brother because of the emotions involved, regardless of who was the better fighter.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Anorexic Starlet 

In light of what we saw of Tommy (an absolute beast in the cage) and what we knew of Koba (undefeated, fearsome) the audience really has to suspend disbelief to believe a 30-something schoolteacher can come out of retirement and beat them both one after the other. Having Tommy- who hadn't spent more than a minute in the cage thusfar-- survive a tough bout with Koba would have made Brendon beating Tommy more plausible.

Pretty much this.  But I'll also add that it would have been nice simply to change up the beats of all the fights leading up to the final one.  As it is, they all kinda bleed together - Tommy knocks out his opponents super fast, and Brendan gets the shit kicked out of him before eventually coming out on top.  Having Tommy have just one fight with an opponent that actually gives him a tough time would have established that he isn't some superhuman indestructible machine, and having it be Koba, with Tommy still winning, would have just added to the idea that Brendan is out-matched by Tommy.  Win-win.

It's a nitpick, though.  A small problem, and the movie still works like gangbusters as is.

Just reposting how I rationalized Brendan's victory against two invincible beasts.
 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Anorexic Starlet 

 

Tommy's fight with Brendan  wasn't consistent with his prior fights. Tommy dipsensed his other more experienced appointed in under 10 seconds with knockouts but struggled with his physics teacher brother for several rounds? Were they implying that Brendan was just able to take more punishment than the other men?

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by mcnooj82 

 

I thought the same thing about Tommy's longer fight against Brendan as well.  I rationalized it in a few ways...

 

-Tommy has some issues to work through that he doesn't want to end with one good punch.

-These guys are still brothers, regardless of the wide chasm between them.

-Brendan already survived a fight against Koba.

 

But yeah... if this wasn't a movie, I would be afraid for ANYONE going up against TommyRage.

 

The thing is, I bought Koba going down simply because MMA *is* the most wildly unpredictable sport in the world.  Upsets like that can, and regularly do, happen.  Anything can happen on any given night at any given second.

Don't believe me?  Ask Jon Fitch.

Quote:

Originally Posted by The NZ Natural 

The thing is, I bought Koba going down simply because MMA *is* the most wildly unpredictable sport in the world.  Upsets like that can, and regularly do, happen.  Anything can happen on any given night at any given second.

 

Don't believe me?  Ask Jon Fitch.

Watching Tim Boetsch vs Yushin Okami a couple of weeks ago reminded me of this. Okami tooled Boetsch for 2 five minute rounds and then Boetsch comes out in the final round and begins to turn the tide before getting that amazing come-from-behind KO.

Or we could look to a guy who's like a real life version of Rocky Balboa in MMA, Frankie Edgar. In his second and third fights against Gray Maynard Gray had Frankie badly rocked in the first round of both fights and was very, very close to getting the finish, but Frankie found a way to avoid it and went on to gain a draw in the first fight and an extraordinary KO victory in the second.

Current welterweight interim champion Carlos Condit fought Rory MacDonald a little less than two years ago. MacDonald was in control for two rounds and most of the final round but as he began to tire in that last round Carlos started to gain the upper hand and with only 7 seconds remaining before time was up Carlos stopped Rory, grabbing victory from what would otherwise have been a comprehensive points defeat.

Hell, one of the most talked about fights of the last decade is Chael Sonnen vs Anderson Silva, where Sonnen dominated Silva for four and a half 5 minute rounds while Silva basically just hung on in survival mode, then with less than two minutes to go in the final round Silva throws up a submission and forces Chael to tap out - pretty much exactly as they had Brendan doing in this film.

Koba is based on Russian MMA legend Fedor Emelianenko, a fighter who had amassed such an incredible decade long undefeated run that he was almost more myth than man. In 2010 he was finally given a loss - tapped out by a Brendan-esque submission no less - by an unfancied underdog.

This is a sport with more than enough genuine drama to lend to any aspiring screenwriter. In addition to the above-mentioned comebacks (which are only a sample of a few from the many) it could also be noted that in 2005 Rich Franklin, a former high school maths teacher (although I don't know if his students called him Mr F), became the UFC middleweight champion, a title he successfully defended twice before being overtaken by the aforementioned Anderson Silva.

If the movie fails to be realistic in any aspect when it comes to the fights it's not regarding the ebbs and flows of the fights and the personalities themselves, it's that it shows a referee allowing the fights to continue far beyond when they'd actually be stopped to protect the losing fighter. In Brendan's fights against Kruller and Koba he was shown not to be "intelligently defending" himself for much longer than Josh Rosenthal would have allowed in reality. And no way in 2011 would Tommy have been permited to continue with only one good arm. The Best Of The Best angle was good drama, but not true of modern MMA. In reality MMA is basically a combination of the brutality of muay thai and boxing, the athleticism of wrestling and the poetry of Brazilian jiu-jitsu. Warrior is all brutality - great for cinema, to be sure, but not a reflection of the true nature of MMA.