What's your opinion of slow-mo in action movies?

I personally hate slow-motion scenes in action movies. I think it looks cheesy and silly. Thoughts?

 

Mostly I agree with you. But sometimes the slo-mo enhances the shot. Take the Tom Cruise "Mission Impossible" series. In #2 directed by John Woo the slow motion scene with Tom, or Ethan Hunt rather, on the motorcycle was outstanding. I would have loved to see good slo-mo scenes in the Steve McQueen movie "Bullitt" during the car chase, a 1968 Mustang Fastback, over the streets in San Francisco. But in 1968 Slo-mo wasn't as good as it is today. Even though directors seem to over use the technology there by ruining the picture.

 

Hugely over used.

 

Sound effects can be worse: =

 

Lol, despite that scene, "The Man with the Golden Gun" is still one of my favorite Bond movies,

 

When Howard Hawks, a film director from the Golden Age of Hollywood, saw the 1969 movie THE WILD BUNCH with its slow-mo finale, he said any time a film goes from normal speed to the alternate reality of slow motion, it loses its sense of reality or the way we experience reality. Life as humans normally experience it does not happen in artificial slow motion, so when a movie resorts to this trick it automatically becomes a live action cartoon.

 

It can be overused and unnecessary in my opinion but in the 1976 movie Carrie, it was quite effective in the pig's blood scene.

 

Really depends on the movie.

 

I don't have a problem with slow motion sequences in movies. I was just relaying what Howard Hawks (Red River) said about them and why he never used them.

 

Here is an example of an action movie that utilised slow motion and it worked.​

 

I hate it.
Particularly in Porn movies!

 

only if it's the Matrix and bullets are whizzing by 'the one' as he dodges



that's not really slow-mo though...

 

I agree..... It reminds us too much of real life.....

Back in the 70s, we used to edit those films in the evenings for the back street production companies and the original was so funny.
You would hardly believe the material we started with. Laughter was the reason for most of the cuts, along with people and objects falling off the bed.
My favourite was he endless cups of tea.
Up to 6 hours of filming was edited to 30 minutes and it was still hard to find the material to follow the original concept.

 

That was a good movie!

 

Yup SC. That is all chromakey and computer generated effects.

 

I've seen some really bad slo-motion action sequences over the years, but I found myself relatively indifferent while watching the movie 300

 

The matrix was BRILLIANT! That effect is called "bullet time" and it's achieved by setting up an array of hundreds of cameras in an arc/circle around the actor. In the original Matrix I think they used 200-300 cameras each spaced a few inches from the next. That way you can freeze the film at any point in time, and switch thru different cameras fluidly (still on the same frame), giving it the effect of moving 1 camera around a frozen moment in time.

idk if The Matrix was the first film to do bullet time but it's definitely the most well known and effectively used. The problem is, every film that does it now is just sorta repeating an old trick. That's when brilliant becomes cliché. Filmmakers should keep trying to innovate and come up with new tricks, because I gotta agree with the OP, slow motion action fights aren't anything special nowadays. (And don't get me started on the ridiculous wire-fu fight scenes... we saw it all 20 years ago!)

 

It was used very effectively in the Russian "T 34", where some things became easier to understand due to the slow motion. In a way, it was not only for cool effects, but also for telling the story.

 

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I absolutely hate them.
Particularly in Porn movies.

 

Absolutely can't stand watching a movie with slow mo action.