Fight Clip Club: Daredevil

a fantastic relic of the one-shot fight scene trend

Inspired by iconic Korean action movie Oldboy (2003), many early 20-teens action franchises started to play with longer fight scenes shot with no cuts. I happen to think that this trend in fight choreography was not only because of the famous one-shot long hallway fight in Oldboy, but as a sort of relief from the overly-cut action flicks that sliced fight scenes to such smithereens as to render them unwatchable, which were the big trend in the late ‘90s and early aughts. Like most of the fights in the Bourne series, for example. Which we’ll get to, don’t worry. Sigh.

We will definitely get to Oldboy as well, but today I wanted to analyze one of the best known one-shot fights inspired by it—the long hallway fight in one of the Daredevil series’ very first episodes.

This fight caused quite a sensation among action fans as well as the new followers of what would become the sprawling MCU, for several reasons, only one of which was its one-shot nature. There’s a lot going on here, so you go ahead and watch it and let’s talk about all the things that make it special!