Do you know gun fu?

Do you not cognize weapon fu? Briefly and baldly, it's the cinematic signifier of making a gunfight look similar thing retired of a martial arts film, with participants utilizing firearms successful ways that are borderline unbelievable - punting themselves backward on the level with the recoil from 2 pistols, similar Chow Yun Fat successful The Killer, oregon slide-walking down a bannister portion firing, similar Chow Yun Fat successful Hardboiled.

The feline credited with inventing weapon fu is Hong Kong enactment guru John Woo, who directed some the movies above. Woo's gunfights are displays of 'heroic bloodshed' that marque the mean Wild Western duel look similar a spelling bee. They tin impact finesse, but they bash not peculiarly emphasise calculation oregon method. Instead, Woo rejoices successful scenes of slow-mo improvisation, blaring symbolism and sheer overkill. Chow Yun Fat waggles his scale fingers and the acceptable dressing turns into crimson fog and hunks of flying plaster.

After watching Chow Yun Fat stroke gangsters distant similar snowmen, it's amusing to deliberation that weapon fu has go immoderate benignant of 'system' successful the hands of nerds and aboriginal film-makers. The 2002 movie Equilibrium consolidates it into a fictional martial art, "gun kata", with Christian Bale striking assorted catwalk poses that notionally maximise his lethal potential, but mostly conscionable marque him look similar he's trying to dislodge a spider.

Image credit: Remedy

Gun fu has, possibly inevitably, go ever much standardised for being incorporated into games and videogames, which request predictable rules to play by. The archetypal Max Payne blends Hardboiled with The Matrix to nutrient a wonderful, corner-jumping noir shooter, successful which weapon fu is fuelled by adrenaline, which itself is replenished by killing. The dependable refilling of Payne's hourglass icon mechanises the movie director's request to gait retired the showpiece stunts and support a dependable rainfall of bodies.

The creators of GURPS had a spell astatine standardising weapon fu inactive further successful a dedicated tabletop rulebook, which proposes that weapon fu is really 2 centuries old. It offers up a lexicon of documented oregon hypothetical weapon fu techniques, including ranged disarms, "shooting betwixt raindrops", and "crossbow fu". There's an introduction for Max Payne, who appears present stripped of his pill-chugging tragic backstory and cleanly dissected arsenic an Ultimate Shootist with Enhanced Time Sense, susceptible of Behind-the-Back Shots and Cinematic Knockback.

The weapon fu mindset appears everyplace successful modern videogames, to the grade that it's nary longer rather acknowledged. It's the breadstuff and food of innumerable third-person punchbangers, from the recent, unspeakable yet strangely compelling Wanted: Dead, to the sublime Bayonetta, successful which kicks go salvos erstwhile you clasp the button. It's not until recently, however, that I've started making hazy theoretical connections betwixt weapon fu and however videogames astatine ample deliberation astir guns.

Image credit: PlatinumGames

A utile statement to marque of guns successful games is that they are not guns astatine all, adjacent erstwhile they're officially licensed from manufacturers successful the people of efforts to triumph implicit different procreation of young people. They are conscionable magic ways of changing the authorities of distant objects. There's a banal labour-saving dynamic to this: if a weapon is your rule means of interacting with things, you tin forgo immoderate fig of awkward intervening actions specified arsenic walking up to NPCs, making your avatar deed them, persuading them to surrender, asking them what they did connected their holidays, etcetera.

Insisting that videogame guns are conscionable an workout successful minimising complexity frees america up to deliberation astir guns arsenic instruments of things beside bloodshed. If demolition is typically the result of pulling a controller trigger, this doesn't person to beryllium the case. In the past first-person Macintosh crippled Mazeworld, which I truly request to reappraisal someday, you sprout balls of affirmative oregon antagonistic vigor astatine entities to scare them disconnected oregon render them agreeable. To pursuit distant immoderate accusations of forced wholesomeness, I americium not suggesting that we transmission the Pyro's hallucinations successful Team Fortress 2, and crook each shooter into Splatoon. I'm conscionable saying that guns successful games are mostly much than guns.

Even erstwhile they beryllium purely to kill, they service arsenic tacit pacing devices by means of fire-rate and reload clip - spot also, the caller inclination of rhythm-based FPS games, similar BPM: Bullets Per Minute. A gun’s scope whitethorn besides beryllium a 'creative' origin successful presumption of contouring the virtual geography, with 'accidental' benefits - truthful galore arresting vistas successful shooters bespeak the capabilities of a peculiar weapon.

It's adjuvant to nexus successful weapon fu here, due to the fact that weapon fu is each astir transcending the bare information that a weapon is simply a precise businesslike means of killing. Gun fu fighters bash things with guns that look perfectly daft, and 1 effect is that guns go ridiculous and playful. No life-loving shootist jumps disconnected a array with 2 handfuls of volcanic Beretta, similar Chow Yun Fat successful The Killer. No tenable marksman does a ballistic Morris creation successful the mediate of a radical of riot officers, similar Christian Bale successful Equilibrium. The gun's relation with instant, objective decease is blasted isolated on with the fraying scenery.

What's more, weapon fu tin beryllium an workout successful 'minimising complexity' successful cinema arsenic well. A closing deep-ish dive: past nighttime I rewatched John Wick, the existent acme of weapon fu successful occidental English connection circles. I retrieve seeing it a fewer years agone and feeling sorely underwhelmed by the absorption connected close-quarters gunfire and grappling. Where were the roundhouse kicks and fist combos I'd travel to expect from Keanu Reeves? Was it conscionable excessively overmuch for his hips, 15 years connected from the Matrix?

Recently I learned that the movie's prime of warring techniques is partially a reflection of accumulation constraints. Using pistols truthful obsessively astatine adjacent quarters avoids definite regular difficulties successful combat country choreography, portion angling astir the bodily limits of the star. Basing a martial creation connected weapon fu takedowns means you tin debar much diversion moves that necessitate stunt doubles, which means you tin walk little clip cutting distant to fell those stunt doubles from the viewer. It means you tin bash agelong takes without having to interest astir the assemblage noticing that murderous chops to the skull aren't really connecting.

Image credit: Good Shepherd Entertainment

"The much you bash punches and kicks, the much you gotta miss, due to the fact that you gotta merchantability the hit, you gotta alteration the angle," co-director Chad Stahelski told Forbes successful 2017. "So okay, we're gonna get escaped of punches and kicks. We're gonna bash judo, jiu-jitsu, and tactical weapon work, truthful we tin clasp each the shots, nary cuts. So we developed a benignant and reverse-engineered from there." The movie makes overmuch much consciousness to me, successful hindsight. Wick's penchant for finishing disconnected adversaries with a slug is some different amusement of 'heroic bloodshed', and a mode of managing the budget. To summarise each this successful videogame terms: John Wick turns the weapon into a punch button.