Action movies typically choose between two distinct directions when devising fight sequences. Some consciously abandon realism and embrace theatricality to craft fights that would never happen in real life. Other films attempt to inject a degree of realism as a means of grounding the story and maintaining a certain level of believability.
Many might assume that the most realistic hand-to-hand fight in movie history would belong to one such action movie, or perhaps a release inside the martial arts subgenre. While there are certainly plenty of accurate combat scenes within those realms, the most faithful portrayal of a fight on the big screen actually comes from a family Christmas classic.
A Christmas Story Has The Most Realistic Movie Fight Scene, According To Experts
Released in November 1983, A Christmas Story stars Peter Billingsley as Ralphie Parker in a series of holiday-themed vignettes revolving around the Parker family. One such vignette involves Ralphie being bullied by local idiot Scut Farkus (played by Zack Ward), and ends when Ralphie erupts into a violent rage. Ralphie tackles Farkus to the ground and delivers one frenzied blow after another until his mother arrives to break up the fight.
A Christmas Story might have zero credentials as an action or martial arts movie, but Ralphie vs. Farkus has been nominated by several combat experts as Hollywood’s most authentic depiction of a true fight. MMA coach and commentator Ramsey Dewey described it as “raw, real, and how fights actually happen,” while Skillset‘s Marcus Torgerson called Ralphie’s rampage, “The most realistic fight scene I have ever seen.”
A Christmas Story may not have been aiming for absolute combat accuracy when filming, and Peter Billingsley likely didn’t spend six months at a martial arts training camp in preparation. But that’s the entire point. In real-life, most fights occur between two untrained and angry people. Either the battle descends into a stalemate where both participants are dancing in a circle, or we get what happens in A Christmas Story, where one fighter gets the other on the ground and just pummels them with zero technique or precision.
Most fights are not fun to watch or attractive to the eye – they look silly, scrappy, and childlike. Intentionally or otherwise, A Christmas Story honors that better than any movie that actually falls within the action genre.
But A Christmas Story perhaps also explains why so many action movies leave realism behind and opt for something more stylistic. If franchises like Fast & Furious and James Bond filmed the kind of true-to-life fight seen in A Christmas Story, it’d be comedic rather than thrilling. Action movies need that measure of creative license to deliver a proper adrenaline-pumping spectacle. A Christmas Story, on the other hand, did not.
This story originally appeared on Screenrant
