Fight. Lose. Repeat.
January 12, 2015 marks exactly 14 years since the founding of the stunt team "The Stunt People", and in honor of this significant event a short film was released "Rope-A-Dope 2: The Return Of The Martial Arts Mafia".
Rope-A-Dope 2: The Return Of The Martial Arts Mafia
Source: The Stunt People
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Tags: Rope-A-Dope 2, The Stunt People, Dennis Ruel, Ken Quitugua, short film, Ed Kahana, Eric Jacobas
Tags: Rope-A-Dope 2, The Stunt People, Dennis Ruel, Ken Quitugua, short film, Ed Kahana, Eric Jacobas
Masterpiece moment! I agree, it’s good that they left it.
The moment with the third bottle was cut out in the original version. It's good that they left it. I would like to translate the interview, but I don’t have time yet...
I really liked Eric’s new work, but it still falls far short of the original.
First, I'll list what I didn't like:
The short film Rope A Dope did NOT NEED a sequel (for example: a sequel about Google Glass would have been much more logical). But due to the success, Eric decided to film it anyway, which is why he got himself into a difficult situation. In general, he made a mistake typical of big Hollywood: when a director makes a box office hit with an ending that does not imply a sequel, but because of the success of the film, the studio bosses, for the sake of profit, “force” him to make a sequel. By the way...if we're talking about the finale. In my opinion, it would be more logical to make a sequel about Denis’s character (without Eric), about how he got out of this time trap.
Nothing new. Eric makes another Hollywood mistake. :) When making a sequel, he doesn’t come up with anything new, he just adds scope and increases the amount of what the viewer liked in the original. In the original, one hero fell into a temporary trap, here there are two. One trains there, both train here. There was a broom, here you have a broom, and a frying pan, and sticks, and clubs, etc. and so on. In the finale of the first part he fought against 5 people, here he fights against 10 (or even more) people. + branded “gags” in the form of a newspaper (which by the middle of the film are starting to get boring)
Tightness. In the first part they delayed the final battle, and in the second they delayed the introduction. A shot with three people and posters “Extra saves people” (or something like that), an insert with a reminder of what happened yesterday, a showdown with a newspaper delivery man (the idea was to quickly get rid of him, so that next time he would politely bring the newspaper to home), the first meetings between Dop and the gang leader (until the moment with the bat) - all this can be easily cut and the film will only benefit from it.
Workout. This is the worst thing in the film. If in the original you saw how the hero grows from battle to battle, from training to training, then in the sequel the heroes have nowhere to grow, they immediately succeed in everything (in training). Yes, and Dop’s training was very bad, in the previous part they were more natural and therefore looked funny, but here... the training process was turned into one big joke, which is why it looks not so funny and too artificial.
The final. Suspecting the success of the second part, Eric made the groundwork for the third. Apparently now the characters of Jacobas and Ruel will be together. I don't think this is a good idea because... in the threequel it will be necessary to come up with something new, otherwise the viewer (when comparing the first and third parts) will understand how degraded the series is. Despite this... we expect a threequel on par with full-length films with more famous actors (such as Yen, Ja, Yuwais, Adkins and others)
What I liked:
Eric and Denis are still as good and don’t let the viewer get bored (they fight great, have plenty of charisma, and play well). The combat and humor are top notch (there were some things I didn’t like, but against the general background...it’s quickly forgotten). The final battle (despite the problem with an excessively loud swear word) turned out better and more difficult than the battle from the first part. + a positive charge after watching is guaranteed (for the scene with the bottles at the end - you should give a star on the Walk of Stars in Hollywood!).
As a result: if the film were a separate work, it would be excellent, but... against the backdrop of the masterpiece of the first part, the sequel looks worse, but this does not prevent it from being one of the best fighting short films. Although I’ll be honest, I liked Bad Choice more.
Cool)) I was especially pleased at the end with the bottle and the fight with the stick.
The film is simply gorgeous. No words! I got a lot of pleasure from the authors' imagination and watched it several times.
The only negative, as already noted here, is some roughness. Not everything is as polished as in the first part. For example, they didn’t re-shoot how Jacobus climbed into the ring between the ropes and touched the bottom rope with his foot, or in the fight some asynchrony was visible in several places.
But even this did not spoil the pleasure. During the entire 15 minutes of watching, the stupid smile did not leave my face. Super!
Well, I liked it too. Only if the first part is 10 out of 10, then the second is 8 out of 10.
And I liked it. Quite a worthy continuation of the first part.
Mike Fury published an interview with Eric. The creation of both parts is discussed.
Ahahaha))) Cool!!!!) Eric is somewhat similar to Jackie Chan, action with a bit of humor)
There is a feeling of carelessness and haste. The first part was more thorough in both plot and choreography. The second one came out a little like this... “on the wave of the success of the first one, we definitely need to film something.”
What I liked was the intersection of two time loops for Jacobas and Ruel, their preparation for increasingly intense battles. I liked, as in the first part, the musical accompaniment, humorous inserts, gags, pokes and accents. Perhaps this is the biggest success - joint loops, Ruel and Jacobas with a frying pan. And hitting with a golf club. And they began to play with more emphasis. Both Eric and Dennis. Emotional signs on their faces are read clearly and correctly. And this is good.
I didn’t really like the voice acting of the final fight, there were a lot of rough sounds, slaps on the ring surface, together with the music it turned out to be a mess.
I didn’t really like the opponents one at a time, and even those appearing suddenly out of nowhere.
I can say that the plot is actually quite good. Compared to the majority, he is generally very, very good. But it’s the implementation, it seems to me, that this time let us down a little, although a lot of work was done, this is immediately obvious.
Eric raised the bar too high with the first part; now it will be difficult to meet it.