End-of-the-year lists are a beautiful time to look back at the television and film that most moved you, most inspired you, most defined the promise of a moving picture. Well, never mind all that nonsense, let's talk about characters trying to beat the absolute shit out of each other. A good fight scene is a bloody work of art, the backbone of any action storytelling worth watching. With blockbusters getting bigger, special effects getting better, and the fate of the entire universe constantly at stake, it's harder than ever to stand out from the pack with just a few people doing their best to inflict bodily harm. But oh, 2018 was up to the task; this year had weird fight scenes, wild fight scenes, fight scenes you genuinely could not believe didn't involve more CGI.
Before we begin, though, I should mention I have a pretty concrete idea of the difference between a "fight scene" and an "action scene". Do I appreciate Tom Cruise learning to fly a helicopter just so he can almost die while crashing it into a mountain? Absolutely. Thanks, Tom Cruise. Is Chris Evans politely introducing himself to a sentient alien tree in the middle of an all-out war for Wakanda during Avengers: Infinity War an incredible action-comedy beat? Oh, 100%. Should more movies include a scene where Jason Momoa rides a Lovecraftian sea-beast into battle like he did in Aquaman? Obviously, yes.
But "fight scenes" aren't always about being the biggest; usually, it's the opposite. A fight scene is far more about the millions of ways you can frame two or three characters standing across a room from each other, convinced they have to punch someone else into a coma. So without further ado, here are 2018's ten best fight scenes from both TV and film.
10) 'The Good Place' - Janet vs. Demons
For three straight seasons, Michael Schur's The Good Place has been the most versatile series on TV, often serving as the funniest comedy and most heartfelt drama at the same dang time. So when it decided to just go for a balls-to-the-wall fight scene in the season 3 episode "Don't Let The Good Life Pass You By", of course it's extremely well-executed by director Dean Holland and features standout work from D'Arcy Carden, low-key one of the best performers on TV as the afterlife's all-knowing Janet. The brawl—which sees Janet taking on a whole host of demons inside a bar—takes up a good chunk of the episode's final minutes but still fits seamlessly in the world of a sitcom, thanks to some stellar work in the background behind the ass-kicking by Kristen Bell and William Jackson Harper. It helps that The Good Place enlisted Jeff Imada—an absolute stunt icon who has help with fights for the Bourne movies, the Fast & Furious franchise, and John Carpenter classics like They Live and Big Trouble in Little China Town—to put the whole thing together.
9) 'The Strangers: Prey At Night' - The Pool
It took me a while to finally sit down and watch The Strangers: Prey at Night, a piece of information that was always met in conversation with, "Well, you have to watch the pool scene." The pool scene, gotta' watch the pool scene. Folks, I recently watched The Pool Scene for the first time and can finally confirm that it fucks on an almost inhuman level. Coming immediately after the elation of Luke (Lewis Pullman) violently getting one over on the mysterious murder family for the first time, the scene immediately turns from bloody joy to epic struggle with the sound of a "Total Eclipse of the Heart" needle drop. From the moment Baghead (Damian Maffei) menacingly drags his ax into frame, director Johannes Roberts uses sound to brilliant effect to demonstrate what a desperate fight for survival this is. Luke and the homicidal maniac wrestle up and under the neon-lit pool water, the sound of both their fight and Bonnie Tyler's voice cutting in and out. It's a brilliantly executed example of that special type of horror movie tussle where you're gravely rooting for the side of the fight that you almost know for certain won't be coming back to the surface alive.
8) 'GLOW' - Liberty Belle vs. Zoya the Destroya
Pro wrestling isn't supposed to be real, and one of the foundations of that bonkers carnival art form is the communication and trust between the two people inside that squared circle doing their utmost best not to drop the other on his or her head. Which is exactly what makes the glammed up bout between Ruth Wilder's Zoya the Destroya (Alison Brie) and Debbie Eagan's Liberty Belle (Betty Gilpin) in GLOW season three's "Work the Leg" such a tragic character moment. Did Debbie get caught up in all that adrenaline-fueled light and sound or did she mean to break her former friend's ankle? It's hard to say, and that's the area GLOW operates in best, that weird no-mans-land between the heightened reality of pro wrestling and the base level reality of human existence. GLOW's third season is the best a Netflix original has ever been, and this match is its main event.
7) 'Avengers: Infinity War' - The Hulk vs. Thanos
Surely, a lot of people prefer Avengers: Infinity War's later multi-character CGI-a-palooza throwdowns for their pure spectacle, but my favorite bit of brutality happens early. Thanos absolutely taking The Incredible freakin' Hulk to concussionsville with a whole serving of Mad Titan knuckle sandwiches in Infinity War's very first scene is such an effective character work on two fronts. First, we had never seen Bruce Banner's greener alter-ego get worked like this; the Avengers films and Thor: Ragnarok established that you either needed to drop half a city on his head or strike him with literal lightning just to subdue him for a little. So to that end, this fight also works better to establish Thanos as someone Not To Be Fucked With better than a decade of post-credits scenes ever could. Is this eight-foot-tall purple-skinned CGI creation a worthy villain for the biggest superhero movie ever made? Well, he just one-two combo'd the strongest being on Earth into a depressive state, so I'm gonna' go with a yes.
6) 'Upgrade' - The Kitchen Fight
A pox on all of our houses for largely ignoring Leigh Whannell's Upgrade when it first arrived, a deliriously fun, frenetically violent piece of sci-fi that did Venom ten thousand times better than Venom did Venom like three months before Venom premiered. The premise: After a tragic crime leaves him paralyzed, Grey Trace (Logan Marshall-Green) volunteers for an experimental piece of technology, STEM (voiced with 2001-esque calm by Simon Maiden), that is implanted on his spine and can control his movement. "Movement", in this case, includes kicking an incredible amount of ass. The first scene that features STEM deciding to "operate independently" on an opponent is a darkly comedic piece of hyper-violence that sees Grey's body dodging, stabbing, breaking plates, and committing murder while his face—in a perfect, hilarious performance from Marshall-Green—marvels in horror at what his hands are doing. Whannell and cinematographer Stefan Duscio came up with the brilliant idea to keep the camera stabilized throughout, adding another layer of robotic precision to Grey's movements.
5) 'Black Panther' - T'Challa vs. Killmonger, Round 1
The result of the perfect, immersive world-building Ryan Coogler did with Black Panther is that feeling you get during the ritual-style fight between T'Challa (Chadwick Boseman) and the brutal outsider Erik Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan), like there's more than just a life on the line; an entire culture, a way of life is in the balance. Black Panther is probably the closest a Marvel movie will get to a Shakespearian tragedy and this is its climax, the sins of Wakanda's past returned, jacked out of their mind, to beat the absolute shit out of a king who was already unsure of his place on the throne. Coogler and fight coordinator Clayton J. Barber specifically dial the tension to an extreme degree here, but part of the reason it works so well is because of the way this fight contrasts with T'Challa's earlier waterfall brawl with M'Baku (Winston Duke). That was a celebration, not much more than a colorful victory lap; here, the sun is setting on Wakanda and tragedy is heavy in the air from the moment Killmonger peels off his shirt.
4) 'Mandy' - The Chainsaw Fight
I've written dozens of times about Panos Cosmatos' Mandy and yet I still don't feel that I as a person nor we as a society appreciate this movie's existence enough. Nicolas Cage fights a demon with a chainsaw. Sorry, Nicolas Cage fights a demon with a chainsaw and then the demon pulls out an even bigger chainsaw. There are not enough exclamation points on this Earth, my friends. But here's the thing that I most definitely did not expect going into Mandy: the slow, gorgeous, dreamy, methodical build-up. The first hour or so of Cosmatos' heavy metal acid trip is more meditation than mayhem. So when Cage finally does get around to chugging vodka, doing mountains of cocaine, and then engaging in a revenge-fueled chainsaw fight with a biker golem it feels like a violent release; not an ascent but a definite descent into whatever hell allows the type of insanity going on here to exist.
3) 'Mission: Impossible - Fallout' - The Bathroom
For better or worse, the three-way bathroom brawl in Mission: Impossible - Fallout will be remembered for Henry Cavill reloading his arms like a shotgun. When I say "for better or worse", I clearly mean 100% for better because that shit is badass and I've lost hours of my life watching it on a loop. But it is important to remember how breathtaking this scene is as a whole. Director Christopher McQuarrie and fight coordinator Wolfgang Stegemann move Cavill, Tom Cruise, and Lian Yang around that Paris bathroom like a bone-breaking ballet, and you feel the bones hitting tile and glass. That immersion is key; the best fight scenes leave you feeling spent. Mission: Impossible - Fallout's bathroom showdown had me checking myself for bruises on my own body for days afterward.
2) 'The Night Comes For Us' - Ito vs. Arian
I very easily could have retitled this piece The 10 Best Fight Scenes of The Night Comes For Us and still had trouble narrowing it down. Director Timo Tjahjanto's tale of revenge and betrayal inside the world of the South East Asian Triad is a straight-up endurance test for enduring bullet holes, broken bones, and busted teeth. But the movie's blood-soaked pièce de résistance is its final fight between former friends Ito and Arian—The Raid co-stars Joe Taslim and Iko Uwais, respectively—who just go to town on each other inside of a warehouse, using everything at their disposal to punch holes in each other. Picture everything your average blockbuster uses CGI to produce except its two action movie masters with hands and feet faster than your eye can catch. It's a wild scene, man, better experienced and described; just know that whenever you think a bit of inventive violence is the apex, this scene will keep going. When the box opener through the cheek isn't even close to the most shocking thing, you know you're watching beautiful ultra-violence at its best.
1) 'Daredevil' - Matt Murdock vs. Bullseye
The thing that's hardest to accurately get across about Daredevil season three's first showdown between Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox) and Agent Benjamin Poindexter (Wilson Bethel), the best fight scene of 2018, is the way it's actually kind of silly. Yes, it takes place in a room filled with freshly-killed corpses, and yes, the fate of Daredevil's reputation hangs in the balance, but it's also a man with pin-perfect aim just violently lobbing office supplies like scissors, keyboards, and trapper keepers at Matt Murdock's head. Which is why it's comic book storytelling at its best, the type of heightened reality mixed with a beating human heart that makes the medium such a singularly unique joy. If Netflix's Marvel Universe is truly on its way out the window, this fight scene is its crowning moment because it fulfills every promise of a dark, grounded superhero world. It's both violent and fun, both dark and giddily joyful, tense and creative at the same time. There have been bigger fights. More violent fights. But Daredevil's first face-to-face between the Devil of Hell's Kitchen and his on-target archnemesis felt like a violent miracle right in the middle of Matt Murdock's crisis of faith.
For the rest of Collider’s end-of-the-year content, go here, and check out some more of our lists below: