Drunkard's Walk Forums

Inspired by this thread I remembered that I wrote a pretty longish peice on another forum about how to write a decent fight scene. So, I thought I'd reproduce that here, just for anyone who may be interested. Feel free to comment and chip in your own advice as well. Someday, I'll clean this up and expand it and turn it into a proper essay on my website.

There are five things you should do to write a good fight scene. Handle all of them and your fight scene is almost gaurenteed to come out competent. Handle them all well and your fight scene will be good.
I'm going to use some terms from wrestling in this post, not because I particularly enjoy wrestling, but because they are very handy for defining some of the concepts.
Part 1: Establishing Heat
Your fight scene actually starts long before your fight itself technically begins. Your primary goal is to build up the heat for the fight. If you accomplish this, then you will be halfway towards having a fight scene readers will enjoy.
Heat is a shorthand way of saying that 'the audience cares about the outcome of the fight'. Specifically, it means that you are guiding the audience towards wanting to see a single specific outcome of the battle. By taking the time to establish the characters of the story in the readers mind and making them care about what happen to them, you are part of the way towards this. However, you still have a ways to go. You must not only have the readers care about the characters, but care about what will happen after the fight. You must make them want to see one person win or lose.
The easiest way to do this is by building 'villian heat'. If you create a villian for the fight that you build up as particularly vile, that the readers will want to see lose, that they will cheer to see lose, then you have established villian heat. You can establish villian heat by having your bad guy do lots of nasty things, but this is a short term solution. Simply having the villain be nasty will go part way towards this, but you must make the enemy one that is vile. The problem with villian heat is that it can not really be carried past the villian's defeat. You can certainly have the villian win a few of the initial encounters, but if you pull that off too often the audience will turn on you. Sooner, rather than later, you will have to have the villian be defeated. Once this is done, the villian is essentially useless to you (as a villian). They lose all their heat. So you better finish them off and write them out of the story, or be ready to build up that heat again from scratch.
Harder, but better in the long run, is building up 'hero heat'. Hero heat is essentially the opposite of villian heat. You make the audience want to see the hero win, want it so bad they can taste it. Hero heat is built up by making the hero and their cause sympathetic to the readers. Revenge is a common hero heat building story conceit, but for it to work we have to feel the hero's loss and their rage at that loss. If the goal is to protect something, then we must understand how important this thing is to the hero. Rescue involves a similar in depth look at how the kidnap victim is important to the hero. In all cases the key to building hero heat is to make the readers understand why the hero is doing this and why they must win this battle. Mere life and death struggle won't work. If you successfully inspire hero heat then the best thing is that it will retain its value far longer than villian heat. Even if the hero loses (and depending on the circumstance, especially if the hero loses) they will often retain their heat. And if they win, but their underlying motive is not fixed, then they can still retain heat for fighting the next villian and the next.
Ideally, you should establish both kinds of heat for the fight, but this is very hard.
The third kind of heat is harder to define. I call it 'character heat' because it really has nothing to do with heros or villians or, in fact, who wins the fight at all. With character heat, you are building the fight scene up not as important in terms of who wins or who loses, but something important that is going to happen during it. Usually this involves a moral choice. "Will the hero give in to the Dark Side to win the battle?" is an example of a common heat building question. In these cases the outcome of the fight is not so much in question. The question is how the fight will conclude.This is the hardest kind of heat to build up.
Step 2: What Is The Fight About?
Once you have built up to the fight itself but before you type the first word you should know what the fight is about and how it is going to conclude. This does not mean you know what is going to happen blow by blow, but you must identify the elements of the fight. A fight scene is just like any other scene in your story. It has a theme, it has a mood and it has a climax.
The theme of the fight is a concept that you will keep returning to over and over during the course of the fight. It will color the descriptions you give and serve as an underlying structure for the fight. For example, the theme of your fight could be something esoteric like 'challenging your limits'. In that case, your descriptions of the fight are going to include a lot of references to how hard it is. The hero (and villian!) will be constantly pushing themselves, always trying new things they aren't sure will succeed. Your theme could also be something prosaic like 'gore'. In this case you will want to vividly describe injuries, the pain they inflict and the heros disgust at what is happening to him and what he is doing to his opponent. A big part of the theme will depend on what kind of heat you have built up for the fight.
The mood of the fight is the underlying emotion of the conflict. It could be comedy, tragedy, romance, suspense or any of the other emotional contexts you can write for. Once you decide on a mood for the battle do your best not to break that mood during the course of the scene. If you want this fight to be a tragic battle in which the brave hero is unable to save his lady love from the diabolical villian, then don't have people cracking wise or have silly things happening. You can either have the mood and theme be complimentary or at odds (either is good, depening on what you want to accomplish). Once again, the mood of the scene will depend on the heat you have built up for the fight.
The climax of the fight is, of course, what everything has been building towards. It is going to be the single dramatic moment that marks the end of the fight, or at least the end of the part the audiene cares about. Generally speaking the climax of your fight should always be a choice by one of the characters involved. Readers care about choices. Simply having a hero use a new super technique to win the fight isn't that entertaining (the old "I go supersaiyan ten!" problem). However, if the choice to use that technique costs the hero something, then using it is more enjoyable to the readers.
Step 3: Build the Scene
No fight takes place on a featureless plain stretching in all directions. Every fight occurs somewhere, and you should be using this to your advantage.
Before the first blow is exchanged take a paragraph or two to introduce the scene the fight is taking place in. If it is taking place in a building establish as much, define the general dimensions of the room and what is in it. If it is outdoors describe the local landmarks. Pay careful attention to things that could be used as cover or weapons. Remember that you are not telling a story to someone as you type, so if you feel the need to have something appear in your scene later that you forgot to include earlier, you can go back and rewrite your introduction to include it. Don't spend too much time doing this, however. You'll want to paint in broad strokes at first and get into fine detail as the story permits.
While the fight is occuring use the environment to enhance the drama and your descriptions of the fight. If there is a cliff nearby it is just begging for someone to be (almost) tossed over it. Parked cars make excellent cover, things to smash people into and (if your story has enough superhumans) improvised weapons. Have people duck and weave through objects, leap over obstacles, get trapped in corners, gain the high ground on their enemy and come inticingly close to very dangerous hazards (electical wires, lava pits, grinding machinery, etc.).
Sometimes just a word or two to play off the scene can enhance a particular exchange of blows in a way just describing the blows would not. "The sun was setting behind Mark, casting his body into shadow as Joe struck, sending him staggering back." Use such description to play up the theme and mood of the combat again. A theme of a lonely desperate battle can be well established by decsribing how empty the place the fight is taking place in is, for example.
And, as you said, use all five senses to fill in the details. Don't go overboard, but describing the smell of rotting garbage in an alley or the oppressive heat of a foundry can go a long way towards drawing in the reader.
Step 4: Know What Your Characters Can Do
Here we begin to get into some of the technical details of the fight scene. When you are righting a fight scene you must be aware of what your characters can do and can't do. Just as importantly, you must know what they will do and won't do.
To a certain extent, this means if you are writing a fanfic you are going to have to do research. For instance, if you are writing a Ranma 1/2 fight scene you would do well to go and consult on exactly how powerful Ranma is. Get an idea of how fast he is, how strong, what kinds of tactics he uses and how he deals with certain threats. If you do this for all the participants in the fight, you should have a good idea of how the fight will go.
If you are trying to build up a new character and/or are modifying the abilities of already existing characters you must personally define what the extent of these abilities are. You need not tell the reader exactly what they are, but you must keep them in mind yourself. Resist the urge to have character spontaneously develop new powers and strengths with all your might. Instead, you can get much more drama out of a character finding out a way to overcome their own weakness through cunning and perseverance than you ever would by having them pull a new technique out of their nether regions.
When you are describing a martial arts battle do not worry too much about getting highly technical. For the most part, your audience is not into martial arts and thus if you begin to use technical terms they will not understand them. Do not also feel the need to describe a fight in blow by blow detail. You can gloss over the unimportant exchanges of blows with a few words, only focusing in for a blow by blow description during the truly important parts.
A thesaurus is your friend. Bookmark thesaurus.com. You can get a lot of mileage out of just using new words for "attack". Adjectives are also your friend, but be careful not to overuse them. Any more than two per noun (and three per sentence) and you are getting a little too wordy.
Step 5: Poetry
Finally once you have done all the pre-writing work you can begin to write the actual fight. These is were you will learn that the single most important part of any fight scene is pacing.
You want the reader to feel the action of the fight personally, and you can establish this with how your write it. When the fight is fast, the sentences should be fast. Keep things simple. Use short sentences. Rapidly shift focus. Avoid words like 'and'.
At the important parts of the fight you want to slow down. Use longer sentences to establish the mood and theme more directly during these parts. Don't be afraid to make seemingly unimportant (but short!) digressions during these longer sequences. You want the reader to focus more on them and draw them in.
Then change speeds. Shift focus again. Spend some time drawing in the reader by appealing to their senses with an out of place and lazy sentence or two. Back to the short, sharp action again.
You can use several common tricks to enhance your fight scene at this point. I will decsribe some of them.
Establishing Dominance: In most fights there will be one character that is clearly superior to the other. There are two schools of thought on who this should be, and both of them have valid points. One school of thought is that the villian should always be more powerful then the hero. This creates an immediate visceral level of suspense. However it can get strange, even ridiculous over time. Each successive villian must be more powerful then the last, or the suspense won't be there. This is especially true if the hero grows in power either during or after the fight. The other school of thought is that the hero should be stronger than the villian, but the villian cheats, commits dishonourable actions or is otherwise avoiding a direct fight with the hero. This is good because it can be drawn out for longer and doesn't get quite as ridiculous. However, in this case you are shifting the focus away from the fight and towards the circumstances around the fight. The actual fight itself is a foregone conclusion, should it actually occur.
The Hope Spot: In a fight where the hero is going to lose, usually if the villian is more powerful, there should be a moment where the readers are convinced they will win. This is the 'hope spot'. Allow the hero to briefly gain the advantage in the fight, build up to it and then when his hopes are dashed the readers will also be equally dashed. This is best used in the first encounter between hero and villian, so that you can build good heat for the rematch.
Ironic Defeat: Using irony (and other literary devices) can really help you out in a fight. An ironic defeat is one in which the character almost literally defeats themselves. For example, if a villian challenges a hero to a fight in an orphanage which he has set fire to, it would be ironic if that fire is the cause of his defeat. This allows the readers to feel suitably rewarded. Ironic defeats aren't limited to just villians however. Heros can also metaphorically shoot themselves in the foot as well. This is often best used in the case of an arrogant hero whose hubris is the cause of his own downfall (usually but not always followed by the hero learning his lesson and changing for the better).
The Finishing Move: In almost every fight you can see or read the fights often come down to one blow. Combatants exchange a long series of near misses and inconsequential hits until one of them lands a final, dramatic strike that ends the fight instantly. If you are going to use this concept, be sure to do it right. Everything in the fight has to build up to that one last strike. Make sure to slow down the pace of the fight for that strike. Make the description as poetic and evocative as you can. Tie in both the theme and the mood to it, if possible. Add in a dramatic change in the environment of the battle. The finishing move also gets a viceral response from the reader if you have established villian heat. They want to see the bad guy get his just deserts, so don't scrimp on it.
Speech: Nine times out of ten you are going to want to have the two combatants talk to each other during the fight. This can be as simple as trash-talking or as complex as a romantic interplay. Fight scenes are excellent excuses for charcater development and one of the best ways of highlighting what the character says and thinks about their opponent. Think of the fight as a crucible in which anything but the pure underlying emotions of the characters is burned away.
Non-fights: Sometimes you just have to recognize what is a non-fight. Even if two people are technically in battle, you may not want to spend a scene describing it. If your readers don't care about the fight, if the outcome is a foregone conclusion... then feel free to skip it. A few lines of description or just a scene break away before the action starts and then switch back after the fireworks are over should be good enough.
Random Monsters: Common in video games is the idea of random monsters, minor threats that the hero faces just because they are there. Never do this in your story. Readers don't care about them. Even if there are hordes of faceless minions in the battle, try to avoid getting involved in fights with them. They are non-fights. Just say "The hero fought long and hard but the zombies were no match for him. Eventually he was alone, the badguy having escaped while he was distracted." and be done with it. The concept of random monsters can also include things like random thugs trying to mug the character and similar threats.
Cutting Away: A simple way to build drama in a conflict is to change scenes half-way through it, usually just before or after some dramatic event. Don't do this for long, or often or the readers will lose interest in the fight. Also, the scene you switch to should have some immediate meaning to the fight. Switching from a heros dramatic battle with the villian to the kidnap victim he is trying to rescue worrying about him is okay, switching to an unrelated scene about the villian's flunkies playing cards is not.
And that is all the advice I can think of right now off the top of my head.
----------------------------
Epsilon

This seems familiar - I might even have been part of the discussion if it was on the GMCA board or FFML during one of my active periods, with the reply-like mention you make of using all five senses to add to the audience's immersion, since that's kind of one of my things. The coppery tang of blood from a split lip, the smell of scorched grass where (character) barely dodged a fireball, the feel of a wire-wrapped weapon gripped in a palm slick with adrenaline-rush sweat, the faint rustle of leaves as (s)he strains to find the enemy's new hiding spot, even the play of light and shadow that dapple the clearing near the tree line, an incongruously cheery wildflower bobbing from one to the other in the breeze... MOVE! A lightning dodge as shuriken fly in from the side! Then dash and leap to a new vantage point to return the favor, before the enemy has time to get in position!
Obviously that's going overboard a bit, but throwing in a scent or touch now and then can be quite effective, espescially if the character has an enhanced sense that the audience doesn't - I was really impresed with an Oz-centered BtVS/Stargate fic I was reading a couple days ago that made note of scents to set the scene and describe characters as much as visual descriptions, because when scent is as much a discriminatory sense as hearing it just makes sense to do so.
- CDSERVO: Loook *deeeeply* into my eyes... Tell me, what do you see?
CROW: (hypnotized) A twisted man who wants to inflict his pain upon others.
A kung-fu nun in a leather thong was no less extreme than anything else he had seen that day. - Rev. Dark's IST: Holy Sea World
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

This is one of those tips on writting where I really felt like I learned something.

Cutting Away: A simple way to build drama in a conflict is to change scenes half-way through it, usually just before or after some dramatic event. Don't do this for long, or often or the readers will lose interest in the fight. Also, the scene you switch to should have some immediate meaning to the fight. Switching from a heros dramatic battle with the villian to the kidnap victim he is trying to rescue worrying about him is okay, switching to an unrelated scene about the villian's flunkies playing cards is not.
A good example of this would be the climax of Star Wars Ep 1, where they were switching back and forth between 4 different battles. __________________
I feel like I'm diagonally parked in a parallel universe.
___________________________
"I've always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific." - George Carlin

So is there any advice on multiway fightscenes (besides don't?), ie a fight between 4 or so different parties.
E: "Did they... did they just endorse the combination of the JSDF and US Army by showing them as two lesbian lolicons moving in together and holding hands and talking about how 'intimate' they were?"
B: "Have you forgotten so soon? They're phasing out Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

Quote:

---

So is there any advice on multiway fightscenes (besides don't?), ie a fight between 4 or so different parties.

---

The biggest thing to remember, I've found, is that people fight to win, not to be dramatic. This applies to all fight scenes, of course, but is particularly evident with groups. A pause to trade quips in the middle of a battle isn't a dramatic neccessity, it's an opportunity for one of your allies to step up and stab your foe in the back.
The only difference you'll see in a free-for-all is that your 'allies' are looking for a chance to stab your hero, too.
Ja, -n

===============================================
"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"

Generally speaking, a war is much too big for we normal people to wrap our heads around all at once. It is much simpler to focus on a few people in the battles. Best of all, skip over the main battles entirely and focus on things that a small group of heros could be doing effectively.
Assassinating/kidnapping enemy generals, raiding supply lines, collecting intelligence, scouting out enemy positions, destroying enemy factories and so on are all good things to focus on rather than the massive battles.
If you are dead set on describing a massive battle scene, then there are a few things to keep in mind.
Large battles between multiple opponents are NOT the same as duels between two people. Tactics and tricks that might win you the battle in a duel can lose you the war. One important thing about large scale low-tech skimishing is the importance of organised/team fighting. From the roman shield wall on up through the ages more trained/organised have always won out over less organized attack patterns. This generally means dodging or pursuing individual foes is out of the question, since you have nowhere to dodge to (if you dodge left or right your hitting and ally, if you dodge back you just opened a hole in your formation, same if you heedlessly rush out away form the formation).
Speculating on the effects that superhuman martial arts, magic, psychic powers, demons, dragons and other things might have on mass combat is a topic covered by a lot of novels, but few of them well. You'll have to think a lot about this and decide what kind of effect you are going for.
If you really want an epic duel to the death between opposing champions in the middle of a raging warzone, then go for it. The hundreds or thousands of people fighting back and forth around your two charaters is nothing more than scenery at that point, no more important than the trees or the local broke. Use them as fodder for cool stunts, interesting visual florishs and be done with it. If your two dueling heros are sufficiently powerful, the result of the war around them will hardly matter.
If you want something grittier, then war is a harsh and unforgiving place. In a large battle any character could die from a random arrow, sword stroke or piece of shrapnel. This can be inconvenient for your story, so that is why you should have important characters avoid massive battles.
Now there is, of course, a scale of massive battles. A war between hundreds of soldiers is one thing, and a duel between two martial artists is another, but there is space in between them.
A small unit fight (between groups of say, three to five people a peice) can be handled in a fight scene without it getting too confusing. Depending on what you are going for and the tactics involved you can just pair the good guys and bad guys off into individual duels, or you can have them constantly shift and change opponents. Your biggest problem will be keeping track of where everyone is, not only in your own mind, but in a way in which the reader can understand.
Don't be afraid, in such a case, to shift backward and forward in time. If neccesary tell about a series of events from one character's perspective, then shift back and tell the same events from another character's. Then shift location and tell about what was happening at the same time, but in a different place.
Try not to focus on any one part of the battle for too long. Keep your scenes relatively short and to the point, then move on to a different part of the battle. You want to make sure the reader doesn't forget what was happening in previous scenes, so don't linger too much on any one area lest they do so.
With that in mind, remember that each scene should be a scene. It should have a start, middle and end. Think to yourself, "What do I need to accomplish in this scene?" and try to focus on doing just that. Avoid simply 'touching base', instead make every scene something pivotal and important to the fight in general. Something should happen in every scene. Do this right, and arrange your scenes correctly and your reader will think you are deftly tying together many different scenes into one coherent whole. Do it poorly, and you will create an awful mess.
All this being said, fight scenes with multiple participants are more difficult to write, technically speaking, than duels. But they are just scenes. A lot of people will be satisfied by simply having a series of epic duels. Its worked for... just about every fighting anime ever made, after all.
--------------------
Epsilon

That was a very good and helpful essay. I was just lurking through the board looking for some good links to new and good fanfics when I read it, but this was so interesting I just had to actually delurk and make some additional comments.
Something that wasn't explictily discussed here is the question of what actually is a 'fight scence'. I know it sounds like a stupid question at first because you know a fight scene when you see one, but it is actually a bit hard to define. Thinking about it for a moment makes you relize that a fight scene can involve a lot of things: guns going bang, hands striking, swords clashing, spells flying, fighters swooping down and bombs falling. basically all sort of things that involve violence, but it can also be more.
Any sort of conflict between two or more characters can be seen as a fight scene. Whenever the hero and the villain are directly pitching their skills against each other in some form of formal or undeclared contest it can be written as a 'fight scene'. The classic car chase is a good example of how you can have a sort of fight scene without actually having a 'real' fight. When James Bond is playing bacarat against Herr Ziffer that is also a 'fight scene' with all the tension of a 'real' fight even if most of the action is going on behind the heros' and the villains' eyes.
This sort of thing can of course backfire horribly. For an example see every bad movie or fic where somebody who does not know very much about computer security tries to describe a 'hacking run' in terms of a pitched battle. You can do that. It is not realistic but no knife fight on the big screen ever had much resemblance to a real one either. It helps if you know what you are writing about and are not trying to substitute the general 'fight scence' pattern for actual content.
Another important thing to keep in mind besides the fact that a fight can take many forms is that a character in a fight can take many forms. Charcters are not just the various people, but everything that your audience has a sufficient emotional investment in. Quite often the same fight is happening on more than one level.
Gangs, Armies or fleets of battleships can be charcters just as much as the single people they are composed of. When a spaceship like the enterpise gets into a conflict with another spaceship than those are characters as well as the people on the bridge.
Somebody I read once who wrote an analysis of the use of the 'hero's cycle' in Star Wars pointed out to my great suprise that the millenium falcon has its own small cycle just as many other characters in the movies. Things like being insulted by Leia and having you engines fail only to finally come back on-line at just the right moment give you personality. It is not just another vehicle because its many faults and idiosyncrasies make it into a person in its own right. Battles are written is such a way as to pitch not only its crew but the falcon itself with its own strengths and weaknesses aginst its many faceless enemies.
But not only heroic non-humans can be participants in a fight scence. You very often have the hero pitcing itself against a villain that is not actual a person but a thing. A temple full of traps can be an active praticipant in a fight; just ask Indy. Sometimes you can even have your hero fighting against the landscape or the very elements. The see and the storms can be your villain if you write them that way. You don't have to anthropomorphise anything to make that clear to the reader sometimes subtle use of language is enough to give them enough of a presence to make it clear that they are the enemy.

Another important point is to keep in mind the medium you are actually in when writing. You can easily fall into the trap of writing as if you were in the same medium as your source material. during fight scenes this is especially problematic as they are very different from medium to medium.
A written fight scene or a fight scene from a comic will be different then one in a tv-show, a movie or even an audio play. The reader and writer are not bound by the timing of some playback device. Wich makes quite a difference.
Just look at the same fight in a naruto manga and the anime to see for yourself. You also don't get a soundtrack will have to achive the same effect by differnt means.
Most impoartantly is the difference that you lack the visual part when writing a fight scenes. You might see a beatifully choreographed battle in your mind's eye, but your reader won't necessarily. Don't try to write as if you were watching a movie. You will never get all the detail from a fight scenes to fit. Concentrate on the impoartant bits and let your readers imagination fill in the rest. If you are writing fanfiction you already have the huge advantage that you both will fill in pretty much the same sort of details from your shared source. You can work with that.
Keep copouts like written sound effects and artificial soundtrack cues to a minmum unless you are doing it for humor's sake. A written *BANG!* or #CRASH# makes me think of the old batman tv-series and writing an asside to start the fight-song here is extremly jarring. If you write your fic right the reader will start hearing the sort of theme you had in mind at the appropiate parts without help.

Besides all that stuff there is also something about the battles themselves. This is mostly from the perspective of a reader and viewer. As a write you often do some of these things naturally sometimes without giving it to much thought. It can help to look closer at them.
The Fight in the fight scene espcially if it is of the type climatic battle often mirrors the rest of the story in many ways. It is not just a culmination but also a replay of the same theme. Small setback that your hero had during the story are mirroed in setbacks that he has during the fight. If your hero recieved help or advice from some source during the story he will often use in exactly the same order that he recieved it durning the fight.
If one of your points is that the hero and villain are two sides of the same coin than that will show in the way they are fighting. The balance and symerty might be subtle but it is there. If it is a classic patricide that your hero has to acomplish in order to win in the end than the relationship will show not only in what they say, but also in how the fight itself goes.
The main point of the story gets vowen into the fight on more than one occasion. Sometimes the theme of the story gets ironically inverted for the last fight but it will still be there if you look closely.
Fights also mirror and mimic each other. Not just when the same two contestants meet again or when the villain fights first a failed hero and then the real deal, but often more or less unrelated fights a different points will go along the same lines to drive a point home. Sometimes to show what exactly was missing from the first fight when they end differntly and sometimes to show the equivalence of something or other.

Some goods points Loki, but some things to add:
I think its dangerous to think of every scene as a fight scene. The techniques which work in a fight may not translate exactly to another type of scene, and vice versa. There are some elements of writing that are universal across all scenes (use of conflict, for instance, as well as building sympathy and anticipation in your audience) these are more general rules than you have in a fight scene.
Specifically do not confuse social conflict with fighting. Social conflict is more delicate than fighting and should not be treated as such. The point, in social conflict, is not to DEFEAT the opponent. It is to CHANGE the opponent. That is a subtle but profound difference. In particular, you must walk a thin line when developing the conflict between two characters an identify which type of resolution they are going to want.
Because while you can thwart your audiences expecatations, you must NEVER thwart their desires. If they want the villian DEAD, kill him. Don't give him an eleventh hour redemption because the hero said pretty words.
Also action scenes and fight scenes share a lot in terms of visual flourishes and descriptive pacing but have a lot of differences as well. Particualry is the fact that in most action scenes the hero is not fighting a villian, he is fighting the environment. Nobody cares about the environment. The audience does not want to see a typhoon defeated, they want to see the hero survive the typhoon. They don't want to see a collapsing factory defeated, they want to see the hero escape the collapsing factory.
In this effect, faceless mook are just another part of the environment. A natural (or unnatural) disaster that must be avoided or overcome but not an actual thing to be defeated. Faceless mooks (no matter their form) are Random Monsters. Random Monsters are an excuse for the hero to show off, but we don't really care about them. They ARE a good excuse to build heat for the villian however. Anything the Legion of Terror does will be transfered (in blame) to the Archvillian without any cognitive dissonance. In this manner a good horde of faceless minions (or a disaster he caused) is a good way to build some villian heat for the badguy.
Fight Scenes are a hybrid of social conflict and action scenes, and the best ones use the most important parts of each.
------------------
Epsilon