5 Best Fights In 2024 Movies

2024 has delivered both gruesome, blood-soaked fight scenes, like the nightclub sequence in Monkey Man, and hilarious slapstick set-pieces, like the cartoonish saloon brawl in Hundreds of Beavers. There were even great fight scenes in non-action movies, like the body horror opus The Substance. From the final showdown in Boy Kills World to the multiversal mayhem of Deadpool & Wolverine, 2024’s movies have been jam-packed with well-staged fight scenes.

5 Boy & Mina Vs. The Shaman

Boy Kills World

Boy Kills World has some of the gnarliest on-screen violence of the year. When Boy takes on a bunch of goons in a kitchen, he uses a cheese grater to scrape off their skin. While Glen is being interrogated, he has a weight dropped on his head that instantly crushes his skull into a bloody mess. This movie is wall-to-wall shock value, but it saves its most shocking violence until the final fight.

After figuring out that June 27 is really his sister, Mina, and his mentor the Shaman tricked him, Boy goes after the real target of his revenge. Boy and Mina battle the Shaman in the underground parking lot of the Van Der Koys’ compound. With all the bone-breaking and blood spatter, this is one of the greatest — and most difficult-to-watch — fight scenes of 2024.

4 Lucius Vs. Macrinus

Gladiator II

For the majority of Gladiator II, Macrinus acts as comic relief, and a mentor to Lucius. But toward the end of the second act, Macrinus reveals his true intentions: to assassinate the Emperors, seize control of Rome, and rule with an iron fist. Inspired by his grandfather’s dream of a utopia, Lucius can’t allow that, so he breaks out of the arena, chases Macrinus on horseback, and challenges him to a fight to the death in front of the armies of Rome.

Lucius’ climactic showdown with Macrinus is just as satisfying as Maximus’ climactic showdown with Commodus in the first movie, but it’s much more gruesome. The fight takes them into a river, where Rome is symbolically reborn. Just as Macrinus is getting the upper hand, Lucius chops off his arm in the single most shockingly gory moment in the film.

3 Elisabeth Vs. Sue

The Substance

By the nature of its premise, Coralie Fargeat’s body horror epic The Substance keeps its protagonist Elisabeth and its antagonist Sue separate for most of the movie; when one is up and about, the other is comatose. They grow resentful of each other as Sue sucks all the youth out of Elisabeth and Elisabeth drags Sue away from the spotlight. When Elisabeth tries to terminate Sue and has last-minute doubts, they come face-to-face for the first time — and immediately start beating each other up.

As this fight scene kicks off, The Substance suddenly turns into a Bruce Lee kung fu movie. Elisabeth is launched across the apartment and smashed through tables and mirrors as a superpowered Sue exacts her revenge. Fargeat was clearly inspired by the “wire fu” of wuxia movies, and gave the stunt team plenty of opportunities to get creative.

2 Paul Atreides Vs. Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen

Dune: Part Two

The second volume of Denis Villeneuve’s sci-fi epic, Dune: Part Two, culminates in a duel. Whether the Emperor’s reign continues, whether the Great Houses invade Arrakis, and whether Paul’s visions of an apocalyptic holy war come to pass all come down to a knife fight between Paul and the Emperor’s champion, Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen. Villeneuve has set the stage perfectly, introducing the stakes of the duel and how vicious Feyd is in a fight.

The choreography is suitably brutal; throughout the entire duel, each character is seconds away from death. For the duration of this fight, Villeneuve succeeds in making the audience forget that Paul has plot armor. To anyone who hasn’t read the book or seen the David Lynch version, the outcome of the duel is totally unpredictable.

1 Deadpool & Wolverine Vs. The Deadpool Corps

Deadpool & Wolverine

From their initial match-up in front of a cracked 20th Century Fox logo to their brutal brawl in the back of a Honda Odyssey, the title characters in Deadpool & Wolverine have some really memorable fights. But arguably the greatest fight scene in the movie is when they finally team up. On their way to stop Cassandra Nova from using the Time Ripper, Deadpool and Wolverine have to hack and slash their way through the Deadpool Corps.

Shawn Levy shoots the sequence with an engaging tracking shot slowly moving down the street. It’s meticulously choreographed — sometimes, Deadpool and Wolverine get ahead of the camera, and sometimes, they fall behind — with plenty of fun Deadpool variants getting their comeuppance. Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” is the cherry on top that makes this the most unforgettable fight scene of 2024.