The big buzz coming out of
Wrestlemania is about the two heavily produced and edited matches.
Undertaker vs. AJ Styles in the Boneyard match and The Fiend vs. John
Cena in the Firefly Funhouse Match. To a lesser extent Edge vs. Orton
and Gargano vs. Ciampa also had this same feeling with the filmed and
edited nature of the matches. All of those are very different
experiences and a lot of people are talking about how revolutionary
they are for wrestling. They're not, and they won't be. Wrestling is
largely a live performance that thrives off fan interaction, it's not
the first time this kind of thing has been done. DDT runs shows in
weird places all the time, but they have fans and the show is
whatever happens without any editing. The closer comparison to me is
all of the stuff from the Hardy complex. At least for the Boneyard
match. There is nothing in wrestling to compare to the Firefly
Funhouse Match.
The thing that really differentiated
the Boneyard match from any Deletion match was WWE's production
values. They used them very well here. Impact did cool stuff with
what was at the Hardy's compound, but they don't have the resources
that WWE has and it was cool to see a match done with that budget.
Thnside of WWE production is there camera work. Specifically the
shakey cam handheld and moving the camera with the wrestling taking a
blow as well as having a shit ton of cuts at all times. This match
has a lot of nice touches in it. Despite not having a ring both men's
entrances are great. Undertaker's is helped by the fact that I love
Metallica and I really enjoyed his pause to have his graphic show up
like it was a grindhouse film. The best aspect of the WWE production
over the Hardy matches isn't just the building specifically for the
match, but the lighting setups. With the Hardy compound matches they
use headlights and a couple of big lighting setups they have, but
it's all in the shots as well as lighting up the scene. WWE uses the
lights better as you never see the sources of the light and they help
to let 'Taker appear out of nowhere.
One thing both of these matches do
right is having a soundtrack to the match and adding sound effects as
well. This is a thing the two less cinematic matches WWE had both
failed to have and felt more awkward for. Those being Edge vs. Orton
and Gargano vs. Ciampa. The second of which is made even weirder for
not having commentary, although that might not be much weirder than
the first having really quiet overly serious commentary. Although the
ambiance of the crickets behind everything when Ciampa and Gargano
brawled outside was nice.
The biggest failing of the WWE matches
is that they are built and performed more like a fight scene from a
movie, but don't get shot the same way. Of the three matches Edge vs.
Orton was probably shot like a normal match and went straight through
and didn't really take advantage of it being filmed. The other two
definitely were, but they weren't shot in a way that took much
advantage of that. Ciampa vs. Gargano used it at least once that I
could tell where Ciampa did an air raid crash from the top rope to
the outside, probably onto a crashpad. Then cut to another shot of
them crashing to the floor from probably a more sane height. But
using cuts isn't the big difference from filmed fight scenes in
movies. The action and shots aren't blocked out to look cooler in
general. Its not live, there are no fans you can plan your shots
better. When Gargano does a suicide dive you can have him go right
over the camera using a crash pad or whatever and cut to another
angle where he really takes Ciampa out. But they don't really utilize
that stuff. There isn't a single shot in any of those three matches
that looks as cool as the scene from Tag Team Apocalypto where the
Hardy's and the Rock and Roll Express shoot fireworks at Decay and Andrews and Everett filmed from a crane or drone shot
swooping overhead.
All three of the WWE examples are very
serious fights as well. And none of them have as drastic as stakes as
the Deletion matches tend to have. They are all about proving how
tough they are, or that they still have it, the Apocalypto match is
going to blow up the Hardy's hometown if they don't win the match.
The Deletion matches have a sense of humor and aren't self serious
which, as these matches tend to be longer, gives the viewer a nice
break from the intensity. Matt is getting pinned and the boat,
Skarsgard, moves and knocks Trevor Lee off him to break up the fall.
Plus the biggest feature of the Hardy compound is the Lake or
Resurection which reverts people back to their old gimmicks when they
get knocked in. Shane Helms gets knocked in and comes out as Shane
from 3 Count and makes Lee and Andrews dance with him. They get mad
and superkick him back into the lake and as the match goes on Helms
comes back as the Hurricane and helps Matt beat them up. It's not all
punching and yelling at the other guy to stay down or shit talking
them about how they're not good enough. For me the Deletion matches
still have more of the flow of a wrestling match and don't feel like
as much like an action movie fight scene and are just more fun to
watch.
The same can't be said for the Firefly
Funhouse Match. How much this is a match and not an extended
promo/skit can be debated, but it definitely can't really compare to
the other matches in this piece and is probably unreplicatable. Part
of it stems from WWE lucking into the story by having Cena beat Wyatt
at Wrestlemania that hurt his momentum, and the fact that Cena has
such a storied career in WWE also helps build it up. This is a
psychological examination of who Cena has been throughout his career
and what that says about him and uses the lense of past superstars as
well as previous iterations of his character. The writing is deft
throughout with a bunch of humor, and real feelings. None of the
sections over stay their welcome and they move quickly from scene to
scene with every culmination of a scene helping lead to the next one
before Wyatt becomes the Fiend and hits Cena with a Sister Abigail
and gets the win. It was perfect, but WWE won't be able to do it
again, and neither will any other wrestling company that tries to
make this kind of thing work, which hopefully they won't.
Not every one of these cinematic style
matches works. Largely because the people who filmed and made them
don't know why anything is shot the way it is in movies and
television. Or they don't have a strong idea of what they are trying
to do. The Deletion matches worked because they were fun and the
people behind it wanted to do something that was a wrestling match
you can't do in a ring. Anybody can make this kind of thing work if
they have an idea. Undertaker vs. Styles worked because WWE had a
bunch of production value put into the match. Cena vs. Wyatt worked
because Cena is a good actor, which is a big factor that's going to
be missing in every other version of this match. Most of them are
going to end up like Orton vs. Edge and Gargano vs. Ciampa in that
they will be overlong slogs of matches that substitute moving slow
and playing hurt with emotion. Without fan reaction a lot of selling
loses a lot of its appeal. The wrestler isn't appealing to the crowd
for support so it falls apart. Unless they do what fight scenes do
when the good guy is getting the shit kicked out of him and have a
flashback to show where he gets support from its not going to work
the same way.
The biggest factor in making cinematic
wrestling matches, or matches without a crowd, good is realizing that
it changes how wrestling works. If that's not done you're going to
end up with matches that feel empty. The key is making sure you
compensate for the lack of audience in some way. Some kind of
soundtrack mixed with commentary would be the most effective way so
it still feels familiar to the fans watching. It's definitely a style
of match that has to be used sparingly and needs to be done well more
often than not or it will quickly wear out its welcome, and frankly
the WWE might already have worn it out there.
