Trope Talk: Train Fights!

Hm... my fantasy setting needs trains.

I apparently had Things To Say™ and typed a whole thing, and then I realized it wasn't even a response to the guy I was talking to, so I'm putting it here instead. ... Tbh, I think the main reason to fight [i]on top[/i] of the train is to make the camerawork and set design easier, and also the background usually prettier. Narratively, it's mostly "hey, everything's out in the open now," because no one gets out of the train unless they're plot-important, which I think is fine but boring. Ignoring those factors, I think fights inside a train are more cool. There's less vertigo-driven adrenaline, sure, but the fight choreo is way more interesting simply because it's a more interesting environment to work with. On top, it really just amounts to "hold on" and "look out" while crippling anything really interesting. There's a reason that the Shang-Chi fight took place [i]inside[/i] the bus: 80% of the cool shit does not work on top of the vehicle. Jackie Chan makes top-of-the-train work, because it's a [i]slow[/i] train. Ironically, it's when the fight terrain is [i]cars[/i] (or trucks) that it makes more sense to move the fight outside and on top of the vehicle, because not only do you need the room, but the steerability of the vehicles means that they become interesting for reasons other than "going fast". Example: Matrix Reloaded highway. You still get the practical camera/set benefits, but now you get weird but awesome shit like leapfrogging between cars and deliberately crashing and so on. (And this is kinda why Spiderman 2-style high-mobility fighters work: they don't have the hold on/look out limiters, so it's mostly a matter of the battlefield keeping up with the fighters.)

Why is the opposite of a danger magnet?

Archer has SUCH a good deconstruction of the typical train fight memes, highly recommend checking it out if you haven't seen it Red!