MovieChat Forums > Sudden Death (1995) Discussion > Fight Doubles for Van Damme?

Fight Doubles for Van Damme?

posted 8 years ago by raphroehler2004
4 replies | jump to latest

One big thing hurts this film with me. When you watch it again, you'll notice that in almost every fight scene there are notable shots of a double doing much of the fight scenes (especially look at the face...definitely not Van Damme)...it's almost as if Van Damme just did a lot of the close ups.

I can understand having doubles for dangerous stunt sequences. But for the fight scenes? C'mon...it's kind of why we watch Van Damme films. To see him do the stuff (I doubt he even did the dropkick to the guy in the locker room).

Why is this? He was still in great shape at the time. Hell, he's still in pretty good shape now...and most of his films don't have this (the only other one I notice is in parts of Double Team).

Was this perhaps because of his drug problem going on at the time? Was there a 'strict' schedule, thus they had to use doubles for most of the fight sequences?

[–] manbat33 8 years ago

This was at the height of his fame so I'm sure VD especially wanted to be used as little as possible for his fight scenes. Probably had other stuff going on behind the scenes.

[–] MrRockStone (89) 4 years ago

Universal Pictures along with producer Moshe Diamant did not want to pay the added insurance premium. Moshe Diamant was a ruthless bastard and had managed to "trick" VD into a 10 picture deal contract.

[–] Threadkiller (3075) 4 years ago

In the mid to late 90s, during the plateau of Van Damme's career he seemed to rely on stunt doubles a lot more than he did early on in his career. I remember finding it particularly noticeable in the film Double Team back in the day.

[–] CaldoTheKid (360) 16 days ago

Aside from the stuff mentioned, this was not long after his court cage for injuring a stuntman on Cyborg and another actor from No Retreat No Surrender said he was rough during fight scenes. I can see some executive at top studio like Universal not wanting any bad publicity if he injured someone again and so decided to only use him when needed in fight scenes.