The Divergent movies happen to be free to watch on BBC iPlayer, so I found myself finally giving them a try. One of the things that caught my eye was the unusual fighting stance the characters are trained to use in the first film, as well as some of their punching technique. If you search online you'll see a lot of people trashing the stance and punches as completely unrealistic, and I'm not going to get into that exactly (how realistic or unrealistic something is can vary depending on the individual, and honestly it's also not something that interests me a lot when it comes to movie combat). I will say this much, though -- I actually quite like seeing these unusual stances rather than the normal boxing or kickboxing approach.
The rear hand, as you can see above, is held up in the more typical style, close to the chin, but the front arm is tilted in an odd way with the elbow pointing out at the opponent. After looking into it, it seems like the stunt co-ordinator (Garrett Warren) was actually inspired by the boxing style of George Foreman, and used this for the Divergent stance. (Foreman was one of the best heavyweights in history, and famously fought and lost to Muhammad Ali.) Warren calls the guard Foreman used 'peekaboo', but this is (as far as I know) a mistake on his part, because the peekaboo style is actually something named for the stance Mike Tyson used during his prime days (high hands held straight up, while you look over the top of the gloves as if you're peeking). What Foreman used, on the other hand, is usually called the cross arm guard/stance instead.
Regardless of the name mix up, it's clear he wanted to channel Foreman's cross arm stance for a cinematic fighting style, which I find pretty neat! (How useful that stance would be in a fight where you can use more than your hands and you don't have gloves is another question, but again, I'm not too fussed over realism.)
One thing I will say is that Foreman's cross arm guard looks a bit different to the Divergent one. You can see that he sort of holds his arms closer to his face and body here, rather than the more angled posture in Divergent. Here is Foreman on the left:
[Screenshot from a helpful haNZAgod Foreman defence highlight video.]
Looking back at Foreman in that video led me to another video, of a fighter I know very little about -- Gene Fullmer, someone who fought the great Sugar Ray Robinson. The video was about his stance and style, and watching it, I realised that it actually looks closer to the Divergent guard than the Foreman approach that inspired the movie's stance. Here is Fullmer on the right:
[Screenshot from The Modern Martial Artist vid on Fullmer's guard.]
Compare Fullmer there to this below and it looks similar, although Fullmer keeps his rear hand low:
[Picture is from this interview about the fighting in the movie.]
A stance with a raised elbow/pointing the elbow at the opponent also reminds me a bit of pictures and footage I've seen of the kung fu style Baijiquan:
[Li Jianming, traditional Bajiquan form via blue hippo films.]
Another interesting thing is how Divergent sometimes shows characters punching in a strange way. Rather than jabs, straights, hooks, and uppercuts, the basic boxing punches, Divergent shows characters using what most people call 'hammer fists', attacking with the bottom part of the fist as if stabbing downward, which as far as I know is illegal in boxing, but can be used in MMA. (I call it illegal in boxing but the Fullmer video mentioned above shows him doing it, which I frankly can't explain other than maybe he got away with it because he fought in a much older era where it was either permitted or rules were much looser.) Hammer fist attacks can also be found in traditional kung fu and karate forms, to name two examples.
The way the Divergent characters hit the bags without wearing gloves is also like traditional kung fu or karate (where you tend to see emphasis on conditioning without padding). Even the odd exercise/drill you see the Divergent characters doing in pairs reminds me a bit of the forearm conditioning you will see in some traditional martial arts, albeit the Divergent characters are doing it in a way that doesn't look great.
None of all this is me saying people are wrong to criticise the 'realism' of the fighting style and scenes in the Divergent movies, mind you. This is more me appreciating the effort that the people behind the movie took to try a more interesting looking approach to the characters' fighting style than typical kickboxing and so on. It's fun! Apparently the actors only had around three weeks to a month of training before shooting, so I'm impressed they managed to be as good as they were.
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