Those cats were fast as lightning!
In fact it was a little bit frightening!
But they fought with expert timing!
Chop Sockey is a rather disrespectful term referring to fight scenes with an East Asian (especially Chinese, mostly Hong Kong) martial-arts style, but is often (see examples below) used to describe the whole genre of martial-arts films. They usually feature over exaggerated presentations of traditional fighting techniques, dramatic sound effects, and sometimes questionable dialogue dubbing.
This is also a parody trope where stereotypical aspects based on the Martial Arts Movie genre are played up as an Affectionate Parody to Pastiche.
Today, this trope can be found in everything from South Park to Mountain Dew commercials to video games (e.g. Kung Fu Chaos) to this XKCD strip
.
Artistic License – Martial Arts is a Sister Trope. Dragons Up the Yin Yang is a common visual motif.
Parody examples include:
- Kung Fu Hustle
- Kung Pow! Enter the Fist, Steve Oedekirk's awesome tribute to martial arts flicks.
- Wayne's World 2, in a scene which has Wayne fight Cassandra's Cantonese father in a chop sockey kung fu fight. The stereotypical sound effects, dubbing and dubious wirework are all aped for the scene.
- Kickin' It alludes to Bobby Wasabi's movies as being this.
- Kill Bill Volume 2 has a Deleted Scene in this style which has Bill facing off against the former student of a guy he killed and his handful of mooks.
