Who invents martial arts for movies and games?

A fight choreographer is hired to do that.... BUT, he/she does not create a "new" martial art. Usually, they are hired because they can offer the right "flavor" to the action.

Examples:

- Robert Downey, Jr. in Sherlock Holmes movies uses a modified expression of Wing Chun to "create" an estimation of a style called Baritsu. One of the choreographers is Downey's Wing Chun instructor.

- The Batman trilogy with Christian Bale use Keysi Fighting Method (KFM).

- Star Wars went to Kenjitsu in the original trilogy for the light saber fights. The later trilogy incorporated more Chinese Wushu sword work into the choreography.

- And Avatar: The Last Airbender based each of the "bending" arts on a particular existing Chinese martial arts. (Water Bending was based upon movements of Tai Chi Chuan.)

Usually the choreographer is a martial artist of a particular background. And just like actors are chosen for their roles, the choreographer is chosen for the kind of work (the flavor of action) he can bring to a project.

To my knowledge the sword fight choreographer for the Star Wars light saber scenes was the legendary Bob Anderson, a well known fencer and stuntman in Hollywood, who has choreographed sword sequences for such films as The Highlander movies and series, The Princess Bride, The Zorro movies, The Lord of The Rings trilogy and one of the Pirates of the Carribean film. He was a former Olympic fencer who represented Great Britain in the Sabre fencing event if I'm not mistaken.

He doesn't most of it is comprised of other, previous ideas on the subject. Some of it is ripped off the more flashy forms. In cases like "the by M.Night that should not be named", they take the the styles that the original techniques were based on, and then have fight choreographers make the taken techniques extremely flashy.

Film "martial arts" aren't really martial arts though, so there's always that concept.

Woo-Ping Yuen... hands down the best.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0950759/

As for Star Wars, Nick Gillard did the prequel fight choreography. He has a character named for him where they spelled his name backward in the comics. Cin Drallig.

people that do martial arts