The trailer for Transformers: Dark of the Moon reminds me of two things: first, that changeling robot aliens look hilarious as “sexy domestic automobiles” and, second, that Michael Bay is indifferent to the workings of the human eye and brain. Can someone tell me why his Autobot-on-Decepticon battles look like krumping cockroaches? How am I supposed to gauge speed and size with supertight, fast-moving camera shots, thousands of similar-looking metallic surfaces, and little environmental involvement? Maybe some Bay PA can do me a favor and dispatch a pigeon (spray-painted orange?) to fly from one corner of the screen to the other? At least then I’d have a frame of reference. Seriously, those fight scenes are the worst.

An onscreen knock-down, drag-out needs a few basic ingredients. We have to know what constitutes physical pain and death. We should know who the underdog is and how swiftly that character will get obliterated in the absence of a miracle. Ideally the skilled, invincible, or gob-smackingly numerous enemies will flex and preen a little (“I will break you”). And then the fight should simply defy all of these expectations. Good music helps.

Consider the very lo-fi beat-down in the Russian bath from Eastern Promises. We feel connected to every ham-fisted, labored, imprecise punch. The movements are messy and straightforward—visceral displays of human gutmeat against tile and blade. That’s not to say special effects always ruin fights. Not to get all misty about hallowed visual-effects goldentimes, but Ray Harryhausen’s stop-motion skeletons made for a heart-palpitating battle in Jason and the Argonauts. The first entirely CG character, the stained-glass knight in Young Sherlock Holmes, worked because he was part of a hallucination, a distillation of everyone’s fear of going tits-up nuts. I hope the knight’s animator, John Lasseter, swims Scrooge McDuck-style in the pool of Oscars he has since won as head of Pixar. The guy is a beast.

Then again, movie fights can certainly go pear-shaped when technology is funneled down our gullets with liver-engorging force. Just look at the Matrix trilogy. Sure, bullet-time was diverting; Neo’s wire fu was judicious, and we never doubted that it was Keanu Reeves and Laurence Fishburne hitting each other in that dojo. Really hard. But by the second movie, a nigh-invincible Neo turned a shower of bullets into tap-dancing Tic Tacs, and the third movie was dispassionate, effortless, and riddled with meh.

The key to making fights work is stakes. Leonidas divorcing a Persian from his leg in 300—as baddie and limb pinwheel on different axes—gives us a focusing beat that amps up our bloodlust. Director Zack Snyder does the same kind of metronome manipulation in his Sucker Punch this month—we’ll have to wait to find out if this latest stylized reality ends up being sexy or tired. The pigtailed female protagonist has been committed, and I swear, if the monsters are “self-doubt” or “abandonment issues,” I will IRL want to cut someone. Howard Hughes needed clouds to indicate the speed of aerial combat in Hell’s Angels. I need a touchstone for a mortal wound—say, a spectacular decapitation and a gratifying geyser of plasma—or I’m out.

That’s why, despite its energy-drink name and rock ‘em sock ‘em conceit, I’m excited for a fall release called Real Steel. It’s about 8-foot-tall boxing robots, and the stars are animatronic—actual metal, welded and bolted together. Sugar Ray Leonard is consulting on the sweet science. And just as MacGyver and Jackie Chan winced and shook out their hands after delivering a punch, if there’s a preestablished functional need for a pugilistic robot to shake a fist after administering a knockout, I’m cool with that. At least it would be a robot fight where I know what I’m looking at.

Guest columnist Mary H. K. Choi (mhkchoi @gmail.com) is a writer for Marvel Comics.