Why are movie swords always wrong? (An armourers thoughts)

—Oi, Pierre, have you seen our arrows lately? —No, what about them? —They got black fletching on them... Pierre, are we the baddies?

Probably the most annoying thing in movies is that armour often doesn't do anything. People just slash through mail and sometimes even plate.

“They will wear open-faced bascinet” mighty bold of you to assume the actors will wear helmets at all

One further reason for the industry love for the back scabbards is - I'd imagine - that it allows you to show the weapon right alongside that expensive face. You get the actor AND the character specific hilt design neatly right there in a close-up.

everyone knows that a trotting horse's hooves sound like coconuts

The last time I went hunting Orcs, pretty sure we were armed with just some No2. HB pencils and some funny dice.

My view is that I can deal with it being historically inaccurate but not historically implausible. They can have armour that's a couple of centuries out of date and the wrong colours but it should behave like armour and be functional in the setting.

I loved how Peter Jackson got around the wonderful LOTR artwork copyrights of Alan Lee and John Howe by employing them as art directors on the films. Very clever. We've all marveled at the beautiful pictures in many editions of the books over the years done by those two men, how fantastic that the films were able to recreate so many of those iconic scenes. With the added bonus of him being able to ask them "can you draw suck and such?", and then taking that drawing to the set department and saying "can you make it look like this?" Luckily both Alan and John were thrilled to be involved. That's how it should always be done, but sadly the opportunity to do so arises very rarely. Of course LOTR is a fictional work, not an actual historical recreation, but I'm sure you understand my meaning. Great video Tod. I could listen to you all day.

It's sort of sad that we've basically imagined a history without colour, so that every medieval peasant has to wear dirty beige, every castle has to be gray, togas are white and so on.

I can tell you what kind of sword I use to hunt Orcs. I’m more reluctant to admit that I haven’t found an Orc.

re: "What sword to take Orc Hunting?" The sword you already own, and already know how to use. That is the PERFECT sword to hunt orc's with.

"When the last time you went hunting orcs, what was the sword you used?" LARPers: "Well since you asked...."

Personally i would think seeing a battle from the perspective of a knight in full plate trough a visor could make a good claustrophobic scene.

I love it when a movie has the balls to put their expensive actors behind helmets/masks the whole time. Props to Dredd and V for Vendetta

Still no excuse for the Nilfgardian armor that Netflix made.

"Peasants are always dull. They're not bright." Wait a minute ... oh, he's talking about the color scheme! Isn't he?

Just to say as a person very familiar with the commercial industry, there's something Tod can't mention: it's not unusual to have complete idiots in decision-making capacities. Most of them are called 'producers.' They will sometimes demand absurd things in the Dunning-Kruger belief that they know better what punters will think or like. So yes, he's totally correct and illuminating about the many practical factors. But they're not always grown-ups. And on the note about not being documentaries. Very true. But that can also be a cop-out when you realise that the masses Tod speaks about often derive their knowledge of history from these films and not from any other sources. Filmmakers have more responsibility than they like to tell themselves. And it's frequently only the opinion of the directors and producers that the masses will need these changes in order to enjoy the film as entertainment - and these heavily altered films sometimes bombing, and very accurate ones sometimes raking in millions will never convince them otherwise. They're not as rational as they pretend to be.

Counterpoint to full face helmets: A Knight's Tale. The actors wear armor obscuring their face during the majority of fights, I suspect it primarily worked because the plot revolves around tournament fights of short duration with plenty of opportunity to show faces during interludes, and doing so let stunt doubles more easily take over the roles of an actors. It's a fantastic comedy, completely historically inaccurate and all the better for it.

"Camera Tests" are pretty much the FINAL arbiter of whether a thing can be used. A weapon, armor, or set piece that causes camera issues [i.e. a tight weave pattern on a gambeson that causes Moiré patterns to appear on the final product] is right out, regardless of how "authentic" the weave was for the character who is supposed to wear it!

My personal opinion... Anduril, Glamdring, and Aragorn's "Ranger Sword" from Peter Jackson's LOTR were three of the most perfect, beautiful, realistic, and ideal movie swords ever made.