The gilt, scaly-looking armor already annoys me. Why couldn't they have stuck closer to the brass of Sir John de Northwode?
http://effigiesandbrasses.com/651/873/

I mean, the fact we can have this conversation at all, is a HUGE improvement. Is it going to be 100% perfect, or completely accurate, no.. but they are closer than some re-enactors I have seen, and that is such a leap ahead of say "Braveheart".

I agree on the scaley armour :eyeroll:

So cool that Tod did daggers (and maybe Albion did a sword)!

Z

Yes incendiary arrows are a bit naff and in fact they appear to go out in the air, but they are visible at least (in a film). Arrows at dusk just disappear on reality and as a watcher you would see very little clue that massed archery was taking place.

The bottom line is that they are telling a story first and documentary around 24th on the list of things they are doing and to tell that story effectively in the restricted medium of TV (restricted compared to real life) compromises have to be made.

Heros need to be shinier
Baddies have to be blacker
Arrows have to be burnier
Swords have to be schwingier
and so on.

We will never have a true portrayal of the period in film because A. we will never agree what that would be, and B.most of the audience would not be interested or have any idea what was going on

Tod

Well said Tod.

The scale armour of the baddie is ugly.
But it's flashy, makes him stand out so i can see why it was done.
Compare that to ironclad's silly axe and woad viking baddie, it's a paragon of historical accuracy.

That looks promising, better than any historical genre film I've seen maybe ever. I think I see schiltrons, good sets, armor that looks plausible, correct helmets for the era.. people wearing helmets.

Love the armor at 1:27

Certainly better than Braveheart.

Sadly the charging cavalry doesn't seem to have lances though. Why does Hollywood hate lances so much? Seems like they could CGI them if it's a safety issue.

Hi Jean,

I get it and it would be much better if we did pursue historical accuracy, but decades of the public thinking one thing is hard to overcome. and that is your audience, the fee paying public who want entertainment over education.

Secondly, your award winning big name director doesn't want lances (or whatever), so you don't have lances - simple. Its my way or the highway is a daily reality on film sets.

Tod

Back in late '97 I was working with Ron Maxwell, the fellow that did the classic American Civil War epic, 'Gettysburg'. We were in preproduction on an epic about Jeanne d'Arc, with a real desire to do something as historically accurate as we could on the $50 million budget we had. We got squashed by Sony, which preferred 'Le Mess(enger)'. It was a very bitter experience. If we had done what we planned, it would have set a new standard in film. He's still trying to get it done as a trilogy; the original script was really too long even by LOTR standards for one sitting, and breaking it up is much more feasible. No word on how it's coming, though, as he is really concentrated on 'Last Full Measure'.

I'd like to see some skirmishers deploying weapons like this in the next medieval genre film i see:

[ Linked Image ]

Its out today, and I just watched it!

It seemed a real mix :\

The first 2/3 were better than the last 1/3..

The opening was really grand, they seemed to understand feudal affinity, class differences, etc.. but then they went kinda crazy with a *really* terrible duel.. and random "greek fire"

I won't spoil the plot, but it seemed pretty good, and the clothing was much much closer than Braveheart. Actual riveted mail!! Though sadly no tailoring. It was a seesaw. They didn't have a lot of gratuitous minority representation or illogical female warriors.... but they did have a lot of 'mud on the face' and random leather arm bracers.
I think the best example of this dichotomy was seeing cool actual castles, like Linlithgow, used.. but then again, the walls were all bare, and it still looked like a 'ruin'. It was cool to see a couple people, like Edward II having authentic haircuts, but at the same time it was sad to see them bastardise historic characters with gross misrepresentation.

The final battle, not so great, and last couple of scenes were laughable.

I stand by, though, at least they tried.. and it was a magnitude better than Braveheart. It is very very far from perfect.. but it isn't like this horrible abomination: Robin Hood (2018) (or even the Robin Hood 2010). At least it wasn't a 'video game' movie!

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Z

We also watched "Outlaw King" on Netflix last night and it was pretty well done. The time frame is 1304 - 1307 and the history had to be compressed a little but overall it is a good, historically-based movie. The weaponry is OK, I guess and the action scenes are very good but extremely bloody, as the actual events would have been. Thought the armor could have been better but I am no expert. The chief Bruce meets on the Isle of Skye is Lachlan (sp?) Mackinnon, which was of interest to me because my 5th great grandfather was Lachlan Mackinnon from the Isle of Skye. Of course he was on camera for about a minute!

Anyway, I do recommend it. Lots of nice scenery as well.

I liked it. Not the best, but far from the worst. I give extra points for trying to give Scottish style swords to the leads, even if the time period was a bit off. The oddest thing was climaxing with Loudoun rather than Bannockburn. Maybe leaving room for a sequel?

I wrote a rather long but hopefully entertaining and useful review of Outlaw King. I give it a C- and try to explain what went wrong with an eye on what could be done about it next time a film like this is made.

It does contain SPOILERS so don't bother to click on this if you haven't seen it.


Review is here due to the need to embed screen-cap images to make a couple of points. But we can and should discuss it here if anyone wants to.

J