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Michael Long
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 Posted: Sun 25 Nov, 2018 9:37 am Post subject: |
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| Craig Peters wrote: | | It's embarrassing how much better this NetFlix series looks that the latest iteration of Robin Hood. |
Don't get me wrong, Robin Hood was an abortion of a movie with its 18th Century political allegory and 20th Century landing craft...
But to me, everything in this scene still looks a lot better than Outlaw King:
https://youtu.be/7qX6JfFdpRw
I commend the Netflix folks for actually attempting a gambeson or two, but nothing comes close to what Ridley Scott's production team can accomplish, even if they didn't bring their A Game to Robin Hood. (Anything good in that movie was probably left over from Kingdom of Heaven, which is still be best medieval armor ever to hit the silver screen).
Outlaw King basically had one good suite of armor, worn by the Bruce in a single scene. For every passable set of knightly mail there was a shot of Edward's 'Black Knights' with matching costumes, or a shapeless dishrag coif. The film got off on the wrong foot with Edward I's mail greaves a mere twenty seconds past the opening credits: baggier than anything worn by a rapper from the 1990s. Most of the ordinary clothing was also uninspired in the extreme, such as Chris Pine's dismal green smock. I really loathe Hollywood's preoccupation with making their noble protagonists look like peasants. Even the goddamn Communists managed to put a fur coat on Jan Zizka in the Czech films about the Hussite Wars!
On my part I am still waiting for someone to follow Kingdom of Heaven's lead when it comes to Morgan Bible-style mail coifs with proper aventails, padding and lacing, along with convincing gambesons for the common soldiers.
Edit: It didn't even occur to me that you might be referring to this year's Robin Hoods (the Lars Anderson Edition). That movie does not even take place on the planet Earth, so we must give it a pass and let it be dreck in its own frame of reference.
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Jean Henri Chandler
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| Posted: Thu 29 Nov, 2018 7:13 am Post subject: |
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| Michael Long wrote: | | Craig Peters wrote: | | It's embarrassing how much better this NetFlix series looks that the latest iteration of Robin Hood. |
Don't get me wrong, Robin Hood was an abortion of a movie with its 18th Century political allegory and 20th Century landing craft...
But to me, everything in this scene still looks a lot better than Outlaw King:
https://youtu.be/7qX6JfFdpRw
I commend the Netflix folks for actually attempting a gambeson or two, but nothing comes close to what Ridley Scott's production team can accomplish, even if they didn't bring their A Game to Robin Hood. (Anything good in that movie was probably left over from Kingdom of Heaven, which is still be best medieval armor ever to hit the silver screen).
Outlaw King basically had one good suite of armor, worn by the Bruce in a single scene. For every passable set of knightly mail there was a shot of Edward's 'Black Knights' with matching costumes, or a shapeless dishrag coif. The film got off on the wrong foot with Edward I's mail greaves a mere twenty seconds past the opening credits: baggier than anything worn by a rapper from the 1990s. Most of the ordinary clothing was also uninspired in the extreme, such as Chris Pine's dismal green smock. I really loathe Hollywood's preoccupation with making their noble protagonists look like peasants. Even the goddamn Communists managed to put a fur coat on Jan Zizka in the Czech films about the Hussite Wars!
On my part I am still waiting for someone to follow Kingdom of Heaven's lead when it comes to Morgan Bible-style mail coifs with proper aventails, padding and lacing, along with convincing gambesons for the common soldiers.
Edit: It didn't even occur to me that you might be referring to this year's Robin Hoods (the Lars Anderson Edition). That movie does not even take place on the planet Earth, so we must give it a pass and let it be dreck in its own frame of reference. |
SPOLER ALERT - there are some spoilers below in my response which you should skip if you haven't seen the film but do intend to.
This issue with the costumes is one of three major problems I mentioned in my review linked above. Aside from the surprisingly interesting Communist era Jan Ziska trilogy you mentioned (which shows things like war wagons deploying quite plausibly) another one worth looking at are the With Fire and Sword films, two done during the Communist era and one right after, which surpass Hollywood in my opinion in terms of costumes and depictions of battles, in spite of budget restraints and other issues. One top of having probably the best fencing duel* depicted in any film in my lifetime (in the Deluge) and some epic battle scenes far beyond any equivalent Western film I can think of.
In general, in the Anglo-American sphere, we seem to have two types of historical genre productions - the "Action" oriented and the "Romance" oriented. The former have really miserable costumes (often devolving into what Matt Easton calls Judas Priest attire, strange outfits of dingy leather and little bangles) or what I call the "medieval caveman" look, but have arguably better action sequences. Some "Romance" oriented films and shows do a lot better with the costumes and sets, but generally have almost no production effort on the fight scenes which tend to be even more inept. Still, you at least have good costumes to look at which helps in the moment to moment suspension of disbelief.
On the Action side, I have seen some good one on one fights in Vikings, and some plausible weapons (I appreciate the small axe heads) but generally terrible costumes and bad battle choreography. The Last Kingdom by contrast, has slightly better costumes (with some more personality for a few characters), fairly good sets and some at least interesting set piece battles with distinguishable formations, but has terrible individual weapons (especially that LARP sword carried by the main protagonist) and one on one fights. Game of Thrones, fantasy but inspired (arguably) from historical sources, as generally what I would call "bizarre but enthusiastic" costumes (some of the Lannister kit looks at least interesting), some good sets, but very bad one on one fights, and a few well orchestrated battle scenes like the famous one in The Battle of the Bastards.
On the Romance side, there was one which stands out for me - the film Last of the Mohekans had very good costumes (IMO), pretty good sets, beautiful locations and very well done depictions of both individual fights and battles. It may have had other issues but those strengths did not hurt it's box office performance. Shows like Outlander have good costumes and sets, with marginal combat sequences. The Canal+ version of Borgia was similar with good costumes, pretty good (if scaled way down) sets and locations, and very marginal fight scenes.
So maybe get the costume designers from Canal+ and whoever makes the outfits for Outlander, the fight coordinator for Vikings (and / or the people who did the fights for Mohicans and Alatriste) and whoever organizes the battle scenes for Last Kingdom (and the people from Alatriste) and maybe you could have something a bit more engaging.
The other major problem I had with Outlaw King was that like most genre films set in any pre-industrial era, the armor doesn't work. This is particularly problematic since a major plot point in the Third Act hinges on the Scots working out a way to cope with English heavy cavalry / knights. Yet the knights wear armor that doesn't work, seem to have little organization, don't even carry lances for the most part, and ride unprotected horses which seem to be quite easy to dispatch. So we see a complex solution to a problem that doesn't seem to need solving to begin with. Armor that serves no purpose is just a bizarre costume and ultimately throws the audience out of their suspension of disbelief.
As are overused, dumb cliche's like "filling the night sky with flaming arrows"
That and ... if they had actually captured the King of England, why on earth would they have let him go? At least swap out the wife and kids of Robrert de Brus in a hostage exchange! Maybe throw in a city or three. And force that Emo Eddie II to replace that absurd brass armor he was wearing.
But it was still far better than Braveheart let alone any of the Robin Hood films of the last 30 years.
* outside of Kurosawa movies,
Jean
Books and games on Medieval Europe Codex Integrum
Codex Guide to the Medieval Baltic Now available in print
Last edited by Jean Henri Chandler on Thu 29 Nov, 2018 7:28 am; edited 3 times in total
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Jean Henri Chandler
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