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Alex Chen
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 Posted: Mon 17 May, 2010 2:58 pm Post subject: a good middle ground |
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They have the money to make things historically accurate, but more time is invested in the overall film rather than the specific historical inaccuracies. I enjoy watching Ridley Scott films despite the historical liberties he takes because he simply has good taste to do so, hes definitely less cheesy, very theatrical but he doesn't beat you over the head with it. The alternative would be...300 anyone?
Balian's sword in Kingdom of Heaven is not historically accurate but is really awesome and it didn't detract from the believability. I would rather see this kind of historical liberty be taken over unarmoured ninja spartans. Ridley Scott finds a good middle ground between realism and the theatrical.
The sad thing is most people would still prefer 300 to this.
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Dan Howard
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| Posted: Mon 17 May, 2010 3:33 pm Post subject: |
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| Jean Henri Chandler wrote: | | I'm relieved to learn that we are on opposite sides of this issue, as with all others. |
I don't think we really are. If Scott decided to make a movie about a fictional character and set it in a fictional medieval land then I would sit back and enjoy the movie. However, Scott has tried to create a story where Robin Hood is a real person who lived in a very specific time period. He then stuffs it up by using all kinds of anachronisms with little attention to the details that bring this time period to life. I won't be seeing it at the cinema, but I'll watch it on DVD. I reserve the right to yell at the screen every time someone involved in the production says "historically accurate". 
If I enjoy the movie so much that the anachronisms don't bother me, then I might even buy a copy. I did this with 13th Warrior for example. On the other hand, I was given a copy of King Arthur for Christmas. I plan on giving it away as soon as my mother-in-law forgets that she bought it for me  I also bought a copy of 300. It wasn't meant to be historical; it was an adaption of a comic book - an adaption that I thought was well done.
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Quinn W.
Location: Bellingham, WA Joined: 02 May 2009
Posts: 197
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| Posted: Mon 17 May, 2010 4:09 pm Post subject: |
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It also helps that most post-civil war guns have the year stamped right on the side of the gun, making it a little easier to tell whether it's in the appropriate period or not...
"Some say that the age of chivalry is past, that the spirit of romance is dead. The age of chivalry is never past, so long as there is a wrong left unredressed on earth"
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Andrew Maxwell
Location: New Zealand Joined: 03 May 2009
Posts: 90
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| Posted: Mon 17 May, 2010 4:23 pm Post subject: |
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One of the things I find most annoying about this type of movie (as produced recently) are the female characters. It seems that it is offensive now for the women to be less physically strong than the men, so the female leads have to be one-dimensional Lara-Croft-esque ninjas 
I mean, personally, if I were a woman I think I'd find it far more offensive that the female leads are portrayed as some sort of brainless animal. The "strong physical woman" seems to also be the "angry irrational woman", and they are objectified far more than they ever were when a less violent role was more common for them.
...but this is probably the wrong forum to go off on a rant about post-modern infantilisation of society 
Men do not care how nobly they live, but only how long, although it is within the reach of every man to live nobly, but within no man's power to live long. - Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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Walter S
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| Posted: Tue 18 May, 2010 2:07 am Post subject: |
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| Andrew Maxwell wrote: | | It seems that it is offensive now for the women to be less physically strong than the men, so the female leads have to be one-dimensional Lara-Croft-esque ninjas |
I too dislike Lara Croft, she is little more than walking breasts... What about some other strong female characters though? Perhaps Sarah Connor form Terminator or Ellen Ripley from Alien? I think those characters are quite ok.
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Jo Thomas
Location: Doncaster, England Joined: 20 Apr 2009
Posts: 28
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| Posted: Tue 18 May, 2010 7:44 am Post subject: |
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| Andrew Maxwell wrote: | | The "strong physical woman" seems to also be the "angry irrational woman", and they are objectified far more than they ever were when a less violent role was more common for them. |
Seriosuly, can't do right for doing wrong on this point. The previous model being "angry irrational woman" without the ability to take it out on anyone (other than bitching) or resorting to screaming in a really ear-bashing manner. The problem is that women in these movies are secondary characters and therefore 1D / with 1 defining characteristic - it's just as common a problem for the male secondary characters. It is compounded by the film industry insisting that these characters are leads or primary characters. Think about the examples already given:
In the literature, at least, Maid Marian is traditionally the love-interest and has no more character than necessary to convey that - just as a princess in a typical fairy-tale. She's the reward for a job well done / life well lived, not a fully developed character.
Sarah Connor and Ellen Ripley are actual leads and had depth, it was their own resourcefulness and character that led to the solutions and consequences if not the actions. Though Connor is originally set up as someone who needs rescuing and her depth is more fully developed over the movies and series.
Lara Croft is no more a developed character than a typical male action hero, but her gender makes her a character secondary to her breasts as well the action.
Even Joan of Arc (in the histories if not necessarily the movies) is following the direction of a higher power and is often shown as simply devoted to God (& St Michael) - her 1 defining feature. Her actions are not usually shown as her own but of God (& St Michael) working through her.
Jo Thomas
http://www.journeymouse.net/
Updated weekly
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Jean-Carle Hudon
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| Posted: Tue 18 May, 2010 1:35 pm Post subject: Lara Croft |
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Yeah, Lara Croft and Conan the Barbarian... walking breasts or characters secondary to their physical attibutes.. do same rules apply?
Anyone enjoy the HBO Rome series ? Anyone remember Ben Hur ? Do you really think a small plain actor could have pulled that one off? Cheesecake of beefcake, seems to me that there is something for everyone in the marvelous world of moving pictures...
How about Miss Rai in the Last Legion...wrong on all historical levels, but really nice to look at during an evening totally devoid of contact with reality (Byzantine Female Body Guard with Burka style mail capable of killing a dozen trained warriors in single combat in an Arthurian setting with Roman overtones) ?
Of course they're over the top, James Bond is over the top, Dirty Harry was way too good, there isn't a decent cop movie out there that doesn't have some superhero aspects to it, how about the Die Hard series, any movie with a hero hanging from a ledge or a bumper of a speeding car, all garbage and haven't we seen them all ?
Do I jump up and down on my sofa.... well, here's the thing : the moment the Credits or Publicity package try to claim historicity and then serve up varying degrees of garbage, I jump accordingly. Then I realize that I am spoiling my own evening, and decide to place their historical acuracy claims in the trash function that all our personnal computer come equipped with, and either enjoy, or not, the ''moving picture'' for what it is, a highly sophisticated comic book.
Some comic books are better than most, and some are worse.
Bon coeur et bon bras
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Andrew Maxwell
Location: New Zealand Joined: 03 May 2009
Posts: 90
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| Posted: Tue 18 May, 2010 2:52 pm Post subject: |
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| Jo Thomas wrote: | | Andrew Maxwell wrote: | | The "strong physical woman" seems to also be the "angry irrational woman", and they are objectified far more than they ever were when a less violent role was more common for them. |
Seriosuly, can't do right for doing wrong on this point. The previous model being "angry irrational woman" without the ability to take it out on anyone (other than bitching) or resorting to screaming in a really ear-bashing manner. |
True to a degree. Perhaps I expect too much from movies when I expect believable human beings 
| Quote: | | Sarah Connor and Ellen Ripley are actual leads and had depth, it was their own resourcefulness and character that led to the solutions and consequences if not the actions. Though Connor is originally set up as someone who needs rescuing and her depth is more fully developed over the movies and series. |
Exactly! They are believable as actual people who are reacting to extreme situations. Neither of them have any superhuman abilities (prior to the half-alien/half-Ripley hybrid, anyway- which was a logical part of the story).
| Quote: | | Lara Croft is no more a developed character than a typical male action hero, but her gender makes her a character secondary to her breasts as well the action. |
Lara Croft is fine in Lara Croft movies (I mean she's a crap character but she's what you expect, and she "fits" in her own universe). What is not fine is when clones of her creep into other movies in which her charcter makes absolutely no sense. I've noticed that often the lead actress will say in interviews that her character is "strong but sexy". This usually translates to "I'm playing a retarded yet acrobatic bimbo, and it would be more honest and less jarring if I just stood in one corner of the screen wearing a bikini and waving pom-poms". It's not just that the character is one-dimensional or just eye candy. It's that they actually don't make sense, but they are jammed in anyway to fit some specific movie making formula.
Men do not care how nobly they live, but only how long, although it is within the reach of every man to live nobly, but within no man's power to live long. - Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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Jean Thibodeau
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| Posted: Tue 18 May, 2010 4:27 pm Post subject: Re: Lara Croft |
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| Jean-Carle Hudon wrote: | Then I realize that I am spoiling my own evening, and decide to place their historical acuracy claims in the trash function that all our personnal computer come equipped with, and either enjoy, or not, the ''moving picture'' for what it is, a highly sophisticated comic book.
Some comic books are better than most, and some are worse. |
Exactly, I completely agree: Enjoy the film(s) if they are entertaining.
Enjoy trashing the inaccuracies discussing the film with fellow history buffs.
Dream on, about finally seeing a film that combines good story, good action, accurate history and accurate costuming and accurate period attitudes ...... but don't hold your breath too long or you will pass out long before something so miraculous ever happens.  
There is no reason why one can't enjoy the film on one level and enjoy dissecting it on another level.
( Note to those who hate the film or any film the word " dissecting " is a good one describing the special pleasure one gets bitching about it ).
You can easily give up your freedom. You have to fight hard to get it back!
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Rod Walker
Location: NSW, Australia. Joined: 05 Feb 2004
Posts: 230
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| Posted: Tue 18 May, 2010 5:42 pm Post subject: |
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| Adam D. Kent-Isaac wrote: |
A joust between Henry and Charles Brandon wearing Maximilian or Greenwich harnesses, made under supervision of real armourers (like a few people here I could mention) would have been fantastic to watch.
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Perhaps something like this Adam?
Heck, it's aluminium armour with lasercut rubber decoration glued to it. The art department of the shoot I was working on sourced it and prettied it up.
Wouldn't cost a real lot and would look a lot better for hero armour than the shite used in The Tudors.
In many ways it is just as easy, if not easier, to have a decent period looking harness than it is to put together some fantasy piece of crap.
I'll go see Robin Hood, remove brain and try to enjoy it for what it is.
Cheers
Rod
Jouster
www.jousting.com.au
"Come! Let us lay a lance in rest,
And tilt at windmills under a wild sky!
For who would live so petty and unblessed
That dare not tilt at something, ere he die?"
--Errantry, John Galsworthy
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JE Sarge
Industry Professional
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| Posted: Tue 18 May, 2010 5:46 pm Post subject: |
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On another note:
Has anyone from myArmoury or the historical community in general ever approached anyone in the entertainment industry and marketed themselves as a technical consultant? If so, what was the response?
I'm just curious if these waters have been tested before. You never know, someone could market themselves and actually make some positive chances in the entertainment industry. 
J.E. Sarge
Crusader Monk Sword Scabbards and Customizations
www.crusadermonk.com
"But lack of documentation, especially for such early times, is not to be considered as evidence of non-existance." - Ewart Oakeshott
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Hugo Voisine
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| Posted: Tue 18 May, 2010 6:54 pm Post subject: |
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From what I've heard from my favorite armorer, what historical consultants and professional armorers have to say is usually of low importance compared to the vision of costumes and props designers, who are backed up by the director because they have done that and that movie in the past...
Plus, armorers often have to work on a near impossible schedule, so they don't have the time and energy to complain or convince the people at the top that their ideas are better...
He gave me the example of another armorer who had to make for a big blockbuster movie a bunch of swords that he knew wouldn't work (the designer put some kind of knuckle-guard where the wrist would go). After he worked all night (things always have to be done for yesterday) to produce the swords he knew no one with normal human physiology would be able to use, the designer scratched his head and changed the design, so the poor armorer had to do another bunch of swords to replace the useless ones.
I also remember that Leo Todeschini from Tod Stuff posted something about this very subject somewhere on this forum...
« Que dites-vous ?... C'est inutile ?... Je le sais !
Mais on ne se bat pas dans l'espoir du succès !
Oh ! non, c'est bien plus beau lorsque c'est inutile ! »
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Randall Moffett
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| Posted: Sat 22 May, 2010 8:10 pm Post subject: |
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Well I came, I saw, I watched it....
I thought it was a very good move. Perhaps 4 out of 5 stars. I thought the number of terrible historic issues were minimal and they did a fair job with most of the real historic people in the movie, even with John, a hard person not to go overboard with.
The clothing could have used some help as could the armour but over all it was a good historic action movie. I did think the WWII landing barges were a bit over the top.... what did they do row all the way across the channel in those. None of the French would have made it over there alive.
I am sure no one wants a full list of my small issues and to be fair I'd not want it to keep anyone from going to see the movie because them.
It is sure not a normal Robin hood movie and don't expect his men to be very merry much of the movie.
Hugo,
I'd be OK with that but we have some people who have done a fair to good job and they were not even doing historic movies regarding clothing and armour... we are just asking for the movie industry to take it up a notch. If it is the costume or design group that cannot get it right the directors should fire them and get ones willing to give it a bit more to do it right. Look at Lord of the Rings for a second. You got a guy like John Howe who basically pushed them to go that extra step and a good director like Peter Jackson who saw this and supported it. Some more of this type of directing and support we'd be set. With just a handful of changes I think this movie could easily have been much better, 5 out of 5
RPM
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Jean Thibodeau
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| Posted: Sat 22 May, 2010 10:00 pm Post subject: |
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| Randall Moffett wrote: | You got a guy like John Howe who basically pushed them to go that extra step and a good director like Peter Jackson who saw this and supported it. Some more of this type of directing and support we'd be set. With just a handful of changes I think this movie could easily have been much better, 5 out of 5
RPM |
And with Lord of the Rings they didn't really have to be historical so getting inspiration from period armour, even if they did a bit of creative mix and matching, was very commendable since the armour looked functional even if " fantasy ".
Yeah, a little effort to research real armour and costumes by costume designers would be a good idea rather than ego trips being " creative ": I get the idea that the designers think their imagined armour and costumes are more interesting than the real thing ! This could be a choice assuming they knew or researched period armour to use as a starting point for their designs.
Oh, I haven't seen the film yet but with a good story the period errors won't bother me too much but as Randall said taking that extra step would be nice to see.
You can easily give up your freedom. You have to fight hard to get it back!
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Marc Blaydoe
Location: Maryland Joined: 29 Sep 2006
Posts: 72
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| Posted: Sun 23 May, 2010 1:57 am Post subject: |
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The only thing that could have topped the landing barges would have been cross-bow firing tanks coming off of them. I rank that kind of thing right up there with "the King's weapon" in Grendel on SciFi (sorry, that's now syfy, and I don't watch it anymore).
An armed man is a citizen. An unarmed man is a subject.
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Walter S
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| Posted: Sun 23 May, 2010 5:32 am Post subject: |
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| Jean Thibodeau wrote: | | And with Lord of the Rings they didn't really have to be historical so getting inspiration from period armour, even if they did a bit of creative mix and matching, was very commendable since the armour looked functional even if " fantasy ". |
They could be faithful to the books descriptions though, and they were not. Armor and weapons in the books aren't on high middle ages level - there shouldn't be plate armor and longswords in the movies.
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P. Cha
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| Posted: Sun 23 May, 2010 11:39 am Post subject: |
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I just saw this movie yesterday night. I judge how good a movie is by how much I can ignore historical inaccuracies. For istance, I didn't notice in 13th warrior because I was too caught up in the damn story the first time through. With robin hood, this was the case for most of the movie...however once they moved to the fight heavy end, that pretty much ended. The ending story seemed rushed and incomplete. What happens makes NO sense to me.
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Joshua R
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| Posted: Sun 23 May, 2010 12:02 pm Post subject: |
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| Walter S wrote: | | They could be faithful to the books descriptions though, and they were not. Armor and weapons in the books aren't on high middle ages level - there shouldn't be plate armor and longswords in the movies. |
If they had done that, each volume would have had to have been made into two or three movies a piece, each three to four hours long.
" For Augustus, and after him Tiberius, more interested in establishing and increasing their own power than in promoting the public good, began to disarm the Roman people (in order to make them more passive under their tyranny).... "
-N. Machiavelli, The Art of War
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Eric Allen
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| Posted: Sun 23 May, 2010 9:29 pm Post subject: |
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| Joshua R wrote: | | Walter S wrote: | | They could be faithful to the books descriptions though, and they were not. Armor and weapons in the books aren't on high middle ages level - there shouldn't be plate armor and longswords in the movies. |
If they had done that, each volume would have had to have been made into two or three movies a piece, each three to four hours long. |
Why would a different aesthetic of armor and weapons have necessitated a longer movie? 
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Joshua R
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| Posted: Sun 23 May, 2010 10:35 pm Post subject: |
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| Eric Allen wrote: | | Why would a different aesthetic of armor and weapons have necessitated a longer movie? |
Because, quite frankly, the only armor I remember being described in any of the books was Bilbo's maille shirt. Ergo, the only way to bring the movies more in line with the books would be to lengthen them, to include events discarded from the script and/or editing of the movies.
I understand that Tolkien stated in other sources that the armor and weapons should be appropriate to the Dark Ages in the British Isles, but... it's fantasy. Completely fictitious. I fail to see how the movies could be improved by using maille instead of plate (and maille. And lamellar. And leather) and a plethora of Dark Age swords instead of mining practically the entire store of Western sword development.
Don't forget, fantasy movies have to have an aesthetic that appeals to modern audiences. And somehow, I cannot see the Nazgul being nearly as creepifying in just black clothing with, maybe, a maille shirt, as they were with their wickedly barbed plate and corroded, old longswords. Or Aragorn king of Gondor with a little, three-foot long Anduril as opposed to the not insubstantial Narsil and Anduril seen in the films. At best, you could maybe push things into a 12th- or 13th Century aesthetic, but even then.... (In my mind, the most vivid images from the movies are those of the first Nazgul the Hobbits encounter jumping off its horse and Aragorn charging the Black Gate. The former works with a hauberk with mittens and maille chausses and the latter... er... was maille with some small plates and a leather open-front surcoat.)
The plate armor and cleavers carried by Saruman's Uruk-Hai make sense, given the level of industrialization (as portrayed in the movie, anyway. How you could make something as time-consuming as maille seem evil and carelessly produced, I do not know). The armor and weapons of the Rohirrim, I feel, did a good job of reflecting their kingdom as a bit of a backwater (although seeing the Rohirrim and Gondorians side-by-side does tend to cause a bit of WTF-ism). The wicker armor of the Haradrim made sense, as did the lamellar armor of the Easterlings. And the plate of the Gondorians, well... it seems a natural enough evolution from the maille and plate reinforcements worn during the prologue, which occurred three thousand years before the War of the Ring. That, and, let's be frank: Weta had people churning out plastic maille armor for seven years or so, if memory serves me right. And that cannot be cheap. And that just covered the relatively small amount of maille seen in the movie.
Weta did a lot of the maille for Kingdom of Heaven and this movie (Robin Hood) and there still wasn't much on screen at any given time in either movie, either. So lots of maille isn't cheap. And while you can play around a lot with the size of the rings and their state and the clothing worn by the actors and extras, there still might not be enough variation on screen to enable the audience to differentiate between one army and another without them wearing surcoats, which wouldn't be period appropriate for Dark Ages Britain. And even then, it might not be enough.
[/rant]
" For Augustus, and after him Tiberius, more interested in establishing and increasing their own power than in promoting the public good, began to disarm the Roman people (in order to make them more passive under their tyranny).... "
-N. Machiavelli, The Art of War
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