Alright folks, so I know that many of you are generally interested in
seeing movies and video games analyzed with regards to realism,
and recently someone suggested taking a look at Vikings, the TV show,
one fight in particular: Ragnar Lodbrok versus Earl Haraldson.
And quite a number of people have asked me about Vikings.
Now, I haven't watched the show myself,
but you know, let's just take a look at this fight here.
Before I start, the usual disclaimer: if you're a fan of the show
and I say anything negative about it, the choreography or the editing,
you don't have to feel as if that invalidates your entire existence.
It's okay.
This is just for entertainment, and yes I know it's just fiction.
People are asking for it, so let's do it.
It starts out actually pretty decent.
So... he's actually using his shield for defense.
Catches those two cuts, and...
you know, this... I feel like he doesn't really need to use the sword the way he does.
I mean, it looks good!
This part definitely looks good. But you know, he's already...
He already has it covered with the shield,
so if you wanted to make this more realistic you would--
right here, you would make him strike at Ragnar and not just swipe his sword away.
Because, you know, he's already defended against that thrust;
there's really no reason for it.
Now here, this is one of my major pet peeves in a LOT of movies and TV shows:
all the damn editing! This is so over-edited.
And also some of the camera angles are just...
are just terrible and confusing. Like this, here.
Why do we need to look over people's blurry shoulders?
This just means that we can't really see properly what's going on.
And also, okay; one cut...
second cut. Do we need this?
I don't think so. This could have been one cut, at most.
So here, they're...
Like, in this case, with the way Ragnar is standing,
it makes sense that he would parry this strike with the sword,
but he shouldn't really have his shield so far back to begin with.
It would make more sense to have the shield in front
and use that as a defensive tool.
Now, if they were using sword and buckler that would be a different story;
in historical sword and buckler fighting you would parry a lot
with the blade rather than the buckler because the buckler is really small;
the main purpose was to protect the hand.
But these guys here have full-sized shields, so there's really no reason for that.
But... yeah. As I said, it's not the worst.
Now they go back to actually using their shields, which is good.
The shields are really thick-looking, by the way.
I mean, they're movie props so I don't know what they're made of,
I'm guessing-- might even be some kind of foam, perhaps? I don't know.
But historical shields would be much, much thinner, just as a side note.
They look a little clunky.
Anyway. So... here's another pet peeve of mine.
Now I don't know the context of this, because as I said
I haven't watched the show.
But you can see Ragnar is limping here.
And... he does that for a little while.
But then later in the fight it suddenly doesn't matter anymore.
And this is one of my pet peeves because this happens so often;
that a fighter would you know, look injured, get shot by an arrow
or get stabbed by a sword or whatever, something like that;
and then they would struggle with it for a while
and then when it really matters it just *plbt* it's gone.
It doesn't affect them anymore, whatsoever.
And I never see the point in that.
You know, why show an injury that doesn't ultimately matter anyway?
If you want to increase the stakes and make it more tense,
then maybe make the injury actually matter.
I mean sure, if you have a situation where you know, the adrenaline kicks in
and the main hero is just pulling himself together
and fighting through the pain and everything,
but you should still see the struggle, in my opinion,
whereas in a lot of scenes, at a certain point
the character doesn't actually react to the injury anymore
and doesn't seem to be struggling with it anymore,
and at that point it just becomes... well, pointless.
This is a really weird moment. So his opponent strikes...
deliberately misses, apparently.
I mean he had that covered, but--
And then... he does this spin.
This completely pointless spin that doesn't accomplish anything at that time,
and then he strikes with the flat of his sword, apparently.
So...
I don't know what's up with that.
It doesn't make much sense, and also
*sigh* All these cuts! Stop with the constant cuts.
Especially also here...
You know, he moves in with a strong cut right there,
and then, oh, blurry hands.
Why do we need this?
Do we want to see this?
I want to see what's happening.
I want to see what the fighters are actually doing.
I don't care about the waving audience and whatnot.
So there are a lot of things that make this fight scene really confusing.
This part here...
So he breaks the sword *laugh* on the guy's shield.
So that's that's a pretty crappy sword, isn't it?
I mean to be fair, depending on how much it's been used...
you know, over time a blade can wear out.
You can get microfractures, and then eventually
it can break at a seemingly unlikely moment,
you know, striking something that's not really supposed to break it normally
just because the metal has fatigued so much.
And especially also considering that at the time
they didn't have crucible steel and the blades were made of iron,
so stuff like that could potentially happen.
Okay, so now we're getting to the fun stuff.
So now they're both just... smashing each other back and forth with the shields,
so they're just bashing the shields against against each other.
And the Earl's apparently not using the sword anymore.
Which is weird considering that, well he has an advantage now.
His opponent doesn't have a sword, he only has a shield now
and you know, looking at this here for example,
he's got the shield covered.
You know, Ragnar's shield isn't going anywhere, it's not threatening him,
and his sword is ready! His legs are here.
Why is he not cutting to the legs?
Well, "why?" Because it's the main character and he's not supposed to die there.
Okay, and then both shields break... at once, which is convenient.
And so now then we have the scene where the Earl has a sword
and Ragnar has absolutely nothing, so the Earl could kill him right now,
but he decides to do the honorable thing
and throws the sword to the side which, you know, that's pretty cool.
It makes sense and all that, and they get new weapons.
Now this is also described in the sagas, where they
they would do a holmgang, which is the traditional duel,
and they would often go through several shields, the way it's described in the saga,
so a shield will break or you know, maybe even a weapon, and they would get a new one
so they can continue the fight, you know, being completely fair.
Okay, so there he does the hopping again,
so the the leg injury makes an appearance, but...
only for brief moments.
Then when he keeps keeps on moving, he moves... just normally.
It doesn't really seem to affect him.
Okay.
Axe wrestling...
Well. Will you do something? *laugh*
There's just this typical movie thing
where they just push against each other and have this intense staring contest
and exchange a few words and everything, and are not doing anything at all.
This is another one of my pet peeves.
Now, it's a very common movie trope and you know, it's difficult to...
to make them exchange words in the middle of the fight
without stuff like that, so I can see why they are doing it,
but I still find it silly.
And here is a pretty good exchange:
Ragnar strikes with the axe, the Earl parries it, wrenches it to the side,
and then he counters.
This is actually a pretty good sequence.
This can be definitely considered realistic.
What's less realistic, in my opinion, is that he takes this hit with an axe
to his upper chest and can continue fighting.
That's stretching it a little bit;
I mean okay-- again, adrenaline, and it's a fight to the death,
and you have to keep going, otherwise you die.
I get all that. But...
axes hit really, really damn hard.
We've seen that over and over again whenever I've done tests with axes,
and getting struck here? That's...
It looks like it takes out the collarbone.
Either that or-- it's a little hard to say, it might also be the sternum.
Either way, that's bad news.
In fact, this is likely to sever a major blood vessel there.
So... he would have a hard time continuing, I think.
This can very well be lethal or at the very least, disabling.
*doorbell ringing*
Moment. I've got a package.
All right, let's continue.
Yeah, by the way, if you think I'm being too harsh on this, I understand.
I mean, I'm kind of a professional over-thinker in a way,
and if you're just watching the show to enjoy it,
you probably wouldn't even notice most of these things.
I mean, the excessive cuts you would notice, I'm pretty sure.
When I saw it the first time that's what really stood out to me.
It's just cuts cuts cuts; all kinds of confusing, weird, unnecessary camera angles.
That's really my main problem here.
Sometimes you have no idea what's even happening. Like right here.
If I just watch it as it is, there are so many cuts and confusing angles
and I have-- honestly I have no idea what just happened.
If-- *laugh* If I keep watching it over and over again, just...
I don't know what's happening.
So if I actually go through it, like scrub through it,
then I can maybe see what's happening.
Okay, so he's trying to strike at him...
or-- although, is he really?
Because he's so close and the axe head is behind Ragnar,
so it can't even really hit him.
So then he raises up there, kind of blocks it that way,
and then he does... what?
Oh, he... Okay, so he stabs him with the handle... *laugh*
and then... what does he do then?
Okay, then he comes around for the swing.
Okay.
And--
Only when I scrub through this slowly
can I actually puzzle together what just happened.
That was also a problem in the Arya versus Brienne fight in Game of Thrones
that I talked about recently.
Now, I looked at the choreography in particular
because that actually allowed me to see what was going on,
whereas in the final episode? Cuts all over the place!
And sometimes really weird cuts, too.
You know, there's the scene where Brienne kicks Arya and she falls down
and then the next-- like, suddenly jump cut and she stands.
I don't get it. This is really...
I mean, I kind of get it because in some cases during recording
maybe some things go wrong or the editor says,
"No, I don't like the way the scene turned out"
and then they want to cut this together, but...
The viewing experience really suffers.
And the actors clearly show that they can pull this off;
they CAN do a sequence, a relatively long sequence even,
in a choreography without needing constant edits.
So... yeah, I think that's enough.
I've ranted plenty about this, and let's leave it at that.
So I hope you found this entertaining, and thanks for watching.