When I talk about armor for theatrical or game-based combat, there are
two very common responses; "It's made up, why do you care?" and or,
"High heels appeal to men.
Shut up, lady."
Neither of these are good enough reasons to wear wedge heels in combat,
they just aren't.
I will fight you on this hill and I will win because
you will be wearing wedge heels so you won't even make it up the
hill before you fall down and hurt yourself so I will win by default,
which frankly would probably be necessary, but that's not the
point.
But on the other hand, your legs will look great.
When I did a video about whether or not it was possible to sword fight in a wedding
dress: answer; probably, but some options require more prep
work for others, I mentioned that shoes were a whole other conversation.
So by popular request here is that conversation.
My name is Jill Bearup, I make videos analysing movie fights, let's go
The shoes a character wears are dependent on a lot of factors; world, geography,
time period, social status, occasion.
If the character is going about their daily life and then is suddenly swept
up into an adventure, it's a lot easier to suspend disbelief about their
costuming and shoe choices than if they're a battle-hardened
warrior wearing a ridiculous outfit.
Much ink was spilled about Claire Dearing's high-heeled shoes
in Jurassic World.
But the thing that got me was this, those were
completely appropriate shoes for a professional woman making an
important presentation on ordinary workday, I mean, on rugged terrain,
even if you're going to hurt your feet, it might have been better to
take them off.
Personally, I always like to plan my outfits as if The
Doctor will appear at any moment and sweep me away for an adventure in
the TARDIS, but I understand that other people have different
priorities.
All costume choices can show character and shoes are no
exception.
But there's this weird disconnect with some warrior women
in movies where the sexy takes priority over the character and it's
just weird.
Nebula is a vengeful cyborg killing machine played by
Karen Gillan, who is already pretty tall, she does not need three-inch
block heels on her costume, but there they are.
Unless she's got some kind of weapons hidden in them, Nebula is
not a character who gives a single flip about beauty standards and frankly,
Karen Gillan probably looks fine even if she was wearing flat shoes
or even just boots with a shorter heel.
I mean, block heel is preferable to wedge heel when it
comes to running around because there's more flex on the sole of the
shoe but still.
On the plus side, she's wearing knee-length boots,
which do tone in with her costume.
The design is layered and geometric and industrial, which is cool and she has
knee pads.
We're not going to get into general costuming right at this
second, but obviously bulkier patches where you can stuff a load
of knee pads for your actresses and some performers?
Yes more of that please.
Knee-length boots, if you can justify them, are brilliant
because they do provide some degree of leg protection.
Not to much against direct blows, though they're better than nothing, but against
things like running through vegetation or things exploding around
you and they're being shrapnel or similar, they're brilliant.
I do not remember very much at all about The Hobbit movies, I only saw two
of them, but as I recall they gave Tauriel very nice practical flat
boots, and that short heel means that it's also good for horse riding.
Any movie where there's a lot of horse riding, is a good way to justify
all boots all the time or at least, mostly boots most of the time.
I mean, they also gave her a lot of hair and they tied it back directly
from her face, but it is in front of her shoulders and she's an archer
and I'm sorry, we were talking about shoes, your boots are grand
Tauriel.
The thicker the leather or whatever you make the boot out
of, the less flexibility you have but the more protection.
I mean, Wellingtons are sturdy enough to stand up to a lot of garden-related punishment,
but I wouldn't enjoy sprinting in them.
Moving on but not too far, Nebula's sister, Gamora
has full-on combat wedges.
Now, I've said it before that it's cool if you need to raise your actresses up a bit,
and so you give them wedge or platform shoes for their walking around
scenes, I mean there are other ways to cheat their height, but this
one is easy and I get it but for official costuming on their promotional
pictures and their life-sized cardboard cutouts, it just makes
these battle-hardened alien warrior women look like they don't understand
biomechanics.
Same goes for Wonder Woman, though she isn't an
alien.
Even if the character is invulnerable and biomechanics
is just not a thing for her, the actress and the stunt women portraying
her are not, and so then you'll need a flat pair for stunts and
you'll need to keep switching back and forth.
Just keep the heels out of the promotional pictures for warrior women, that's all I'm
suggesting here.
At the other end of the heel scale, we have Harley
Quinn who wears high heels quite a lot and yet, it works.
Partially because Harley is not a superhero and also because she's canonically
completely out of her tray, that she would choose to go into battle
in athletics stilettos.
Athlettoes?
Seems fairly in character, especially if a, she's dressed
up because she knows she's going to meet the Joker, the only character
that she actually seems to care very much about in Suicide Squad, or
b, she's out on the time for drinks with her roller derby friends.
Harley Quinn having offbeat, brightly-colored, quirky shoes even with
high heels, works for the character.
I mean, in Birds of Prey, she does an action scene in roller skates and
it's amazing.
As a character, she does not live by the same suspension
of disbelief rules as the characters around her, which admittedly
is weird but whatever works.
Speaking of suspension of disbelief, there's this argument that
if you see someone fighting in high heels, you should be especially
afraid because they are so good at fighting, they can overcome that
inherent disadvantage.
In which case, I would like to see more men fighting in high heels please.
But I think for me that only really works when they have a casual relationship
with reality, to begin with, like Harley Quinn.
Or when they happen to get into a fight while wearing heels as opposed to suiting up for
battle and choosing to put high heels on.
Black Widow wearing four-inch wedges with our superhero
costume, just makes her look like an idiot, much better.
Catwoman sneaking around the room and then back-flipping
out a window in skyscrapers stilettos?
Sure.
Okay, why not?
Wearing them in a fight in her full tactical gear, even if she's using
them as a weapon, it's a really tough sell in such an otherwise serious
film.
If it were more of a campy Batman adaptation, then you can
stretch suspension of disbelief and play it for laughs, and I think
that would work but The Dark Knight Rises is not that kind of film.
Suspension of disbelief, in general depends very much on the tone of
the piece of media, like the 2000 Charlie's Angels movie gets away
with a ridiculous collection of shoes.
But that's basically because you have either decided that
everything here is so over the top that you're just going to go with
it or you've already noped right on out of there.
My top underrated shoe choice which you can adapt to basically
any setting, (because I mean trainers and tennis shoes are both great
but they do place you in a pretty specific time period) is ankle boots.
They can be sturdy like hiking boots or work boots with steel
toe caps, still bear in mind that that will make you very clumpy.
They can be leather or suede.
They can have decorations on them.
They can be laced or zipped or button depending on the setting.
But even really formal outfits like wedding dresses can generally accommodate
an ankle boot underneath.
If you make it the right color, if it's sufficiently fine
in construction, and if it's nicely decorated.
Bellatrix Lestrange
wears mid calf length laced boots with a, is it called a flared
heel?
You see that style of heel quite a lot on Edwardian and
Victorian style shoes.
Either way, because the heel of the shoe was a
bit more centered over your actual heel and the flare gives you a
little bit more contact with the ground and they're not too high,
they're pretty sturdy.
Bellatrix might have to run around, but her principal weapon is a wand, so I really liked
the shoe choice.
It fits in with her evil magic, steampunk vibe, while
still being reasonably practical.
This character in Iron Sky wears something similar, but
you'll notice that the heels are higher, spindlier and centered on the
back of the foot.
All of those things make it most practical.
Even the more impractically heeled boots do have the
advantage that they attach to your feet, which is also true of a lot
of kinds of shoes, including trainers, but a lot of women's more formal
options tend to be a bit flingy.
I personally love brogues which do lace on, but court shoes, or
peep toes, stilettos not so much.
They may stay on your feet while walking about, but what if you're running
or kicking?
Ballet flats are, well, flat, which is a plus.
But they do have a distressing tendency to fly off your foot when you run
or kick out.
Great surprise ranged opening move, but know you're barefoot,
so that might not be ideal.
Point shoes a la Gwen Stacy are firmly affixed to your foot
and I bet you could do some damage with that wooden toe box, but I've
never actually worn them, so I can't really speak to their
practicality.
Also, aren't they quite expensive and otherwise delicate?
I don't know, just wondering.
That said, I do have these which are technically ballet flats, but come
with tying on things so you can attach them to your ankles.
They are pretty good.
Flat sandals don't offer any protection to the top of the
foot, but they have been the footwear choice of many different cultures
and many different time periods and there is a reason for that.
Samurai Warrior, sandals, Greek Hoplite, sandals, Roman centurion, sandals,
is the weather warm?
Sandals.
In a Black Panther movie?
Sandals or flat boots my friend.
Nakia does wear stilettos, but they don't last very long on our feet
once the fighting starts.
Flip-flops and mules are barely attached to your feet and so you often have to grip with
your toes just to keep them all on, which isn't ideal.
Unless they have very high heels, they're probably better than nothing on nasty,
rocky, sharp terrain, but not really the best choice.
I have absolutely no idea if Crocs would be any good for fighting, but they do
have a strap that goes around the back.
Maybe, if you have ever tried to fight in Crocs, do
leave a comment and they would certainly make an interesting character
choice.
In the absence of laces, shoes with straps are much more
likely to stay on your foot.
I bought these at the charity shop for £4 for an upcoming video in which I may be
required to do something quite impressive in them.
But more on that another time because we're allowed to mix with other households
now and I have plans.
Thing is any laced or strapped shoe is probably going to be
fine provided you don't go nuts with the heel, so let's get into those
for a second.
Wedge heels I have previously discussed in a somewhat
routing fashion.
Their design makes the sole of the shoe, inherently just less flexible and they raise you up,
which isn't ideal either.
This might be a good time to explain why being higher off the ground
is a disadvantage when physical activity is required.
It's like this.
Your ankles are usually a certain distance from the ground.
In order to prevent you from turning your ankle while
you're performing strenuous activities like running or jumping,
your muscles are working to stabilize you.
Overcoming the strength of your muscles and causing
you to turn your ankle requires a certain amount of moment.
Moment is a product of force and distance.
The higher your heel, the greater the length of the moment arm, that's the distance
between your ankle and the ground and so the lower the force required
in order to cause you to fall over and that's just wedges.
For other heel types, not having your entire heel in contact with the ground
means you're also just more likely to slip on things and you're more
likely to sink into soft surfaces like grass.
You can see the mess of the heel from where I had
to walk across my lawn.
Plus wearing high heels of any kind increases the compressive force on your knee joints
by up to 23 percent and that's just when you're walking.
And it also means in the long term you might be more likely to develop osteoarthritis which
is not really relevant to combat at all but I did think it was interesting.
"But my character needs heels!"
I hear you say, "for the horse riding!"
Horse riding stirrup boot; the long boots have heels about this size too.
Cowboy boots have higher heels than that and they are a reasonable option but remember:
cowboy boots are optimized for riding not for walking.
Also remember historically when it came to men's high heels Louis's highest of the high
heels because he was the most important person in France were bright red seven or eight centimeter
block heels and that's in his fancy court photos so can we collectively agree that the
people who have previously been commenting but they need stilettos or wedges for horse
riding can just stop?
Great.
If you must have heels or you just really want them the wider they are at the base the
better but you don't want them to extend past the actual heel because then they're wedges.
If the heel is low enough you can basically do as you please unless what you please involves
striding across soft grass and not sinking in if you're wearing particularly pointy heels,
but when it comes to shoes and fighting your biggest considerations are: is it firmly attached
to the foot?
how high is the heel?
what size and shape is the heel?
You can absolutely ignore all practicality-based considerations for a character should you
think that it's justified (looking at you Harley Quinn) but if your character is a battle-hardened
mercenary she is probably not going to be sporting four-inch stilettos on a muddy battlefield
unless she's having a really really bad day You may enjoy my original shoe rant, or possibly
just my entire playlist where i talk about and demonstrate fighting in various kinds
of costume, or you can always add your thoughts about shoes in the comments section.
See you next time!