this is good rock throwing was a real
nightly skill hi there my name's david
rowings i'm the master of arms at the
london longsword academy which basically
means i teach people to stab each other
for money i'm toby capwell i'm a curator
of arms and armor at the wiles
collection in central london i'm also a
practitioner of the european historical
martial arts today we're going to look
at jewels in movie and in tv and we're
going to see how realistic they are
this film is portraying a highly
fictionalized version of a real
historical event a trial by combat or a
judicial duel
is a legal procedure to settle some kind
of dispute this is a legal standing it's
an appeal to the direct intervention of
god this is really a medieval phenomenon
although there's stories of one-on-one
combats throughout history
that's one of the only things that we
know for a fact happened jean de corruge
was stabbed in the somewhere in the
thigh a good martial artist will know
that that's a good place to stab someone
you can bleed out very quickly with a
wound like that and let them bleed for a
while
the armor is
clunkier and more cumbersome looking
than it should be the whole general feel
of the fight is overall
it's too big too clunky there's a lot of
swinging where there should be a lot of
refined jamming into finding the little
gaps forcing always constantly them to
defend the point as you're going back
[Applause]
this is one of the things you see a lot
in the under halton sections in german
treaties this idea of wrestling your
opponent first of all to the gown once
they're on the ground you work your way
up them you fall with your knee between
their legs a lot of times when there's
rolling around on the ground in film
fights the other opponent will then just
jump sort of belly flop style straight
onto him which doesn't achieve much but
here you've got
a very intentional crouch binding the
fallen enemy's limbs
i guess when a lot of people think of a
nightly dagger they think of a knife
that looks a bit like a sword
cross-hilted cruciform daggers
like this were a thing it can be used
blade up it can be used blade down
stabbing action whatever but actually
they're not the much more typical
nightly dagger for armored combat
are daggers like the one we see in the
clip the so-called rondelle dagger
which instead of a cross guard it's got
two
circular plates it's not really a weapon
that's effectively used to extend the
reach of the arm
it's really all about this
and in the clip here you actually see
matt damon getting in and leaning on it
but you do still see it quite a lot used
like so and again it's all about the
utility that you get out of it you can
put your weight on this absolutely valid
for me it's more about the spacing so
this gives you much more protection than
this particularly if you're in a
position exactly as toby said like so
you're preventing somebody from stabbing
up into your hands in the german
treaties that we study we call this the
wrath position or the wrath strike when
we think about knights and formal
dueling there's a question of manners
politeness fights to the death aren't
clean and the dirtiness of it perfectly
plausible six out of ten
it's got some
good references in it
but with this production crew at this
level of budget
it could have been a lot better yeah i'm
gonna say a five six as well
it's not anything like the typical
hollywood lance exchange normally
they'll charge each other one two three
times and someone falls off and it's
really kind of formulaic and boring and
predictable here
they go on the first charge and they
both blast each other out you can see
real
impact you see the guy's lance get
banged out the back of him nearly hits
one of the extras on the side there
almost and the falls are pretty brutal
too
these giant maces
which as far as i am aware are not a
weapon that ever existed there are
two-handed mesas but with these giant
oversized heads they've basically taken
a short mace and then just enlarged it
to to mythic proportions because there
is a long tradition in judicial combats
of using unusual weird weapons just for
the trial by combat that are not like
the normal weapons that you would use on
the battlefield i'd like to see people
in kind of like a lower guard without
just swinging the thing around the head
swinging the thing around your head is
not a good use of energy at all it's a
waste of your time is this sort of like
the big barrelling we're going to run in
and do big moves when your moves want to
be concise about controlling your space
particularly when you're using something
which is primarily a thrusting weapon
the thing that makes me giggle about it
but i do like it is the way that
whenever there's a swing at somebody
they kind of try and skip out the way on
one level it looks comedic on the other
level well you don't want to get hit by
something really heavy so you might well
skip out the way
hollywood people are forever trying to
get rid of their actors helmets
as quickly as possible
there are plausible ways of getting rid
of a helmet if you bother to think about
it he's having a hard time breathing
he's probably overheating and he just
panics and loses the helmet that's a
storytelling device that i can get my
hands on and actually i've suffered from
near
heat stroke fighting an armor in
california and taking your helmet off
might seem like a bad idea but it's
about practicality you might get hit in
the head but you're definitely going to
lose if you fall on the floor
here
gowan rescinds his accusation of
adultery there is a real precedent for
someone who's been defeated in a
judicial duel and is about to be
dispatched can make an admission that
they were wrong
i'm going to have to give it another
five i'll give it a six because it's got
a legitimate helmet removal
women did actually fight judicial duels
especially in germany women you know
historically weren't knights that's a
fantasy element here but they did fight
judicial duels and later they fought
civilian duels as well particularly in
the 17th and 18th centuries may i ask
anything of me you desire is within my
power
it is yours
your grace
i ask the honor of a place in your
kingsguard i like this because knights
often did fight formal combats
for other reasons beyond the legal
procedure of a judicial duel sometimes
they fought what were called deeds of
arms which were these kind of
exhibitions fights a lot like this
and it's just about the prestige and the
fame the celebrity aspects of knighthood
which is something game of thrones does
really well
today is another day i die
[Applause]
both sides in this judicial procedure
are fighting with champions professional
fighters who volunteered to act on their
behalf and that is absolutely a real
thing it's almost very much like having
your own lawyer this person will come
and fight for you
i'm not sure quite this much exhibition
jumping about is a good idea here i'm a
bit wary of anything that might give
your opponent information about how you
move
and what you're capable of i think it's
potentially a good way of releasing your
own adrenaline if you stand there and
you're very sort of like stoic and
you're kind of
then all of that adrenaline is coursing
through your system and it makes your
reactions very very jumpy so it's almost
like this feeling of freeing up your
limbs ready to fight
it seems like a spear with a wooden half
is a bad choice when you've got a seven
foot tall guy with a big sword facing
you i guess you don't have to let him
hit it i do like that the majority of
the deflections with the spear are ones
which accentuate the movement of the
sword there's good deflections there's
not these attempts to confront the
weapon mainly which is very very good
there's not very much of this just
direct threat threat changing through
from side to side
is an awful lot of movement around the
opponent cavendish talk about getting
behind your opponent morozo talks about
walking to their shoulders like a modern
fencing match just up and down with very
few exceptions you're categorically
trying to get the best most advantageous
position that takes your opponent's arms
out of their natural position of
strength
the way that we portray people who are
incredibly large
in
general forms of fiction is massively
fiction that person who is immensely
strong has to be for some reason
uneducated and unable to move and this
is not true you get some absolute
premium huge athletes who move fast
nimble yes terrifyingly fast and are
intelligent and use that to their own
advantage it would be nice really to see
a fight that represents that not only is
this person huge but they have studied
their art oh no you can't die yet you
haven't confessed
he clearly has made a mistake
with all this gloating you've got to
keep your emotions under control
you've got to stop with the pride and
the celebration prematurely a nightly
kind of mental preparation is about
keeping a very even
kind of dispassionate mindset i'm gonna
go for a seven and a half i really
really like the way the spear moves i
hate the way the sword moves i'd be
willing to give it a six how many more
must die for the throne
just
one i think you can always look at this
as just being what are your physical
attributes and your training relative to
those of your opponent if your endurance
is good and you're older or if your
endurance is good and you're younger and
you spend more time as a younger person
fighting it's more likely to go to the
person with the best combination of
attributes and effect but the mental
aspect is important too older
fighters often have a mental advantage
because they're better at keeping their
cool the bigger stronger more
experienced guy is gonna have an
advantage it's kind of that point where
are you on the curve how many injuries
have you taken how does that affect your
performance
[Applause]
where's the probing of it it's always
i'll step in and then i'll hit and
that's a sure way for somebody to have
the right time to do something
there's too much rolling around now
there's reference in a knife fighting
manual to basically effectively faking a
trip so you you fall over and then you
roll past your opponent and got caught
by somebody in a sword and buckle fight
because they literally they come towards
you they trip over their own leg and you
go ah and they roll behind you and they
cut the back of your leg literally
rolling along the floor so there's
certainly places for it
making it the predominance of a fight
scene i think is very very very
sinus need flawed
five minutes
the whole thing of taking a break in the
middle of a trial by battle
it's unusual
and
probably normally not allowed but there
is some historical precedent for it
there is a famous deed of arms called
the battle of the 30
in
1351 in brittany between two groups of
breton knights they fought very hard for
quite a long time and then they did
agree to take a break they were
exhausted
but yet they hadn't achieved a
resolution so it's not totally without
precedent i think it's going to be
another five six but just because
there's there's so much rolling and i
appreciate that the armor is is is nice
the younger guy especially could have
used more training i think i'm gonna say
five on that one
i come from a planet where we have no
understanding of reach or measure
[Music]
a lot of people have criticized this
scene
for the slowness of the dinosaur guy's
actions but that actually relates very
well to what it feels like when you're
fighting in armor you can feel as though
you're moving really dynamically and all
these amazing things are happening and
then you see the camera footage of the
fight and it's just like
there's a castilian knight named louisa
pata who wrote a book on nightly combat
at the end of the 16th century he says
specifically when you're in full plate
armor you must make an extra effort to
move dynamically with intention and he
says specifically
so that you don't look stiff as a statue
you have to make that extra effort to
get out of the kind of gorn effect
[Music]
we get an accidentally into another
piece of nightly combat or nightly
health and fitness
great this is like what have i got to
hit him with i mean element of surprise
and moving spontaneously and getting
ahead of your opponent is obviously very
important there's not a lot of that
going on here
this is good rock throwing was a real
nightly skill numerous nightly treatises
talk specifically about the correct
techniques for throwing small medium and
large rocks
appropriately not perhaps that large the
gorn as a sort of reptilian humanoid i
think he's being sold to us
as a creature that has a very thick hide
i just like the idea he's on his way to
a cocktail party and he's been accosted
by kirk
absolutely tan is there a 12 button yeah
12.
[Music]
it's a form of punishment meted out on
prisoners
making them fight to the death normally
i would say what's with the whips the
whip is not a weapon but the the whip is
also an implement for corporal
punishment again on prisoners so it's
kind of consistent with again the
circumstances in the story so it's more
just making two prisoners fight for your
entertainment rather than any of them
having any particular yeah and fight
with implements that are used to meet
out corporal
punishment for that kind of mannered
behavior
you probably would need to go forward to
the 17th or 18th century
in civilian jewels you might see very
cordial formal politeness
occurring right before they stab each
other to death here it's quite quite a
theatrical
thing where they're just emphasizing
that flash is a good guy and the prince
is is just being a bit of a
these are modern conceptions of shaking
hands and things
there is a tradition sort of theatrical
fights occurring in weird places
i don't think traps were ever a thing
because really they're gonna
ruin the quality of your fight i mean
even like in gladiatorial combat in
ancient rome they're concerned about the
quality of the fighting and if you've
got people tripping and falling over and
accidentally spiking themselves it kind
of ruins
the spectacle
the footing is a problem in a lot of
medieval
combats that i've been involved in
you're wearing smooth sold leather shoes
a lot of the time
and
depending on what surface you're
standing on the footing can be a real
problem
take my hand
it's not how this works if the opponent
is defeated but not killed the officers
of the court take him out and hang him
anyway because you have to have that
resolution the fight has proven that if
he is the accuser
then he has beared false witness and if
he's the accused then he's guilty either
way he has to die historically in
judicial jewels is the penalty usually
death regardless or or can it be a
lesser thing for the loser in the high
and late middle ages the loser dies one
way or another by that point we're
dealing with judicial combats that are
fought largely for very very serious
offenses like murder or rape in the
earlier middle ages when they're
fighting about land ownership they don't
need to kill one person can just say
okay the land's yours i give up i'll
give it a seven it just does what it
wants to do and it's outrageous in camp
for the accuracy of portraying bird men
i'm giving it a 10.
[Music]
does anyone ever use a flail on
horseback it's not a good idea
flails are
massively over emphasized
and when they are used historically
they're used on foot so that's the one
kind of
letdown in this scene
all this mounted combat is great i'm
glad they're using rubber weapons
because they hit the horses a couple of
times but that probably would happen and
there's a reality to it
the simplicity of this fight scene is
that they're trying to hit the person in
general where the shield is not and
they're just looking for every single
gap if the shield's going up you're
cracking them underneath the whole thing
of where they're fighting with different
weapons is something of a problem a
judicial duel properly
has to occur on equal terms so the
weapons have got to be the same one way
or another you can't choose whatever you
want to fight with that's a kind of old
hollywood trope that's appeared in
several films it has to be fairness you
do see a mismatch though you get
somebody who's got a spear somebody
who's got a sword in talhoffer some of
the mismatched weapons is about trying
to address other physical inequalities
here you've got a proper duel of
chivalry set in 1194 or really the high
point of judicial dueling two knights
evenly matched should be fighting with
the same set of weapons so this is set
in
1194 the equipment that they're wearing
is more typical of the early to mid 13th
century they're a generation or so out
but that's really starting to get picky
overall this is a really great sequence
there's manipulation of the horses
against each other for advantage there's
navigation around the shields so for me
it's a good solid day i reckon i'd
rather they charged with the lands first
and then progressed with other weapons
but there's real mail i give it a 9 out
of 10. thanks for watching and if you
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