- Professional swordsman Dave Rawlings broke down 11 sword fights in movies and TV, critiquing their realism and technique.
- Rawlings has over 15 years' experience teaching Western Swordsmanship. He has been featured in the documentary series "Warriors" and "Bloody Tales of the Tower," and teaches longsword at the London Longsword Academy.
- Rawlings looked at the skill of
Henry Cavill in "The Witcher" and Dwayne Johnson in "The Scorpion King." - He also critiqued the realism of scenes from historical and fantasy movies such as "The Mask Of Zorro," "Gladiator," "The Princess Bride," and rated the samurai-sword skill of Keanu Reeves in "47 Ronin" and Uma Thurman in "Kill Bill: Volume 1."
- He analyzed the principles of sword fighting in the "
Die Another Day " fencing scene and the light saber fight in "Star Wars: The Last Jedi." - Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.
Following is a transcript of the
[swords clanking]
David Rawlings: My goodness, this is terrible. There is so much bad in this.
Hi, there. My name's David Rawlings, with the London Longsword Academy. I'm a full-time swordsmanship instructor, and today I'm gonna have a look at a load of clips about sword fighting and slag them off hideously.
"The Witcher" (2019)
So, basically what I have with me here is a longsword. Longsword for me is generally a sword which is held in two hands, so it doesn't matter whether the grip is short or long, it doesn't really matter. You have a pommel, a cross guard, a grip, a blade. Usually within fencing, we divide that into two halves, but different authors divide it into different divisions. So, we'll have a strong half, which is the half from the middle to the hilt, and then from the middle down to the point is the weakest part, and we're just really looking at the geometry and leverage.
You get this big thing in historical European martial arts, as I do, but you're not allowed to carry
I have issues with this particular fight, because there's a lot of reverse grip, with the sword being held backwards down here. It's not a good way for you to use the sword. You sacrifice your ability to fend above, very, very clearly. You have not got any reach. It's not safe. But he's changed grip, yay! Oh, and he's back. I like how he moves. I think he's got a good organic feel to him. Generally, the sword is being moved in front of him, which is a very, very good thing. It's very rarely just kept behind him, so he's closing the space off between him and his opponent with the sword.
One of the things I like about some of "The Witcher"'s fight scenes is that there is this idea of moving between the opponents. And you see this in things like Godinho, where the idea of spinning, something which people really, really quite often frown upon within the HEMA community, is very much used because you're trying to keep opponents away from each other, so it's not just about fighting you and concentrate in moving into you; it's against driving you back and then hitting the next person, the next person, the next person.
So these spinning moves actually become quite important, and this angled, sinister, straight-into-you idea goes out the window. It's not this focus. Suddenly it's much more wide, and it's a flurry. The thing is, is most of my judgment on this fight scene is actually Henry Cavill being very, very good physically. And what is shown in this fight scene being probably the most disappointing fight scene in "The Witcher." So, for Henry Cavill, it's gonna have, like, an eight. For actual quality of fighting, it's gonna have about four.
"Gladiator" (2000)
So, there's bits in there that actually aren't too bad, looking at it. There's evasions of the blade from the emperor, which could be accidental, but you have these movements of just moving around as the parry's coming in. That's actually not too bad. You see this kind of thing quite often. You see it in Destreza when opponents are moving around each other. Where a parry comes in, you disengage underneath as it's happening. So you have potential for some actually quite interesting movements in there.
Good parry. You see that in Talhoffer, usually accompanied by a wrap, because of the closure and the close distance. Kicking up the heels is referred to in quite a few treaties, quite often accompanied by a movement onto the jaw as well.
So potentially within this fight scene, I'd say in those last two actions, from the cover to the kick with the legs and sweeping up of the heels, I'd say those are actually quite good actions. Usually you'd see more control of the opponent's weapon arm, or their balance with the off hand as well, but that part's actually reasonably good. So, for that I'm actually gonna give it a six because I think those two aspects save it slightly
"47 Ronin" (2013)
OK, so, again we've got some very, very good bits on this. The first bit of this is the shunting away of the opponent. I really, really like this. He creates distance between the two opponents. Now, you could argue that maybe he'd want to push the opponents into each other, but he has a very, very good instinctive response. Push one away, get the weapon from it, and then on to the other one. And then a good clean finish on one of the cuts. Nothing posh, just a simple cut of wrath in effect. Pretty good! I'd give that a seven.
I think that's quite a comfortable thing. Again, I think it's very easy within judging this from a HEMA perspective to get very focused on an individual, and this is showing good awareness of space, maintaining that distance, and then simple finishes, nothing posh.
"Die Another Day" (2002)
So, immediately, the first attack is this big, I'll spin at you, I'll expose my back, and the distance is so bad that he could just be stabbed in the back.
Yeah, it's a broadsword or a saber or something, therefore you have to go and cut candles or scenery. You don't use this like this. This is terrible. Quite often in Japanese swordsmanship, you're moving the glass deposits, the slag deposits effectively, silicon deposits that can be in steel. You're moving those throughout the entirety of the length of the blade, and through those foldings, you basically, you spread that out. So you make sure that your blade hasn't got one particular weakness. Now, with European swords, before we had that consistency, we did something very similar, except that we twisted them like string, so that if one thread was weak then that could be a problem in itself, but you have multiple threads, and twisting them around each other, you create something stronger. That said, swords do snap, swords do bend, and there's always a fine point, and you can't guarantee. The process is not perfect, even nowadays with much more clear definitions of how steel should be made and produced, blades still break, so it's not impossible for this to happen.
So, this is where it really gets quite terrible. There's this insane idea that somehow longswords are really heavy, clumsy weapons. They are not! You can move a longsword much more quickly and much more dexterously than you can a rapier. It's still balanced as if to be used in one hand, but you have the advantage of being able to move it around this position of the forward hand. Now, even the most barbaric moment of a longsword, the barbaric technique, we have a technique called the strike of wrath, which is a strike that uses the entirety of the anterior oblique slings. That's the most powerful strike you can do, but it's not done foolishly. It's done as a mechanic. It's a way of claiming space in front of you. Claiming that space for yourself, killing with it if you can, and then going on to pursue your opponent through that. Wide swings don't serve anybody, and they represent the actual piece of equipment very, very poorly.
Doing a spin when you're not engaged with the opponent's blade is insane, because you don't know what their sword is doing. And because you're so close and you don't know where their sword is, obviously they can cut you freely, because they're still facing at you, they still have all of their requisite safety in their hands. Three, four out of 10.
"The Princess Bride" (1987)
This, in case you didn't know it, is the best fight scene ever in any film ever. The fencing in it is completely irrelevant. The fencing is part of a narrative device, it's not meant to overwhelm you, it's just there, happening while the dialogue does.
Inigo: You're using Bonetti's defense against me, huh?
Westley: I thought it fitting, considering the rocky terrain.
David: There's references to Bonetti's defense. I don't even really know what that is. But references to Thibault, and Thibault's one of my favorite systems, but they're not showing any awareness of Thibault. Thibault operates on the idea of the perfect angle that you see in a lot of Spanish swordsmanship and destreza particularly, here where you have a 90-degree angle, which is maintained as much as possible. And you don't make lateral movements with your arms. But all of this is what we call vulgar angles, where the point is higher than the hilt, and lots of lateral movement.
Inigo: Naturally. You must expect me to attack with Capo Ferro.
Westley: Naturally. But I find that Thibault cancels out Capo Ferro.
David: Rapier, some people will call it a side sword. The divisions are really a later thing. We don't worry about it too much. It's a sword that you hold in one hand. Now, again, we have the quillons. Quite often, or it could just be like the cross guard in effect, quite often people would hold this simply like so without their finger over the bars, and these extra rings would be to stop things from landing on your fingers when you're holding the sword normally. And this allows you to put your thumb on there. Later on, you start seeing people holding the sword like so. OK? But it's not universal. Sometimes it is just used like this. OK? Sometimes these are very, very ornate, as you can see here, there's a lot of wire around here. And then sometimes, it's just a simple cup.
Westley: There's something I ought to tell you.
Inigo: Tell me.
Westley: I'm not left-handed either.
David: The idea of being able to fence with both hands shouldn't be necessarily a problem. Fighting somebody who is differently handed to you as well shouldn't be an uncommon experience, so this kind of thing, although it's amusing, you don't want to do this sort of thing at close distance, because obviously while you're busy changing your sword hand, your opponent can stab you and this kind of thing. Here, you have a bit where as the blade comes through, it disengages, so you're having the blade changing from one side to the other. And in order to fight that, what you're doing is, rather than doing lateral parryings like this, you're wrapping the blade and you're staying engaged to it. And that can be used to throw the opponent's sword out their hands. So there's a degree of reality in that. It's good. Technically wise, I'd still give it sort of like a six, seven. Even with its parody fencing, it still has better fencing than a lot of the others.
"Game of Thrones" (2011)
That's quite nice, because in effect, you have a very, very nasty version of a movement of conclusion. This is basically where in using a sword to parry, here we then do something with the off hand. If we were doing Verdadera, the idea would be to restrain the opponent's weapon hand so it can control it. And we can choose whether they live or die, and we can show mercy at this point. If you're doing this, this is lovely. He doesn't have to worry about the guy's off hand so much, because the guy has both hands on the sword, there's a closure off of the line, and the guy giving him the distance. Because he doesn't have to move his feet. The guy's gonna come and hit him anyway. He gets to push it aside. He gets to thrust through. He's got control of the opponent's sword, still, and he gets to finish him. So that, I actually quite like. That's pretty good.
I'm not entirely sure holding your hand palm down with a longsword is a good way not to get the sword taken. Oh, my goodness, this is terrible. There is so much bad in this. Again, we're back on this idea that if you've got a longsword, you have to do this with it, and it has to be wide and spinny, and it has to be these big moves. It's meant to be dexterous. You have this idea that there's basically half an el. The idea of being this kind of space here, rather halfway between here and here. You don't wanna be more than this way far away from your opponent with the point at all times, so if they drive you away, you're trying to find a way to get your point onto them. Most longsword is intrinsically trying to dominate a space very, very close into the corner of your opponent. If they move you sufficiently around, you're immediately back at another opening. If they stay tight on the blade and the angle's tight, just enough to parry like so, you're trying to drive the blade in and still maintain a contact on there. All this wide-around movement is complete nonsense.
OK, knocking the blade down and striking back up. Now, you could argue that this is almost a nodding, in effect. The idea of beating someone's blade down and then hitting back up with the false edge. Here you see where the sword is sweeping wide and one person is standing with their point right in front of the other. You don't parry then come back here. You stand here, and you stab them immediately, because the blade has moved out of presence.
Well, that was good. Yep, if someone has got their back you and you have a spear, do stab them in the back of the leg. That, again, redeeming feature, that's given it another point.
So, I quite like the fight scene between Brienne of Tarth and Arya. I think that's quite good. It's cohesive. It has that real focus to it so the movement is constant. Neither of them is really sacrificing. There's no great pauses. There's always, I want to be back in the fight. I want to be back in it. I do like, in general, the Hound fights because they are just, like, eh, pff, dead. That's good, and I think having that idea that a blade is intrinsically there to either stab someone or hit them with it and remove all the, sort of, like, fussy detail is a very good thing to have in a series.
"The Scorpion King" (2002)
First, the twirling is dreadful. But the blades are all over the place. There's no safety in them. And now, being focused on a single opponent, we could use the sword in a much more efficient way. Even if I were to twirl the swords towards you, you'd always want one blade in presence, always one blade doing something. Never having the swords over here.
At that point, I think the idea of restraining two weapon hands becomes more important than actually taking the weapons out of the hand. So at that point, I would suggest that, potentially, you're looking at a way of either throwing the opponent as far from you as possible. Throwing them down the really big hole on the other side of you might be a good thing. Producer: Do you have a mark out of 10 for that one? David: Uh, two.
"Kill Bill: Volume 1" (2003)
Yep, she's dead now. Yeah, you're really looking at just absolute theater here. And that's fine. It is what it is. But it's terrible, terrible sword fighting. This idea of driving people apart to fight; so, you don't want to be standing still. You don't want people to be managing the space while your space is getting more and more cramped.
One of the things that is misunderstood quite often is that in pattern-welded blades, quite often these were given mirror polishes. And I believe, unless this is anecdotal, that there's reference to people blowing on the blades, so that the breath actually brings out the pattern weld for a moment, so you can see it. So, yeah, blades historically are incredibly highly polished in various different places. Certainly in Japanese swords, that's a thing, certainly European swords, it's a thing.
Interesting tactical decisions here. So you have a point where somebody has control of the blade, and if you think, like, of parrying daggers, you have really options to take the blade of the opponent on your dagger or to take them on your sword and to attack them with the other. But in order to do so, you'd want to maintain that contact. So to do an action like this, with the opponent's blade still directly in the middle, doesn't make any sense, really. So you had a point of control or a point of control, both of those have been sacrificed. It's amazing that one of these people didn't die in the process of this. There should've either been disemboweling or a stab or whichever. Or the other person should've plowed straight through the middle in the space. From the voting viewpoint of a good cohesive fight scene that involves realistic technique, I'm gonna give that two.
"Star Wars: The Last Jedi" (2017)
OK, the first miracle of this fight is they don't manage to kill each other. There are forms which consist about fighting around somebody. Usually that other person is disabled so that they're kind of in a position where you don't have to worry about them. They'll be prone or something like this. Or perhaps you'll be bodyguarding someone, so it's a way of moving around each other. I would not really like to have my back to someone who is swinging something sharp or burning.
So much of this is almost a method to show how he feels. So you have an expression of emotion going on in the fight scenes, rather than necessarily being this very, very tight, cohesive fight. His anger is always explicit. Everything is these wide, powerful slashes that aren't necessarily good for defense. It's so heavily stylized. I think in things like the "Revenge of the Sith," you have these very, very dynamic fight scenes between Obi-Wan and Anakin, and those, I think, are much more expressive at combat, even if the distance is a little bit funny. Even if they're standing toe-to-toe and waving the swords around. There's a lot more aggression and interaction in that. As such, I think I'd give it a five out of 10. As in, it has aspects that I really enjoy.
If I was going for my enjoyment of the fight scene, it would be an eight. I really, really love the Yoda fight scenes. I always have. Again, it's that point where you separate any desire for reality. It doesn't have to be real. You know, if it's got dragons, if it's got the force, it doesn't matter. It has to be something expressive of all the things you want in there
"The Mask Of Zorro" (1998)
Yes, absolutely. If you can cut flesh, you can cut fabric. It's, again, it depends on different things, like how sharp the sword is. But they are made to cut things. The horses were very realistic. Let's give it a one. [producer laughing]
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