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The Last Kingdom did such a good job showing how
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Mundane medieval warfare was since it really wasn’t often grand scaled. Post Roman Europe was mostly small skirmishes with occasionally large scale warfare, but it was few and far between until probably Charlemagne (citation needed. I am NOT a military history guy.)
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Brutal. There was no even match up. It was either a one sided slaughter or the battle didn’t happen.
Point two is important. When your force is so small that a single pitched battle is pretty much it for either side, you don’t really want to roll those dice unless you really like your odds
Likewise, how “few” casualties there were in actual battle. Fiction shows both sides duking it out until they’re both effectively wiped out. In real life, if 10% of an army was dead or incapacitated, the battle was over. There would be a rout, a retreat, and depending on the details, another battle a few days or weeks later.
And if you were a knight of nobility you would surrender with the expectation to be ransomed.
Remember limited warfare? That was awesome.
Yeah turns out seeing your buddies get stabbed isn’t great for morale.
Very true!
A fighting retreat is an incredibly difficult maneuver to pull off, but if managed, it means that what could have been an utter massacre is reduced to simply damaging. A commander - and a military force - that knows when to fold 'em in that context of high-casualty retreats is worth their weight in gold.
Contrary to what movies generally show, there’s a time after battle, and most of the time there were more than two factions at play in a given region.
If you go all-in on one battle, and both factions battle to the last man then (a) you won’t have anyone to do the next harvest and (b) you won’t have anyone who could defend against any random third party to swoop in and easily take both factions’ land.
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I’ll never forget going to see the movie 300 in the theaters. Cuz I was a huge fan of the book
The HotGates of Fire so anything involving the battle of Thermopylae I’m there for. But I knew nothing aboutStevenFrank Miller, and of course I knew nothing about Zack Snyder. And admittedly things were looking bad when they were all you know not wearing armor, but there was a second right when the battle started that gave me so much hope. Because for that one second you know they say push and they all push forward together like an actual phalanx battle for a second. I was so excited . Finally a movie showing actual Greek battle . And then of course the rest of the movie 300 happens.Now don’t get me wrong as the movie progressed I realized oh this is something else and I was silly to ever expect anything different. I was able to enjoy it for what it was. But I’ll never forget that crestfallen feeling for that one moment.
But I knew nothing about Stephen Miller
Do you mean Frank Miller, the writer and illustrator of the comics? Stephen Miller, the Nazi, would have been in college when the movie came out.
Looks like Steven Pressfield and Frank Miller got blended together there
There might be more overlaps in that diagram than you would expect
My favorite part of 300 was the dance battle.
Oh no! I can imagine your state and even share some of it with you.
However the situation itself is quite comedic, especially if one checks all other Snyder’s movies. You made my day :3
The Hot Gates by William Golding?
Oh you know what? I’m thinking of Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield actually.
Thanks!
i thought them being naked was the whole point? /s
HBO’s Rome has the second one. But on account of their smaller budget, you only really see a very zoomed in section of it all. Still a great attention to detail, as most things in that show.
Great show. Name a more iconic bromance, I’ll wait.
JD & Turk. Those guys can’t be beat for bromance. “It’s guy love between two guys”
Such a pity that they had to compress two seasons worth of story into one and when they wanted to do more, their giant Rome set burned down (ironic though it is).
Achilles and Patroclus?
I
lovehate how in movies and tv shows about old times warfare there are all of these maps everywhere and in depth discussions of how they’re going to beat the enemy, discussion of battle tactics, etc. and the only real tactics we see in execution are when which side decides to charge in an undisciplined massAlso the spinning. It was truly a sad day in history when weaponry and martial arts split from dancing. While ballerinas did master the art of spinning, its loss in warfare can still be seen to this day.
Edit: I should mention that spinning is a good trick.
Anakin brought that technique back
And in the middle of the pitched set of duels, most times an important character struggles, another one will show up just in time to save them, maybe exchange some words, and then split back up to wade back into the series of duels (to cover more ground).
Also everyone knows what’s going on, who is the enemy and who is an ally, and orders are clearly yelled out and quickly followed with minimal confusion. There’s a good chance that some characters are carrying out a conversation.
Bonus cool points if the two conversing warriors intuitively do a tag-team switch attack at some point (I attack your guy, you attack my guy finishing move)!
Don’t forget that moment where the main character stands there looking at all the fighting happening around them in slow motion for a solid 30 seconds without getting slaughtered.
It’s to do with visual style but also with logistics when filming. It’s more manageable if you have stuntmen working in pairs.
Me and a friend were hired as extras for a big Hollywood film and saw some of this stuff.
I remember they had to cut at one point though because another extra thought it was just a big free-for-all and decked one of the stunt guys with a giant rubber crucifix.
Not only is it not accurate, it’s also not very interesting. It means that the warriors only use duelling weapons, rarely halberds, spears, etc. because those aren’t as good as swords in duels.
Would be funny to see one side only readying themselves for the second type of battle, while the other is in Phallanx.
Normally the second case would only happen when most people are dead and all formations are broken and the only few remaining are fighting until the last one standing, which, why would someone do?
But this way, the second case would never occur as the duel-searchers won’t have the tools to break the Phallanx
The second method provides a greater reactive surface areas, so if you want the particles to react and annihilate each other more quickly, that is a more suitable approach.
Oh they were people?
Well, my monitor only goes up to 1080pBerserk actually features multiple battle scenes with (seemingly, as I don’t have much knowledge on the subject) good formation and tactics.
TV Shows and Age of Empires I intro
Pulse-pounding!
Chinese movies, historical and fantastic, have a raging hard on for rows and rows of faceless mooks pushing against each other. Only the leader is allowed to have individual fights. You want the historical approach, you look at China. It’s the whole Confucianism root.
Sure, but that would be boring to watch
Hard disagree. It’s a matter of treating it differently.
How would you know? We’ve never had a chance to watch it.
Sir, I’ve had the troops assemble into a shield wall. We’re ready for the enemy’s advance.
Perfect, captain. Now tell the elves to jump over the shield wall and go stab some dudes.
The defence rests, Your Honor.
Sometimes, a video is all you need.
This is indeed excellent, dramatic, intense. Not boring at all.
That makes me think: Game of Thrones also has excellent scenes of pitched battles.
Imagine a piece of the scale and scope (including of historical accuracy) of Waterloo (1970) done with modern techniques.
