Stage Fencing and Martial Maidens

For that matter, I am always slightly “taken out of the movie” when the hero is flat on his back parrying the incoming blade. I would have to be a really, really bad fencer not to be able to score a touch on a target who was on his back and could not lunge or retreat. You have foot control: you can establish the distance and strike at leisure. What about hitting him in the meaty part of the thigh, from the left? How is he going to parry that?

You would never, ever take off your helmet during combat, unless you were suicidal, but in a film the audience has to see the handsome actor’s face to see his emotions and reactions.

I thought the duel between Miraz and Peter was well done. They seemed evenly matched, they got winded and got wounded; it seemed like  a real fight. Peter’s youth and vim was almost overmatched by the cunning, reach, and strength of Miraz. I could pick nits and make minor complaints, by why should I? It was a good scene despite any minor flaws.

Let me emphasize again, these are very, very minor objections. Even really good stage fencing is juststage fencing, not real fencing. It is a movie; it is supposed to look good, and PRINCE CASPIAN, in my opinion, looks really good.

Not every movie can have a fencing scene like the dread pirate, Roberts, facing Inugo Montoya atop the Cliffs of Insanity as in PRINCESS BRIDE.

I unfortunately have a deep-seated mistrust of teen-girl warrior-glamor-models, which is a very popular trope these days. It is an article of faith with some people that young girls are equal to professional soldier, strong as linebakers, tall as bold grenadiers, tough as Marines, mean as Viking berserkers.

Now, a well-trained girl against an untrained man, I would believe the girl could hand him his head on a platter. Training counts for a lot. Even an athletic guy with good reflexes holding a sword for the first time cannot lay a blade on someone with as little as a year or two sword practice. He does not know how to stand or hold the weapon.

But a short and slight girl, even well trained, against a linebacker in forty pounds of plate armor, him with buckler and broadsword, her with a slim and unsharpened stick? Let her stand back and shoot him with a bow, and give him an nice puncture wound to the lungs or heart– that I can well believe will knock him off his feet and put him in his grave. A hard slap with a wand to his helmet? I don’t see how that would deck him. Boxers have to be hit in the face pretty often & pretty hard before they see stars.

Again, we are talking about a movie. The same blow, if filmed from a different angle, or with a different sound effect, might look more realistic. Make it look like he is being hit in the throat rather than the gorget. Part of the art of convincing the audience is establishing the character: I am willing to believe the four-pound superninja death-mouse with his letter opener can kill a grown Telmarine. But Susan was established to be an archer, not a Kung Fu killgoddess. I assume she can shoot like Robin Hood– she has the skills and memory of a grown up Queen, and a Queen of Narnia, too, and her bow was given her by Father Christmas himself.

As a viewer, I am not hard to please, not hard to convince. But the movie maker has to give me something to work with.

I will happily suspend all sorts of disbelief for a good cause, or for the sake of a good story. The theme of the Martial Maiden is as old as Brandemart and Britomart, Camilla and Penthelisea. Give me something to work with, and I can suspend my disbelief like a champ. Britomart had a magic lance; Pentethelisea was a daughter of Mars, a war-god.

But just the casual assumption that young glamor models fight as well as tall and bulky veteran thugs is too arrogant an assumption for me to swallow casually: it stinks of Political Correctness, which I call that special art of pretending unreality so blindly that one feels free to be offended with the obvious.