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DRAGONMOUNT

A WHEEL OF TIME COMMUNITY

Expectations for Combat in the series


KakitaOCU

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This topic came up in tangent with Lan's portrayal and I thought it warranted it's own discussion. 

 

What do you want to see from weapon skills and battles?  Wheel of Time sets up the imagery for some epic weapon fights.  The way blademasters move is portrayed almost like poetry.  The whirling and spinning of staves gets brought up too.

This will be harder to portray than we think if we don't want a very limited set of weapons, and as episode 4 shows us, they aren't doing that.

The sword forms and the way a blademaster works in Wheel of Time is very evocative of Kenjutsu and its attendant styles.  It's based on the Katana, though it works with any single edged, gentle curving blades.  But will that mean we have to only use katana in one form or another?  What about a dualist with a rapier who is a master of their art?  Or what about a Blademaster in Shienar or Saldaea where we have deliberate leans to greatsword and kukri style weaponry?  Movements with those weapons are VERY different from what Lan and Rand Learn.

Similarly The Ashandarei often gets relegated to a whirling staff that happens to have a sword on the end.  But naginata technique is a very different animal.

So far I have been pleased to see the variety shown but I have seen areas for concern.  The Kenjutsu styled movements from Lan are fairly solid, and I love Ivhon being a speed archer.  But Maksim... Spear is all well and good but we kept cutting to a shield on his arm.  He's not wielding a one handed spear, he fights with it like you would a glaive or naginata, so I'm curious if we'll see the shield drop, or if they just are forcing incompatible tools together.

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I personbally just want to be entertained.

 

Battles on TV shows, like this one, are not going to be much fun if they are realistic. War is hell. Plus we are dealing with alot of magic-battles which by definition are not going to be realistic ?

 

Nah, let it be fanciful and pretty, people jumping unrealistic distances, swinging axes that would be too heavy, covering distances that are impossible.

 

This is a show for escapism ?

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Zero experience in this area but I just want it to look skilled enough and real enough not to break my immersion. I don't actually have any preference in terms of whether they go for gritty realism or flashy flourishes. The actors just need to have had sufficient training to pull off whichever of these the director is going for convincingly.

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This needs to be fluid thought. Rand depends heavily on his sword training for therapeutic reasons as much as survival. And becoming a blade master takes dedication that produces a very poetic result. He becomes “one with the blade”. It becomes an extension of himself. Thom and his knives, Mat with his spear. I do hope they capture the beauty properly. 

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Henry Cavill is a joy to watch move about. It's not totally realistic but choreographed like a dance.

... ehm, which is what Lan calls his fighting, right? Dancing?

 

Anyway, I am just waiting for a clip that will showcase warder fighting or just Lan. I still don't think I've seen enouigh to go on. For me, personally. I like more input.

 

Cavill play fighting is not as entertaining as watching him put together a pc ? Awww, he is so cute when he nerds out.

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4 hours ago, grayavatar said:

Found some footage of Lan fighting

https://i.imgur.com/QZfMTN1.mp4

 

More efficiency of movement and less flailing around is what I expect from warders.

While Geralt's moves are okay....  The fight commits a major sin of movie fights.  The enemies conveniently move up one at a time so that Geralt's twirling and back spins never get him murdered.

The reality is, the Crossbow would have been reloaded and shot twice before he gets to the guy and the at least 2-3 would be rushing him at a time if not more.  

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Yeah the Logain "army" fight was pretty bad and made the Aes Sedai and warders look pretty incomptent ( I mean how far away was their camp from the cave?).  I hope they do better later on (especially Dumai Wells).  The cheap looking weapons (god those horrible toy looking axes) didn't help.

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2 hours ago, Dead Warder said:

usually was brutal and short.

This is what I want to see. A flurry of quick strikes, blocks, hits and a killing blow. Shouldn't last longer than a few seconds unless it's blademaster agains blademaster. I loved Tam's fighting style.

 

Disclaimer: I have no experience with any combat. I have watched a few videos where experts tell and show how actual swordfights are

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I don't think realistic combat is a total non-starter. It worked fine for Band of Brothers and The Pacific. The Bourne trilogy somewhat revolutionized spy movies for a minute with more realistic fighting than we'd seen in earlier movies (short, brutal fights with lots of grappling), but also popularized shaky cam and short angles that isn't a great trend.

 

But there is a lot of not at all realistic scenes that should be coming up. Rand flies and brings down thousands of lightning bolts at a time. He tears down a mountain. Some of that is going to be Superman versus Captain Marvel. It'd be nice if it looked a little less cartoonish than MCU and DCEU, but I'm not sure how to do it in any remotely realistic looking way.

 

Army on army, I'd settle for at least as good as Vikings, which mostly had pretty small armies but the combat was realistically portrayed. Nobody was superhuman, they didn't dodge a thousand arrows, guys dried from infected wounds, etc.

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I just finished the second season of See and to my mind this is some of the best choreographed combat scenes in any tv series and many films. 
 

while the actual nature of the story mean it is very different to other fight scenes (most people being blind makes for an amazing feel as everyone tries to stay silent). The thing I loved was how real and visceral it felt. 
 

If the feel of this could be followed in WOT that would be amazing. 

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2 hours ago, Dead Warder said:

e.g The Last Duel (2021) is a fairly good representation of small scale melee combat. Quite gritty & gruesome with a substantial amount of realism. Add some Aes Sedai One Power in the mix and you have a good reason to piss in your popcorn.

 

I know, the example is a different production, director and budget.

Didn't that film also bomb at the box office? 

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1 hour ago, SinisterDeath said:

Didn't that film also bomb at the box office? 


It did, and Ridley Scott blamed the millennials and their smartphones:
https://www.ign.com/articles/ridley-scott-blames-the-last-duels-box-office-failure-on-millennials

(Writing that sentence above reminded me of Scooby Doo villains:
"I'd have gotten away with it if it weren't for these meddling kids!")

I haven't seen it yet, but its (still) on my list to watch.  I'm from a generation loooong before the millennials.  Just haven't taken the time to see it yet.

Edited by 2RiversFan
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14 hours ago, AdamA said:

[...]

Army on army, I'd settle for at least as good as Vikings, which mostly had pretty small armies but the combat was realistically portrayed. Nobody was superhuman, they didn't dodge a thousand arrows, guys dried from infected wounds, etc.

Yes, but this (WoT) is still fantasy and in many ways Vikings was a fantasy tale (but more along the lines that the characters thought of themselves as supernatural anyway: I mean, they claimed they were descended from gods. Boasted about that. But it was entertaining.)

 

Someone ( @AdamA ? ) also mentioned that most battles, especially one-on-many, suffers from the enemy coming at the hero one at a time. Yes: this is the only way you can depict a battle or fight on screen. Because the battle is there for storytelling purposes.

 

Same as sex scenes. I have seen no realistic sex scenes in tv series ? I may have seen one or two in films that are cute and accurate, and maybe none of those scenes actually thrilled an audience. But they are there for story telling and a means to transport the audience away.

 

Realistic and brutal battles are not fun viewing, I am 100% sure. Even if I have never seen an actual battle, I know enough to know that no one watches that for entertainment. If one does enjoy that, I would humbly suggest maybe think about why.

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1 hour ago, Daenelia said:

Realistic and brutal battles are not fun viewing, I am 100% sure. Even if I have never seen an actual battle, I know enough to know that no one watches that for entertainment. If one does enjoy that, I would humbly suggest maybe think about why.

You made me think of the battle in GoT where Jon Snow's army got surrounded by the shields and were trapped. The battle was awkward and uncomfortable to watch. It made me feel claustrophobic even, but at least it made me feel something.

 

With WoT even when people die I barely feel invested in any character. I did like how Logain wept when he got gentled it was a nice touch. I saw an Aes Sedai get shot with arrows and mentally shrugged not knowing who she was or if she will survive, I think she was a green, what about her warders. Who cares she's an extra, lets focus on Stepin instead.

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10 minutes ago, grayavatar said:

You made me think of the battle in GoT where Jon Snow's army got surrounded by the shields and were trapped. The battle was awkward and uncomfortable to watch. It made me feel claustrophobic even, but at least it made me feel something.

 

With WoT even when people die I barely feel invested in any character. I did like how Logain wept when he got gentled it was a nice touch. I saw an Aes Sedai get shot with arrows and mentally shrugged not knowing who she was or if she will survive, I think she was a green, what about her warders. Who cares she's an extra, lets focus on Stepin instead.

That GoT battle is in S6E9, right? Fair to compare to WoT S1E4. ?

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@grayavatar are you using Jon Snow's battle (battle of the bastards?) (which was awesomely choreographed) as an example of fake or real battles?

 

I do agree with you that it made you feel something, that is what it was designed to do. Also, by then we as audience had invested 6 seasons worth of feels. I hated Ramsey, totally uncoditionally, feeling that he was capable of anything. Mainly due to the actor, who I know is more of a nice guy (thankfully).

 

But Jon did run under a rain of arrows and fell of his horse, with no arrow sticking in him.

 

And then there were lots of horses riding back and forth across the screen. It hints at battle, pain and death, but it's filmed so hecticaly (and brilliantly) that it is your mind filling in the blanks. And if a show can do that, they really don't need to show a lot. Our minds are pretty powerful for special effects departments.

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