Last Duel film weapons and armour review with Curatorial Assistant Eleanor Wilkinson-Keys 

Better than nothing lol

@@tufftraveller4784 oh yeah I'm glad to have this, just saying I struggled to understand some parts due to mic quality

Yeah would love if she had same kind of setup as big j

@@daweqa2406 Big J. XD

@@MetalGamer666 yeah Jonathan has his setup in order. She should ask to use that setup

Always my question as well. It's not like the information isn't literally at their fingertips.

I think a they have to make use of a few things that are available in an allotted time frame . It take way longer to make everything ftom scratch thats completely historically accurate. The story is of the duel not the equipment used during the time period.

It's not that easy. You need time and permission to use the correct armour especially. But the biggest problem of all is that the armour is a big problem for the actors. In fact, Ridley Scott said that they tried to follow the exact same description of the books and of the historical recountings but Adam Driver and Matt Demon could barely move in the original armour. So they decided to change the armour design and to choose them more based on aesthetics than historical accuracy

@@karimrashidpour9378 that's all nonsense sorry. I know more than a bit about medieval armour, it's not so restrictive anyone can "barely move". That's just an old Hollywood trope for lazy costumes. Permission? WTF are you on about?

@@TheAegisClaw agreed. I've been making armour for nearly 30 years. With today's technology, for the sake of the actors, they could make plastic reproductions that looked exactly like historical pieces. At least they could have made accurate harness for the two main characters, and if done properly would not have hindered movement.

One thing I will say. Is that this happens everywhere, not just in 'far flung past' pieces. Some things are done artistically, some things are done because they don't have a full experts. And even if it's a passion project, sometimes certain things slip a director's mind for accuracy, or budget gets away for the cost of what hiring an expert for props alone can be. Even big name directors don't always have the budget (or consider it initially in the budget) for the high accuracy research beyond the most important parts. And you have to remember the term "Based on" when taking things into account. Not everything is Black Hawk Down or Band of Brothers in the level of accuracies. And I'm not even saying that because they're things that have happened in the last 30-80 years with high documentation. There are plenty of war movies that are based on true events that get massive numbers of things wrong on the details because it's about the story and the action/spectacle more than anything.

I have to agree

Maybe but the facts that sometimes the inaccurancy is intended. They don't care.

Good points, especially the the one about Iron Man helmet shots. I would add the suggestion to use distinct enough helmets and armor to make it clear who is who in other scenes. They managed to pull that off quite well in _Knight's story,_ I think, where the main antagonist had gear that stood out so we could recognize him even with his helmet and (full) visor. More saturated colours could help too. It's much harder to distinguish heraldic clues in the gear when everything is grey.

That's not the complete reason. He also said that they tried to follow initially the historical descriptions for the armour but it was extremely difficult for the actors to have any mobility in them. So they changed them to be more suitable for them. Now, because the armours themselves were not historically accurate anymore, he decided to have a creative and aesthetic pass also for the helmets. That is why he chose these designs. It's not about him thinking that he knows better but it's more about him taking a decision as a director and as an artist seeing how the first option, the historical one, was not available anymore

@@karimrashidpour9378 I don’t think he really did any actual research into arms and armor if this is the case. The armor they tried using was probably either poorly fitted or made incorrectly. Actual 14th century armor really isn’t that hard to move around in, and isn’t all that uncomfortable (if it’s fitted correctly that is). The only difficulty in terms of mobility they would run into is if they were using great helms. But even then they could have used visor-less hounskulls, or raised visor bascinets and still had it be period accurate / look good, and show the actors faces. Another strange thing that makes their decision of not using historical pieces instead of fantastical / mismatched pieces due to their “weight” or “immobility” unlikely, is that they could have used lightweight materials instead of steel. (Although the armor weight really isn’t that bad, and mobility wouldn’t be an issue). I think that it is more likely that when they made this movie, they knew that the majority of people watching it wouldn’t be knit picking the historical accuracy of the armor being used (since most people don’t know too much about the topic anyways). It’s also cheaper to make what they have the actors wearing, rather than fitted historical pieces. Or as previously stated, they probably just don’t know enough about historical armor / didn’t research it, and the attempts from the costume department were probably lead by misconceptions about how armors of the period were meant to look / function. All of these factors probably contributed to be honest. But if they had followed actual armor designs of the time, I have little doubt there wouldn’t be very many complaints from anyone over how it fitted, or it inhibiting movement.

There are videos of guys rolling and jumping around in realistic medieval full plate armor. Actual armor would also have been designed to allow mobility doing the same kinds of things the actors would be doing and I imagine the costumes they would use wouldn't be using as heavy materials.

@@sungodra1226 ironic how the director is lashing out at the apparent audience for the movie to flop and accusing them of not wanting to learn - but to this end makes such glaring inaccuracies in terms of the armor.. I wont nitpick, I liked the movie and the settings were beautiful.

@@sungodra1226 Totally agree with all of this. Good comment.

Well they should really have approached their French equivalent

I agree and notice how Matt Damon's character has a scar on his face on the same side as the open side of the helm, tells you all you need yo know about it.

hardly a half helmet, the shape was pretty good just far more open also to late for the Troy era but far better then no helmet

I'll always admire Karl Urban for not taking off his helmet in Dredd.

I get where you're coming from, but with the character Judge Dredd, the helmet is his face in a way. You know exactly who he is when you see the helmet because it embodies his cold cruel form of justice. In films showing combat in the mediaeval period, however, helms are fairly universal and the men (of the same region) who can afford the latest fashion and technology will tend to be wearing very similar helms. Nobles were identified by the heraldry on their shield, armour, standard, and so forth, but modern audiences aren't keyed into heraldry as an identifier. So film-makers, for better or for worse, are forced to make the faces of key characters visible by some artifice or other. Now a character like The Mountain in Game of Thrones is an exception because his physical presence makes him instantly recognisable with or without his face being visible.

@@Auriflamme I was mainly talking about the juducial combat part of the movie with only two characters in armour. I don't know how involved the other combat scenes are.

it's not all that historically accurate, but it is a lot better than films used to be. I hope that things continue to get better.

@@mattgustafson4956 Compared to Kingdom of Heaven the armour is terrible.

An easy way to see the actors faces is to have the helms knocked off.

Buy one for them?

@@tufftraveller4784 would you like to buy one for them?

Look at the horse, wrong end for a head.

@@BlendyStick DOH! I see your point.

Tim Lewis was "master armourer" for this shameful show. He "masterarmoured" "armours" for Netflix "Cursed" series, and now is working on "House of Dragons".

Better than nothing. Why don't you buy the museum one? ;)

@@tufftraveller4784 If the collection toured to Australia I probably would.

The duel that inspired this film pretty illustrates a big problem with Trial by Combat- a lot of the contemporary sources suggest that Carrouges made up the allegations against Le Gris because he had a longstanding grudge against him and knew he was a more experienced fighter than him so thought he would probably win the fight. If you were hard enough you could just go around legally murdering people you didn't like.

@@chrisball3778 I do agree that solving arguments by trial of combat is slightly archaic. I do however think if a pair of idiots want to sort it out that way, well why not. Judge should just give them an order and they can face off.

The is no reason to use a rondel dagger in unarmored combat. That what things like bollock daggers where for. Rondel daggers are specifically made to generate a lot of pressure to penetrate weaker parts of the armor, hence the disk.