Prop Master and Historian Fact Check Weapons from 'Game of Thrones' to '300' | Vanity Fair

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[screaming]
[blood splatters]
- You'll probably be surprised to know
that very little of this is historical.
- Come and get them!
- Ya, ya!
- Just a flesh wound.
[sword scrapes]
[crowd cheers]
- I'm Larry Zanoff,
Lead armorer at Independent Studio Services
the largest prop house in the world.
- And I'm Kelly Devries,
professor of history at Loyola University Maryland
and honorary historical consultant
for The Royal Armouries, UK,
Today, we're going to review arms and armor
from film and TV.
- Both from a prop maker's perspective
- And a historian's perspective.
"A Knight's Tale"
[crowd cheering]
[dramatic orchestral music]
[horse whinnies]
- [Larry] So, from a prop making perspective, of course,
this is a very difficult scene.
We have real horses charging at each other,
we got real guys mounted on top of 'em.
[crowd cheers]
If you look real good on these particular lances,
they are breakaway props
and they've actually been stuffed
with a form of dry spaghetti.
So that when it shatters,
you get that classic splintering
that occurs on camera.
Any time you can film something for real
it's better than CGI,
so that's one of the tricks we use
to be able to film a real joust
but without injuring anyone
and still get that kinda
spectacular explosion.
Very dynamic
and if gives you the feel of how much force
is behind
the lance as it hits and shatters.
Multiples upon multiples would've been created
by the prop crew,
by the prop makers,
months and months and months before.
- Not that far off from what a medieval tournament
would've been. - Correct.
- Because, every knight wouldn't shown up with
multiple lances
expecting to break them on contact.
- And you are?
- Ulrich von Lichtenstein from Gelderland.
- Ulrich vo Lichtenstein, Heath Ledger,
is a professional tournamenter.
He goes from tournament to tournament to tournament.
Well these guys, that's how they made their living.
And so they had a term for them.
They were called "free lancers".
Consequently, the term has come down
free lancers, somebody working
on contract
for victory in a tournament in this case.
[crowd cheers]
And we have to remember,
the tournaments are games.
That's all they are,
they're martial games.
Nobody is supposed to die in these.
On the other hand,
you see the blow to the face.
The blow to the face is very interesting
because when the knights were jousting
they would have a small shield on them
called a targe,
which was a target,
and the only points they could score
is if they hit that
or they hit the face.
You scored no points if you hit the torso
and if you hit the arms
you sometimes lost points.
So, this point that he takes right in the face
is very accurate.
I wonder now a days,
we're so conscious about concussion protocols
and I think,
how many of these knights getting hit in the face
say, "Oh, you get the points."
and the other guy is really in concussion protocol
at that point.
"Game of Thrones"
[intense drumming]
[arrows whizzing]
- Yah, yah!
- "Game of Thrones" is what we call medievalism.
It isn't set in the Middle Ages,
but it is using medieval weapons,
medieval armor,
medieval tendencies.
Jon's brother is running away from Ramsay Bolton
who's going to shoot arrows at him.
Big mistake he makes is he runs in a straight line.
Don't run in a straight line
if you're being shot at with a bow.
The technique here is good.
The bow is weird.
How exactly this bow is made.
But it is a longbow of sorts.
And he is pulling it back as far as he can.
And he gets quite a great distance on it.
[arrow whizzes]
The swords themselves are pretty accurate.
These are hand-and-a-half sword,
which is the most common sword in the Middle Ages.
That's not their term, that's ours.
But that meant that it could be used with
one or two hands.
And we often see the sword being wielded
by Jon or by anybody else
with one or two hands.
The other thing I like about this
is Ramsay has a dagger.
Now, it's not the way a medieval knight
would have worn it.
He would have worn it down the left thigh.
But he does have a dagger
and you can see how sharp and long it is
because that's the death dealing weapon
in the Middle Ages.
A lot of scenes in medieval battles
never shows what is probably one of the
worst things on the battle field
which is thirst.
Medieval battles were often very short,
but if it went on for very long,
the aspect of thirst and fatigue
took over so much.
We have scenes in medieval chronicles where
the soldiers are sucking the hilts of their swords
to get the little bit of moisture out of the leather
in order to keep going,
in order to not die of thirst.
- There's the one famous problem that we have
as Jon Snow's jumping up onto his horse
and he's got a floppy sword, right?
- There was a lot of talk about this on the internet.
People were going, "Oh, look,
"They forgot to put the sword into his scabbard."
But that's not true.
'Cause if you look at the clip,
you can actually see the grip of the sword
and the crossbar of the hilt
at the top of the scabbard.
And yet the scabbard is flapping around
like there's nothing in it.
There's a perfectly logical explanation for this.
The reason that it flops around like
there's no blade inside
is because there's no blade inside.
[Kelly laughs]
This wouldn't been a stunt rig
that has a handle as if there's a sword
in the scabbard
but there's no blade attached to that handle.
And there's several different reasons
why that may have occurred.
Later on in the scene,
his horse stumbles and he kinda does
one of these hero moment somersaults
right off of the horse.
[horse neighs]
That would've been a very difficult,
if not downright dangerous
thing for the actor or stunt person
to do.
And normally when you have big scenes like this
the film maker will always want to do
one or two what we call "master shots"
where it's big, wide shot
from start to finish.
And so there was no room to cut
in between him hopping on the horse
and him falling off the horse
to change out that stunt blade.
So, it's more a safety issue.
It's not an issue of neglect.
It wasn't like the prop crew forgot
about putting,
I mean, this is Jon Snow,
Longclaw is his sword.
It's made of Valyrian steel.
It doesn't flop around like that.
But in this particular case,
the safety overruled what they were doing
as far as the prop itself.
[horses galloping]
- [Kelly] "Gladiator".
We're in the middle imperial period
Roman history.
Maximus has been captured
and sold as a slave into the gladiator arena
as many slaves were.
And we see him in his first gladiatorial bout.
- The movie is "Gladiator"
and there's a lot of props in it.
But, what's the main prop gonna be?
- [Kelly] It's the gladius.
- [Larry] It's gonna be the gladius, exactly.
- [Kelly] I mean, gladiators are called gladiators
because they used the gladius.
- [Larry] Exactly.
- [Kelly] They made them in an industrial fashion
with a low carbon iron for the blade,
not particularly sharp,
and a wooden hilt
that was not particularly varied.
Roman soldiers show up,
here's your gladius.
Almost like a GI might get a gun, or whatever.
- The Roman Empire was built on the gladius,
a short, thrusting sword, and yet,
here he is with these big wide arcs,
and he's slashing and cutting.
[crowd shouting] [man grunting]
[sword slashes and clinks]
And it just wasn't designed for that.
- It would have been used behind a shield,
shield protecting the soldier,
soldier using a sharp point
to kill his opponent
or wound his opponent
and move forward.
This is not the way he would've used it.
- Are you not entertained?
- Unfortunately, we can't use real swords
in that,
in our version of the fight.
So we do things like,
we dull down the edges.
That allows the actor to have the real
weight of the sword.
Gives them the feeling of really being
in a sword fight.
We'll also make an aluminum version
so you can actually
do stage combat.
Contact with the blades.
And then we'll probably do a rubber
or maybe even a retractable.
So you can stab someone and pull it out
without actually injuring the actors.
And if you watch the scene itself,
there's that classic Hollywood,
you can almost see where the sword is going
right under the armpit of the guy on the far side
of the camera
and he kinda traps it there.
- Maximus slashes a couple of times,
which isn't real,
and then he does exactly what
he would have been trained to do
which is to thrust with those swords.
- You can see,
he's actually stabbing something.
There's a little bit of movement
in the blades.
But that could actually be from
what they were stuck in.
Chances are these were actually stuck into
a mannequin.
And so they're just hangin' there in the mannequin wobbling.
And, of course, if I stabbed you right now
with a gladius - Don't.
- It would probably just - Please don't.
- Wobble just a bit.
You know.
So, this is as close as you can get in film making
to actually stabbing someone in the arena
and seeing what that would be like.
It's very well done in this film.
- Yeah, it's almost disappointing afterwards, then,
to see the decapitation,
because that does look bad.
[metallic clank]
- The decapitation scene,
for me is really bad.
First of all, like we said,
the gladius was probably not sharp enough
to actually be able to do that.
Even if Roman gladiuses were
it's not a slashing weapon,
it's a stabbing or thrusting weapon.
And then lastly,
he's taking the two swords
and he's cutting inward.
Your body is limiting your slash
so you're robbing yourself of energy.
If anything,
and outward cut would've been,
maybe giving him a little bit of
an edge [Kelly laughs]
to be able to get this done.
But, that, to me,
just went that one step too far, I agree.
[soldiers clash shields and shout]
- [Kelly] "300"
- Remember this day, men.
For it will be yours
for all time.
- [Kelly] The most famous battle in the ancient world.
Here we see Leonidas
with his 300 Spartans
in the Hot Gates,
which is what Thermopylae was called,
and you can still see 'em today.
In "Gladiator",
the main weapon is the gladius,
the sword.
In ancient Greek warfare,
it was the hoplite was the main soldier
and he carried a hoplon.
Deriving his name from the shield.
The very important armor that
protected him in all of his conflicts.
There are all pretty men in this film.
And I'm not saying that the Spartans themselves
weren't pretty,
but clearly Hollywood is wanting to show
the chest muscles.
No self respecting Spartan ever would've gone into
a battle without having torso armor on.
I like the fact that Leonidas
has put his troops in this kind of
modified phalanx.
- Your father should have taught you
how a phalanx works.
- Phalanx was a triangular formation where
the lead man
would have his shield overlap
the one behind him
and the one behind him
and that would be filled
so it wasn't hollow,
but it was a full group of men
formed in that triangular manner.
And they would hit another phalanx
or hit another unit
and push them into their direction
while using their spears behind their shields
in order to mow down the front ring.
It's kind of a moveable field fortification.
With the shields.
- And, correct me if I'm wrong,
but the strength of the phalanx was,
it wasn't just the front row with the spear.
The spears were long enough
that you had three or four ranks
reaching through.
And so you're attacking this
giant porcupine of spears.
It's not something the enemy
would really want to run up against.
It would be tough to defeat them in battle.
- So, spears they use.
That's a main offensive weapon.
It's a wooden shaft with a
metal tip as we can see.
Those are the ones we can always see on screen.
And they're pretty good.
What is less known
is that there's also a tip at the end.
And this goes into the ground
and so the hoplite can actually use this
coming out
and use the pressure of the ground
as well as his own thrusting.
- [Larry] To reinforce.
- To reinforce and also to help stop
the phalanx from being pushed back too far.
- One good example of the movie making process
slipping in is the shields.
Some of them were sourced as leftovers
from the movie "Troy".
Because it's expensive.
Just like back then it was expensive
to make shields,
it's expensive to make 'em now.
But the give away for me
as far as it being a prop really,
is the uniformity.
Every one of them
has that great lambda on them.
Which wasn't even necessarily historically correct
for that period.
If you had
every shield individualized
like they probably did back then,
it would become very expensive for the prop makers.
The spears, of course,
we see some of then shattering.
Those would've had to have been breakaways.
Purposely made props
that are prescored in some way
to shatter at a specific point.
'Cause we can't just have it shatter,
we have to have it shatter
at the same point
over and over and over again
because we do take two,
take three, take four, take five.
It's just an immense amount of effort
gets poured into making the props.
And then you kind of jump 30% more
to give yourself a cushion.
Because there's always that unknown
that can happen out on the set.
We have a saying in the prop world,
"If you have one, you have none."
- This is where they die!
- "Monty Python and the Holy Grail".
[swords clashing]
You'll probably be surprised to know
that very little of this is historical.
The scene is made for the ridiculous.
[helmet clangs]
There are things we can learn.
You'll notice the swords.
Of course, they're both doing
this is a sword duel
and then the swords are going to be
preposterously sharp.
They're too long.
That we should say off the bat.
But,
the interesting thing is
how if you wanted to kill somebody
on the battlefield in the Middle Ages
how would you do it?
And you had a dagger.
And very few people killed with a sword.
If you've got your opponent demobilized
and they're on the ground or whatever,
bring out your dagger,
go into the carotid artery
go into the underarm, into the heart.
Go up the groin and into the femoral artery.
Or, always a good choice,
the knife in the eye.
The reality of medieval warfare
is not many people died.
And the reason they didn't die
is that everybody was worth money.
The better your armor was,
the better your weapons were,
was a sign that you could pay for yourself
being captured
and therefore not die.
There's actually a name derived from this
which is called "blackmail".
In a tournament,
the victor won the armor of the opponent.
And he could sell it back to him.
In fact, he didn't want an extra pair
of armor around,
so he would sell it back to the opponent
and this became known as "blackmail".
The reason why is because the men who were seated
in these tournaments usually wore black mail
because they didn't polish their armor.
And thus we get blackmail.
[blood splatters]
- Clearly, we're not cutting arms
and limbs off of an actor,
but we've faked it
very effectively, I think,
in some way.
We got the geyser of blood pumping out.
- Victory is mine!
- That's obviously either a hose
that's connected off camera
to a special effects apparatus
that's pumping the blood,
or within the wardrobe,
they could've hidden
different blood packs
and they guy has kind of a little hand pump
and he's squirting that out.
We get down to the scenes where he's go no legs.
The actor, obviously, they dug a hole
and he's standing down in the hole
and it looks like he's standing on the
stumps of his,
you know,
of his legs.
- All right, we'll call it a draw.
- [Kelly] 'Maximillian"
[rain pours] [swords clash]
- When I first saw this scene,
I was just blown away.
It's just very, very impressive.
The number one thing that jumps out at me
about this scene is
it's raining.
[intense drums]
That's not real rain,
that's a rain effect.
We can control this rain.
It can be raining all day long
on that set.
That means the stunt people,
the crew that are surrounding them,
all the background actors,
they're all getting drenched.
There might've been some protective clothing
underneath the armor.
Electric battery warming socks
and things like that to keep,
maybe even a wet suit,
to try to keep the actors dry.
Because it is very fatiguing
to work under those conditions.
Also, the props themselves
don't always stand up very well
in those rainy conditions.
Metal, of course, rusts.
Rubber swords that are painted,
the paint would start bubbling up
and everything.
And then not the least of which
is continuity-wise.
Puddles on the ground are gonna be
getting bigger and smaller
depending on the stage of the battle.
And when you go back to do take two,
take three, take four,
you always want to start out
at the same continuity point.
So, there's a lot of stuff going on
in this scene
and it's done very, very well.
- Of all the scenes we've seen,
this is by far the most accurate.
[swords clashing] [rain pouring]
I'd say this maybe the most accurate scene
I've seen in any Hollywood production
or any movie production of the Middle Ages.
Whoever has gone out and acquired the armor.
You can see the way that it folds over the body
and how fluid it is,
and how much it works,
how protective it is,
how many different ridges there are.
All of this shows great research
and great ability to understand what
a medieval combat like this was.
Here you will see they are wearing armor
completely on the body.
That's because this isn't the regulated game
being played by the two opponents
of "The Knight's Tale".
[screaming]
In this case,
they really are fighting
and they're fighting to show manliness.
To do so, they can hit anywhere,
and they are.
So, they have to be protected.
Swords are a little long,
they wouldn't have been used in battle
but the armor here could've gone
right onto the battlefield
from this tournament.
[intense battle drums]
Here's the perfect example
where we can see that helmets
were purchased by medieval soldiers
based on a number of different reasons.
Visibility is essential, of course,
but he has very small visibility.
Both helmets have very small visibility
because they are in a duel situation
where they might get hit in the face.
But what's better is we got the perspective
out of his eye.
[swords clash]
You can see how limited now
the eyesight is.
The protection of the eyes
was the most essential thing.
Combats were supposed to be over quickly.
And so breathing becomes an issue
but not if they're over in the time
that it's supposed to be.
There's enough oxygen in the helmet
to keep 'em alive.
I want you to notice, though,
not just the armor that is in the sequence.
Those two guards are armored exactly like they should be.
The kettle helms,
and that's what they're called, kettle helmets,
are perfect.
Their armor is perfect.
It's downgraded.
This is just a marvelous scene
from beginning to end.
Films and TV are always going to mix
history and entertainment.
Some do it very well,
and some not at all.
- But it's important to remember
what we're doing.
And what we're doing is telling a story.
Even if it's not 100% historically accurate,
Hollywood is still very successful
in getting the message across.