Armor is surprisingly useless against most forms of attacks. Unless it is desirable to wait until later to suddenly reveal that the armored figure is female, evil or somebody who we have already met. For the Hollywood hero, a helmet is an encumbrance to be discarded as soon as possible, so that the hero's face can be more easily seen and recognized.
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Your head is right on top of your body where it is easy to hit, and a blow to the head will give you a bad day in a hurry. Against real world edged weapons, a helmet is your first buy and best value. Wiliam Wallace can also generally get his hands on fire starter whenever he wants to burn English soldiers to death in a cottage. It is then set alight by flaming arrows, to set the enemy stuntmen on fire so that they can run around screaming while the flammable stunt clothing blazes merrily over their Nomex jumpsuits. At the battle of Falkirk, he apparently has a tanker truck parked behind the lines, so that he can wet down a broad stretch of the front-line as a death trap for the enemy. In the counterfactual universe of Braveheart, William Wallace has easy access to large quantities of gasoline. There was some use of naphtha and naphtha based incendiaries, but they weren't easy to get, and more common in the Middle East than elsewhere. Try this experiment: pour some vegetable oil on the ground and try to set it alight and see how far you get. Just pour a can of gasoline on the ground, strike a match, and WHHUMPP! Not so in the premodern world. Cheap and ubiquitous petroleum distillates are a commonplace of the modern world. "AAARGH! NIGHT ARROWS" scream the terrified French opponents.įlaming arrows are a useful resource for any director that has run out of plot or characterization "We'll give them an unpleasant surprise" laughs Cardboard Villain #1 "NIGHT ARROWS." His archers fire a barrage of ordinary, non-flaming arrows. Why attackers don't just wait for the moat to burn out is not explained. Timeline brought the cliche to a new level: a night attack with flaming arrows, siege engines and cannons throwing photogenic incendiaries, soldiers carrying torches, and a flaming moat. If you did fight at night, you wanted a stealthy sneak attack that avoided things that might spoil the surprise and make you an obvious target, like carrying flaming torches. In the real world for most of history, fighting at night was something generals tried to avoid, since your troops were likely to get pointed to the wrong direction and start killing their friends.
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![medieval 2 fire arrows medieval 2 fire arrows](https://exarc.net/sites/default/files/main_218.jpg)
In clicheland, none of this matters, since fire arrows look good on the screen, especially if the battle is fought at night. Wrapping bulky flammable material around an arrowhead is bad for air resistance, accuracy, range and penetration, and pausing to light the arrow slows the rate of fire. If you have an arrow sticking out of your neck, the fact that you are also suffering a nasty burn is a secondary consideration. While these weapons had some utility against flammable structure, they weren't actually very good antipersonnel weapons. Thus the classic cliche of the historical movie, the fire arrow. If a siege weapon throws a missile, expect it to be a flaming one. If an automobile goes off a cliff, expect it to burst into flames without fail.
MEDIEVAL 2 FIRE ARROWS MOVIE
Movie special effects departments are good at making things burst into flame or explode. There Is No Problem That Cannot Be Solved by the Application of a Sufficient Quantity of Pyrotechnics.