HEMA Swordsman rates TV/Film fights

[Jubal]

I enjoyed this and it was better than I expected - in that from the opening clip I expected it to be a "but they're not doing this by the manual" ritual dunking on it all, cinema sins style. On watching though, actually I thought he was very fair, made some interesting points about use of space which were worth thinking about for me, and also discussed with actual interest the importance of narrative and narrative presentation in many of these fights. Also gets a bit of credit from me for recognising/accepting what I think of as the historian's reversal argument - specifically, if you get a historical text telling you that X is right and you shouldn't do Y, it certainly doesn't mean "everyone therefore did X", but definitely means that someone was doing, or arguing for doing, Y. A surprising number of people don't seem to get this fact, but it's a general truism that almost nobody spends time and effort telling people not to do things that they weren't doing anyway.

Also he shares the correct opinion about the Princess Bride's swordfight which is that it's The Best Thing.