The Pen is Mightier

Is the pen mightier than the sword? If the pen is writing a movie or television show, the odds are good. Accurate representations of sword usage are so rare as to be remarkable. It is a strange irony that the actual use of a sword as a weapon today is more common than accurate depictions of it in entertainment.

What are some of the indicators that the film you are watching might be inaccurate?

• Prolonged fight sequences. An actual sword is a difficult weapon to use, and the less you use it, the better. As a result, sword strategies and tactics quickly and anciently evolved into a fast-kill type of solution. In effect, if you could not kill your opponent in two or three moves, he would kill you. Good sword work is efficient, fast, and direct: kill your opponent, and then move to the next. Scenes of sword fights between hero and villain extending for several minutes is a sign of considerable inexperience between the fighters.
• Clashing blades. If you are attacked by a swordsman, and you have the remarkable luck to have a sword of your own, the last thing you would do is jeapordize your sword. A near-universal conceit shows the hero raise his sword to block the incoming swordsman’s own blade. Look carefully, and you’ll see he used the edge of his own sword to stop it. Such an action could be disastrous. For clarification, imagine taking two sharp kitchen knives, and violently chop the blade of one knife into the edge of the other. The receiving knife would be badly chipped and even slightly deformed at the point of impact. The energy of a sword is far larger than a kitchen knife: the hero’s sword will likely be badly damaged, or even crack catastrophically. A trained swordsman will seek to dodge the swing, and instantly counterstrike the villain. If the villain is quick, he might parry the hero’s sword by pushing the side of his blade against the hero’s: this deflects the energy of the counter-strike safely.
• Big circular swings. Whether the sword is an ancient Viking-style sword or a more modern rapier, the sword’s best use is as a thrusting weapon. A thrust can explode forward, cutting the distance between sword and target in a fraction of a second. Also, the thrust allows the sword body to cover the hero’s head defensively. On the other hand, a big circular swing requires our hero to bring his sword backward, wind up, and swing around. This takes twice the time of a thrust (you have to move backward and then forward, whereas a thrust just moves forward), and exposes the hero’s head and neck for a powerful pre-emptive strike. As a result, most initial sword attacks are often thrusts. Circular swings are usually performed as a secondary motion, or when the hero has positioned himself away from the villain’s sword tip. As a finishing move to a disarmed or wounded opponent, a circular swing will easily end the fight.
• The magic katana. The katana was, and is, a well-designed weapon. It excelled at thrusts as well as cuts. However, the katana is not inherently superior to all other types of swords. Japanese metallurgy was, even at its height, no better than European practice; the use of folding and differential steels was not a brilliant invention but a practical result of dealing with inferior product. Katana legend depicts them as nearly unbreakable, with perfected balance and engineering precision. Katana reality, based on testing, shows they fail as often as any European sword. Their design offers no inherent advantages over other sword designs, and offer no improvement in balance or center of percussion. Conversely, the sword that performs the best under most test conditions is the rapier. The reverence of the katana as the greatest sword is a modern conceit eagerly perpetuated by Hollywood.
• Bigger is better. Large swords look impressive and show up better on film. As a result, a resurgence in popularity for Scottish claymore-class swords, hand-and-a-half swords, and longswords has occurred. On the one hand, this popularity has rescued these swords from obscurity and better recorded their historical value. On the other hand, of course, the long sword enjoys a potentially undeserved glamor for its capabilities. It is important to remember that sword evolution was constant: as new techniques and strategies developed, the sword was changed immediately to reflect the new concepts. Longswords, in particular, developed to meet certain conditions: notably, the use of cavalry, where opponents might be significantly higher than you, and the need to keep opponents at a longer distance: close-quarter fighting was more easily won by the person with the shorter dagger to insert between the armor joints. However, the close-packed nature of melee warfare on crowded battlefields, plus the greater need to kill on the thrust (as opposed to the cut) resulted in swords evolving to shorter, lighter, and smaller sizes. In other words, the longswords proved to be less effective over time. As a result, bigger does not mean better.
• Swords everywhere! You can easily picture a scene from a movie in which the battlefield is packed with opponents crashing swords into each other. In reality, swords were a rarity. Although the Romans equipped each soldier with a gladius, it should be remembered that this weapon was more of a multi-tool, intended for many purposes. As a sword, the gladius was effectively a longer Bowie knife. After the fall of the Roman armies and their style of warfare, the sword remained rare: some armies were armed with axes, but most used spears and pikes as a fast way to kill enemies at longer distances. These weapons were inexpensive to make, and could be learned by infantry in much less time than the sword. One study by ARMA suggests that perhaps only five percent of fighters carried a sword; this figure does not appear to be limited to Europe but even applies to Japan, where the samurai preferred the use of the bow and the spear, and far less often the sword.
• Sword wielding ninjas! Equally incorrect is the notion that the ninjas of Japan historically used specialized swords. First, there is little historical evidence for the black-clad ninja skulking about (this idea is a very modern notion); putting that aside, there is no evidence that any special operatives carried swords at all, let alone the famous ninja-to shown in films.