Movies with medieval battle scenes resembling reality | SBG Sword Forum (2024)

Most battle scenes, that show a charge followed by a free-for-all-rolling-in-the mud scene, people tumbling over each other where you have no idea what soldier belongs to what side isn't really how battles worked, right?

From what I have read it should be a tight formation vs another tight formation or charging enemy and the free-for-all would be classes as a total break down and a failure likely ending in a route.

Are there any movies/shows (or ytube videos) that get the battles and formations right? I have read descriptions of battles, but I just can't imagine how it worked. The dimensions are just too big and our modern combat strategy is so different.

Or amy I being silly here?

AFAIK formations would and could break, a mele' was not out of the question...cavalry, pikes, routing the enemy, etc. Those that did not stood a better chance as a unified group, even during retreat. Sometimes formations were so compact it became hard to use swords:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Agincourt

As for tight formation battle scenes one comes to mind ( if I remember correctly):

"The Last Kingdom" Saxons vs. Vikings battle scene, though the "hero" broke ranks.

Others have the same qualm, but this is about about Roman, Greek and Carthaginian battles:
www.reddit.com/r/ancientrome/comments/ddwvrb/are_there_any_films_that_accurately_depict_an/?rdt=62213

I would, and the only medieval one that I have ever seen was the GOT destruction of King's Landing by Dany's army (leaving the dragon out, of course ). That unmitigated slaughterhouse exemplified edged weapon combat in all its.....glory? Conditions on every battlefield before the introduction of firearms involved hacking, sticking, and slicing such that chunks and guts were everywhere, and the ground became slippery with blood. It was also necessary to train your troops to inflict such damage without any hesitation (this is still an aspect of infantry hand-to-hand/bayonet training today), despite all of the shrieking and screaming that it causes. The closest thing to an ancient or medieval battlefield today is what's left by the effects of massed artillery or cluster bombing, as modern hand-to-hand melees are usually much more contained than what used to occur, when thousands of men hacked each other to bits all around a square mile or so. Remember this the next time you pick up one of your toys and BS that you "were born in the wrong century".

Modern moviemaking can seldom get away with a realistic portrayal of medieval/ancient combat. The censors get very squeamish about such violence. The studios usually nix realism in modern combat as well. BTW, one time, Star Trek (TNG) graphically showed what a real phaser would (presumably) do to someone, and some fans had a fit. They never did that again.

As far as realism in formations and tactics, a number of movies showing ancient and medieval combat seem to get those correct as far as matching contemporary manuals, descriptions and paintings go, but how accurate those sources are is often questionable. Leaving the real horrors of the battlefield (which have an effect on troop movement} out of the descriptions and representations (omitting the "morbid details"} has a long history in literature and art.

Cinema is art, and artistic license is taken, no doubt. The lack of cohesive groups of "shield walls", Pike and Spear men, and the emphasis on "one on one" ( or one on many) combat in modern cinema is just part of that. Not that combat did not turn into a mele', oh that happened, but that it often did not start that way.

It does appear to me that much of the Medieval European tactics were adaptations of Greek / Roman tactics. We have a pretty good idea of how it was supposed to be done in theory. Without contemporary historians, and other records we would be lost.

Currently, warfare is no less bloody, just very different, with odds stacked against front line infantry soldiers (Drones, artillery, thermobarics, Glide Bombs, Cluster munitions, and mines of all sorts, etc.). The horrors of war often face censorship, how else does one get people hyped up for the next war?