Hawkeye -- world's worst archer?

Pfft, no way am I arguing with Arcanaville, I'm nowhere near that kind of level!

I agree with a lot of what's been said, tbf, just amuses me that people will nitpick stuff like this when a giant green man is smashing buildings.

If we wanted to, there's no doubt a stack of things we could get in all the movies and TV series we love

Oi you, which part of "not arguing with Arcanaville" did you not understand?

No way am I taking on the CoH forums answer to Batman

People are vehemently defending Renner (or excusing him, rather) right now because the Avengers is a highly anticipated movie for this year.

Even people like me, who gave up on Marvel and DC as pointless years ago, are waiting for this movie (mostly because this is a retelling of the classic stories that I enjoyed).

However, the author of that commentary did not say the movie would be bad. He in fact said that he expected that the movie would be enjoyable. He is an archery expert commenting on archery, pure and simple. He started with the Brave and decided to do the other two for fairness's sake. But his focus is purely on the archery, not the worth of the stories, acting or the movie in general.

Given that he is probably correct that these movies will spark an interest in archery, it is a good idea to point out what works and what doesn't to anybody that might be interested in actually doing archery.

He's not advising people not to see the movie. He's not advising people that it is a bad movie. He's advising potential archery enthusiasts on what is proper.

As to why that is a concern for the story.

Put simply, a level of accuracy in the more realistic elements of a fantasy lends credence to the fantastical elements. Everything in a story that has a real life element should be looked at closely. Those elements are dangerous.

Making errors in fantasy is relatively difficult as long as you remain consistent in how things are done. Everything is made up when you're talking about superpowers, working magic and some of the super-science stuff we see in soft-sci-fi (better labeled science fantasy).

Errors only exist in the fantasy elements in relation to the rules you set for them.

However, making errors on real, verfiable elements is cause for alarm. Someone will notice such errors. When errors are noticed, it breaks the state of suspended disbelief you have placed yourself in. If your audience has to remind themselves that "it's a superhero movie" or "why worry about that when there's a giant green ogre fighting aliens?" then you have already lost some of the atmosphere.

Fantasy errors will only be noticed when compared to other scenes in the same story. That will usually be a fridge issue sometime after the story finishes and it's not something that will have too much of an impact unless it is apparent that the writers are making no attempt to be consistent in the way the fantasy elements work. One error in fantastical consistency is a trivia discussion more than anything else.

But errors on anything with a touch on the real has the potential to be immediately jarring. The audience will already potentially have other situations from their past to compare it to. It will often make a person pause right there.

Which isn't to say that always have to be completely one-hundred percent accurate to reality.

As Arcanaville points out, two pistol rigs are more or less ridiculous (one of my favorite parts of Silverado is the way the other three main characters kind of roll their eyes at Kevin Costner's character's rig). However, this is because firing a pistol with one hand removes a lot of stability from the shot. When you're in action movie with larger than life heroes, you can imagine that they are in that prime of a condition that the loss of accuracy is not substantial enough for them to worry about.

Likewise, kicks above the waist are also Hollywood ridiculous. Tae Kwon Do, a very kick heavy art, has competition rules requiring a certain number of kicks in matches or else points are lost. This is because if the competition board doesn't require kicks, then the martial artists won't do them and the competition board wants to show case the kicks.

The only reason you practice kicks higher than the waist is to develop flexibility so that your usable kicks are easy to perform.

Despite my experiences with Tae Kwon Do (which are almost lost now after 7 years of stupidly not practicing), I have no trouble with the high kicks in movies. There ARE people who train so much with kicks like that that they are useful. Those people are rare, but they exist. There are also entire arts based around kicking under the assumption of the developers that the hands would be bound by chains or something else.

As such, I can tolerate high, flashy kicks.

On the other hand, I know you don't practice forms (kata or pumsae or whatever) in actual combat. Katas are meant to be practice in moving from one position to another and teaching you how to move well. You don't use them in a fight. Instead, you use the individual motions and elements and flow them together.

As such, when Equilibrium went on about "gun kata" and how these forms were the best way to avoid fire and what not, the entire movie was gone for me. Especially when the way they portrayed the fighting was exactly that: the character performing memorized routines to stay out of firing lines in the middle of a real fight. Everything was rigid and unyielding and we're led to believe that he could stand in the open without cover and avoid being shot because he knew the standard firing lines. It was patently ridiculous and I obsessed and laughed about the problem the whole movie. The character drama was well done, but I wouldn't recognize that until I watched the movie again a year or two later, because the whole "kata" thing destroyed the movie's credibility.

Likewise, Ed Greenwood's The Kingless Land had similar problems. Granted, I've long said that Ed Greenwood is an excellent game designer and Forgotten Realms is an awesome setting, but I've always said he's a B writer at best. The Kingless Land, not one of the TSR titles but something of his own, took his writing flaws to new heights. Ignoring the fact that he had somewhere around 3-5 separate storylines that never intersected, making this novel feel more llike he'd written several long short-stories and simply cut them up, which is a writing skill error, he had several points in his story that made me simply say "that can't work". Each of which pulled me out of the story and into having to analyze the story.

If I fall into analysis on the first read through (unless I've been specifically asked to analyze it), that tells me that the author failed somewhere. He didn't hold me. I found enjoyment in analyzing the writing. I didn't simply enjoy the story.

There are two of these points that I remember clearly.

The first was a particular mook who apparently had a very powerful backswing and specialized in the backswing....to the point that they'd pull their sword over into position for a backswing on every stroke. That's wasted motion. Worse, it's wasted motion crossing one arm over the other and making defensive action difficult thus leaving you WIDE open. The reason for a backswing is to make every motion you take part of an attack if at all possible. That, however, was one mook and I would have forgiven it as an amateur mook if the other flaws didn't exist.

The second realism point he failed on is having a crowd of men storming up a medieval, common inn's staircase while standing three-abreast....meaning three people standing side-by-side and many behind them in rows and columns. Anybody who has seen medieval style stairwells in commoner buildings will tell you that even a single person fills up most of the space of those stairs and they would be hampered for fighting by close walls. A stairwell big enough for three people to go up side-by-side and STILL be able to fight is not something you'd find in any inn. You probably wouldn't find many of them in the castles of the rich because they're something of a security risk.

You can't catch every nitpicker for the simple fact that you don't know everything and are not professional at everything. There will always be cases where you fail to get the right research, or fail to research at all because it didn't occur to you, and someone will catch you on it.

The main problem I have with Renner is the comment that he was receiving lessons to prepare for this. I probably wouldn't have noticed without it being pointed out, and now that's already been processed I probably won't notice it when the movie comes out...but it is still a very poor lapse in planning and I have more hope that it is because the instructor was bad than that he didn't listen or taught himself.

Gotta go with Tenzhi on this one.

Besides, for $50 and/or a case of beer I'm pretty sure I could find an 'expert' that would confirm that the actor paid to impersonate an archer is in fact using perfect form.

My only issue with the nitpicking is that the expert is using a cartoon as an example of perfect form. (Sorry animated character)

The actress playing the role of the animated character probably never touched a bow and arrow in her life.

Even if the animated film used an archery expert to get the form correct before using computer wizardry to animate the character, that's like comparing the forms of a beginner martial artist to a kung fu master. What the beginner's making mistakes? I never would have guessed.

Why does everyone assume Renner didnt get a teacher and isn't doing it right? Even the blogger admitted to not seeing enough to make a judgement call.

So, you're going to go into the movie, not know anything about archery, and what, think Hawkeye is just doing it wrong?

the other two movies had a bit more screen time in the actual archery department, and likely because they're more centered around the archer.

Why are we assuming there's only one way to shoot a bow correctly?

One of the guys comments was that Renner was wearing an arm guard on both arms meaning that he really had to be doing things wrong if he was hurting both arms. I guess he's never heard of a costume before. Completely bare arms just don't look right with that costume. And the type of bracers the comic book Hawkeye uses really would interfere with firing the bow.

Plus of course the author probably thinks that nobody can hit the broad side of a barn without the correct form (hand to cheek, sight through string). Much like Adam and Jamie on Mythbusters decided it was impossible to be accurate firing a pistol from the hip just because it was something they couldn't do on their first try. The main concept behind Hawkeye is his skill is at a point that he is an instinctual archer. He doesn't have to bring the bow in line and sight through the string in order to hit something. He just knows where the arrow is going to go.

And you know, when I was a teen I taught myself to fire the bow with a very awkward form. Sure I could line up the bow and be more accurate at a longer range but I did it just because it was cool to be able to whip the bow up and fire before my arm was even fully extended and put the arrow in a milk carton from 50 feet. Hitting something that size from 50 feet is not exactly accurate archery, but it's fun when you are doing it all superhero like and firing from the hip.