Dragon Blade (Chinese movie)

These pictures are from an upcoming Chinese/Hong Kong movie Dragon Blade, which claims to be a historical action fantasy film, but has so nothing to do with actual history, that even naming the word ‘history’ anywhere near this movie is a horrid blasphemy!
The movie tells about a purely fictional story of ancient “Romans” fighting against ancient “Chinese” people over the control of the silk road, which in reality was in control of the Parthian empire which existed between Roman and Chinese empires. But this movie forgets it. It also forgets that the Chinese were the producers of silk and many other goods so they didn’t care to control the silk road. All the gear and weaponry presented in this movie are apparently designed by the director himself, who has obviously played too much World of Warcraft, so ridiculously impractical and unrealistic all the equipment are!

But now to the main topic.

Mistakes:

1. What is this this bow grip? Doesn’t seem very solid at all. Maybe the bow is too thick for this Chinese woman’s small hands. Her fingers just don’t reach around the bow’s grip properly. They shouldn’t have put so much fur and other stuff around the grip. Simple wooden grip would’ve been fine.

2. This string release method is very rarely used in history, since it’s so impractical. There’s always a possibility that it was only an artistic convention and not actually used at all. It’s much harder than any of the other release methods (this is mediterranean release, but the hand is turned upside down). Probably the moviemakers thought this looks cooler.

3. The woman has so much fur on her, that it makes shooting difficult. See in this circle how the fur gets in the way of the bow string. Not good, can effect the flight of the arrow.

4. This back quiver is so far away back that it would be quite difficult to even find the arrows with a hand backside the archers head, where she can’t see where the arrows are.

5. Sideways shooting is always bad. No one ever shot like this with a bow, or with any other weapon for that matter. See where the red arrow points, the string bends because it collides with the flank of the archer, and thus the bow cannot be drawn full length and the missile lose momentum.

6. Even though the bow is not quite fully drawn, the arrows are too long for this woman’s shortish arms. You can’t even see the tip of the arrow in this photo, so they’re definitely too long for her. The bow and arrows haven’t been measured for this actress personally. Minor error, but still.


Good:

The recurve bow and the arrows themselves look realistic and actually working weapons and not as fantastical as everything else in this movie, some swords with forked tips for example, terrible!