Guinevere (King Arthur 2004)

Today, Guinevere from King Arthur (2004 movie). This is one of the 106 movies/tv–series/animations made about the Arthurian legends, not the worst, but not the best either. Made by a director no one knows, this movie is most famous for its theatrical poster which had Keira Knightley's bust enlargened in Photoshop. Because sex sells and a small breasted woman is not feminine and sexy enough, according to media.
Anyway, the movie was claimed to be based on most recent archaeological and historical evidence, but it ended up being a collection of blatant mistakes and errors. It takes – as the first adaptation of the story – the stance that King Arthur lived in the Late Antiquity (300–500 C.E.), instead of High Middle Ages (1000–1300), and this was more realistic and interesting approach in my mind.

While everything else from the error of calling Picts "Woads" (now this is the real people who painted themselves with blue war paint, often misidentified to be made of the woad plant) to their use of trebuchets (large counterweight powered stone throwing siege machines), which were only invented much later in the Middle Ages, and to the fantasy outfits everyone's wearing, archery in this movie is pretty well portrayed. Even surprisingly so!

I will start with good points this time, since there really are many!

Good:

Keira Knightley has learned archery well from her trainer. She really knows how to shoot. This is very uncommon in movies, where actors don't pay much attention to their archery teachers, or then they don't have those at all. Knightley's form is just perfect! This is because...

1. Both her arms and the arrow form one parallel line.
2. The draw is full and the string is drawn very close to face.
3. Mediterranean grip is perfect with three fingers around the string.
4. The position of the arrow is right, the cock fletch (marked with blue arrow) points towards the face and the other two fletches point up and down. Even this minor detail is right here! Bravo!
5. The arrow goes around the bow at the left side, resting on the bow gripping fist.

Mistakes:

There are some mistakes though, but some of them are not the actress's fault at all. Rather director's or costume/prop department's.

1. The arrow tip is not sharp. This is of course a safety reason, since it could be deadly if sharpened (it still can, but you wouldn't be as much dead as after getting hit by a sharp tipped arrow). This is not a major issue, and I'm okay with it. Even I don't want the actors to die... maybe extras are expendable though.
2. In the last picture Knightley is overdrawing her bow. This is probably not very powerful recurve bow, like in movies they never are, and even a woman can easily overdraw it. Shooting becomes a bit more difficult if you do this. The arrow tip touches the bow hand, which it should not do.
3. The actress holds the bow a little too high. Her hand is not properly on the grip, looks like she has got the bow in her hand a half a second ago and must shoot like her life would depend on it. But this is not the case in this scene of the movie, where the Picts are shooting a volley of arrows. Keeping hand on the grip makes the bow's limbs bend more equally and the shot is more stable.
4. Where are her arrows? There are no quiver anywhere to be seen, and no spare arrows tucked to a belt or anything. Only two swords for 'coolness factor', but of worthless use.
5. Guinevere has at least two bows in this movie, which are depicted in the middle pictures. Both are recurves, but the first one is more of a "longbowish" type, since it's obviously quite long. We don't know much about the Picts, but I'm fairly certain that they didn't use recurve bows, such as the last one here. It is primarily an Eastern invention. Picts would've probably used simple D-shaped self bows. Strangely, the extras at the background in the last picture, are using self bows! Maybe they thought that a recurve bow looks 'cooler', and thus the main character has to have it. This might be the case in many movies of our era.