Terrible Hobbit dwarf cosplayers

Two more Kili's this time!
Both are cosplayers who try to be the archer dwarf from The Hobbit movie trilogy, both are obviously girls, and neither of them can shoot with a bow and arrow.

First I'd like to address something relating to cosplay. Why is it so that all the Kili cosplayers I've seen on the Internet have been female, trying to be the male dwarf, glueing or painting some stubble on their chins? That does not look remotely real or believable. Everyone notices right away that they are not men. Male and female physique is quite different and the smaller jaw usually exposes the female gender easily, if nothing else (like the obviously female haircut in the B picture, or the makeup). And if the human inside the character speaks, the play is over.

Cosplay is one of my hobbies too, as well as costume and prop making. I just can't understand why it's premarily a female hobby, at least in Finland where I live. Most of the people in conventions who have dressed in costumes are women. Men tend to be more interested in gaming (traditional and video). Another question is, even though there wouldn't be enough men willing to cosplay some male characters, do women really have to cosplay them? There are plenty of female characters out there to cosplay, even if we rule out all the sexist and stupid 80 percent of them!
And then there's genderbending, even though I'm not the greatest fan of it, but if you really must play as a character of the opposite gender, can't you adjust the costume to your own? Just with a little bit of imagination you can make the role yours. Women can make female versions of male characters, be just as happy cosplaying them (if not happier, since it requires less tied breasts and glued stubble on face), and look cool and inspiring instead of obviously fake and ridiculous.


But now to the mistakes in these girls' archery, if it could even be called that.

A

1. Sideways shooting. One of the worst mistakes you can make. Enough said of it already in the previous posts.
2. What is this bow supposed to be made of? Looks like plastic and cardboard to me, but it might imitate wood and bronze. Anyway, if it would be bronze, it would be too heavy, cumbersome and unbendable to actualy work well.
3. The arrow is on the wrong side of the bow. This is the most common mistake seen in this blog's examples of crap archery. How she think the arrow keeps there? She has to literally hold it between her fingers, unless it would drop to the ground! Did the thought not cross her mind to maybe put the arrow on the other side of the bow? No? Okay, terrible. You just failed your basic archery course.
4. Four finger grip around the string. Not necessary and quite amateurish.
5. These little arrows and the dashed line show the two points where the bowstring bends. Because she's shooting stupidly sideways, the position of the drawing hand is unnatural and results in the bending of the string. It is true that you can bend the string sideways like this to give the arrow and extra spin in direction or another, but that is super high skill level precision archery stuff, not for the novices in these pictures.
6. The larger opaque white arrows show the direction of her arms. And they are not anywhere near where they should be. The biggest problem is again the sideways shooting, which results in a very poor shooting form, and the arms are just all around the place.
7. This arrowhead is not sharp. What are you trying to do, knock someone out? Or hunt squirrels without damaging their fur? I doubt that. It's also too big and heavy for this arrow (if the tip would be made of metal. I bet this foam tipped "arrow" flies as good as a foam tipped "arrow" can, which is probably below ten meters).
8. This mock of an arrow doesn't have proper fletching, what a surprise! Two feathers in terrible condition instead of three good ones. Nice job there.

B

1.  I just ended up lining this whole figure, since everything about this form and holding of the bow tells me that this person has never hold a proper bow in her life, let alone shoot with it. It's like she's holding a delicate crystal goblet full of red wine, in a pure white silk dress, walking on killer high heels on a slippery wet marble floor. That's not the way to hold a bow and arrow. That should be like a lumberjack and his trustworthy double-bitted felling axe, not just with brute force, but with firm hand and expert's preciseness, every hit of the axe splitting a log in two perfectly balanced halves, never hitting a rock or his own leg.
2. Maybe she wasn't holding the bow properly because it's not a proper bow! Or then not. Anyway, the bow is a toy. With a bow this thin you can create enough energy to maybe get an arrow stuck in a dartboard, if the arrow is sharp enough. With a real war bow you (well, not you, but a professional ancient or medieval archer) would hit right through the wall behind the dartboard and nail a guy hiding behind it.
3. Arrow. On. The. Wrong. Side. Of. The. Bow. Again, she has to use her thumb to keep it there.
4. These transparent big white arrows show the position of her arms. They are again a mess (and covered in obvious plastic foam!), and even though she hasn't made the full draw yet, I bet my head that her arms aren't aligned when she does that. A novice just don't get it right without proper instructor.
5. The cock feather (red one in here) should point towards the face of the archer, not outwards. That's because the two other fletches (which are opposite to each other) then pass the arc of the bow without touching it and thus damaging the fletches.

That's for today. I have nothing good to say about these "archery" pictures.

Kili the Dwarf from The Hobbit

A dwarf archer for the first time in this blog. They are quite a rarity. J.R.R. Tolkien, who is siglehandedly responsible for creating the modern concept of fantasy dwarves, elves, orcs etc. also wrote about dwarves using bows in his book The Hobbit. Peter Jackson's film adaptations have quite a many archer characters; Legolas and Tauriel, who were not in the book, Bard the Bowman of course, and also the dwarves Kili and Thorin. Although Thorin's archery stuff was cut out of the theatrical release. Maybe it's in the extended edition (of the already extended-to-three-movies adaptation of one book merely 300 pages long), we'll see...

Someone in internet confessed that he/she (probably earlier) hated that the dwarves used bows, and the bows should belong to elves, and elves only. Well, this is both stupid and ridiculous. And also moronic, did I forgot to mention. Why couldn't the dwarves use the bow? They use bows in the Hobbit book for Iluvatar's sake!!! Professor Tolkien invented modern concept of dwarves and he made them use bows in the first book they appear in! Yes, elves use also heavily bows, but also many other kinds of weapons, such as swords, knives and spears.

It is a ridiculously stupid and clichéd view that dwarves should only use axes or giant warhammers as their weapons (as in the eponymous tabletob miniature wargame), not swords, spears and especially bows. Many games have give them gunpowder instead! Dwarves are based on Viking mythology, where they first appear and where Tolkien omitted them, so they "should" only use Viking weaponry. That includes swords, spears, axes and bows for example. Especially not firearms!

Elves are also based on Nordic legends, so their weaponry "should" be the same as the dwarves'. But it is fantasy and they can use more diverse weponry if an author wants. As long as it's believable. I think gunpowder weapons are more than a bit off the Viking style of dwarves, but hey, that's just me!

Also the elves shouldn't only use bows, since that's stupid. No army ever used only bows. In every land and time period throughout history all armies had a large footman force in their core, using spears and/or swords. Bowmen were often important, but without anything else, they wouldn't win anything.


But about the dwarf Kili, and his archery. First mistakes:

1. Two finger grip. He only has two fingers covered in leather glove, archers glove, so it's natural that the actor doesn't want to use the third finger to draw the string, since it can hurt. they should've given him a third leather finger in his glove at the costume department.
2. Keeping bow and arrows in a same (separate) quiver is nothing unusual, for example ancient Persians, Scythians and other eastern/steppe people's did that. But their bow quivers were always at waist level, fastened to a belt. Not in the back, which is not the place for arrows either. They are harder to get there, and why you would make things harder, when you can make them easier? Especially if it may mean if you live or die!
3. These flat headed arrow tips are not unknown either, they were used occasionally, but they are kind of speciality arrows. These would probably be used in hunting small animals, such as squirrels, or some other rare purpose, but not against armored opponents for example. These are not good for war. And the arrow tip is also too large, it would be too heavy for that arrow. I get it that they tried to make the arrow look bulky (and succeeded) so it would seem more "dwarven", but why the dwarves have to make everything so impractically thick, heavy, angular and bulky? It's not very useful you know.

Then the good parts, and there are surprisingly many:

1. I didn't expect to see good archery in The Hobbit films at all, but Aidan Turner (Kili's actor) has really listened their archery instructor. Better than anyone else on the set. His archery form is nearly perfect. In this second picture his grip is more of a three finger Mediterranean one, and the bowstring is really drawn near his mouth, where it should be. This give much better aim.
2. The lines from the arrow and both arms are parallel, which is great. This is how it's done.
3. The arrow goes on the left side of the bow, which is right. Too many beginners put it on the right side and then drop the arrow wondering why it happened. He also doesn't seem to shoot sideways, like all other archer characters in The Hobbit have done. Shame on them, good for Kili. Although Kili's bow is so short than it wouldn't lose much power when drawn sideways. Although aim would be poor of course.

Strange:
I already talked about the arrow tip, but I need to say something about the bow too. It cannot be clearly seen in these photos and screencaptures, but Kili's bow is a very short composite recurve bow. It's length is about the same as his arm from shoulder to fingertips. This short composite recurve bows were in fact used in history, by the Huns for example, but they were always used on horseback. That's why they were so short, so they didn't interfere with the horse. Or the other way around. Anyway, the dwarves are all foot soldiers, so why not a longer bow? Are longbows too elven or something? Although Tauriel was given a recurve bow too, since it seems to be in fashion now. It has become hard to even find longbow using characters these days.

Bard statue (from Hobbit)

This is a statuette of Bard the Bowman from the Hobbit movies. This Orlando Bloom look-a-like has some serious issues with his plastic copy.


Mistakes:

1. The bow is way overdrawn, ridiculously so. I've drawn the proper draw distance for the bow in light white for comparison. This much overdrawing would require an immense amount of strength, and it could probably even break the bow. If the bow holds the stress, the accuracy of the shot would not be very good. This would also require huge arrows, the size of a javelin (throwing spear) almost. Which brings us to the next point...
2. This long arrows cannot be carried on a back quiver. They are impossible to draw from there. They must be attached to somewhere else. Otherwise Bard has to remove his quiver from his back in order to draw new arrows from there.
3. The grip here is as flawed as it is in the movie, so in this regard this is an accurate reproduction of the movie character. Sad that he has to use this stupid reverse grip and draws with only two fingers. Certainly he would not have the strength in just two fingers to perform this huge overdraw. And reverse grip is less powerful anyway than the usual one.

Good:

Nothing really

Bard the Bowman (from Hobbit)

Hoah. Bard the Bowman. He who killed the mightiest dragon of all time, Smaug the Golden, in J.R.R. Tolkiens the Hobbit of course. Peter Jackson's movie version is now under my magnifying glass.
Bard should be one of the best archers in Middle Earth, at least among humans. Still his archery form is terrible and has all kinds of various errors. And the thing which he builds in seconds to kill the dragon, let me get to that in a minute...


Mistakes:

1. Sideways shooting. Apparent in pictures A, B, E and F. Bard shoots a lot of times sideways, which is a very bad technique only used in movies which don't do their research properly (i.e. almost all of them). In this way the bow cannot be fully drawn since the flank of the archer gets in the way of the bowstring. With a longbow, like bards', this is extremely bad form.
2. Bard uses two finger grip most of the time. This is also a bad idea, since with three fingers the grip would be sturdier and more powerful. Why use just two fingers? Bard needs extreme force in order to penetrate Smaugs thick scales, so using a two finger grip and shooting sideways are very stupid decisions. 
3. The moviemakers probably thought that because the Hobbit movie has so many different archer characters (Legolas, Tauriel, Kili, Bard), they had to invent some unique styles for each of them. This is completely unnecessary and leads to stupid decisions. Bard has given a 'style' of shooting with his string hand turned upside down. There is no proper evidence that this technique would have been ever used in history. This is because it's unnecessarily hard and useless form. It also makes the bow tilt more than usual (leading ultimately to 'sideways shooting').
4. In this promotional photo Bard grips the string with four fingers. Four finger grip is a beginner's mistake. Three fingers are enough, the least strong finger of the hand doesn't add to the force of the shot, it only make the string rotate around itself more than necessary when released. This can then effect the flight of the missile.
5. The arrow in this shot is on the wrong side of the bow. It is because the arrow is obviously computer generated and the editor don't know anything about archery. The arrow seems also a bit too long here. In the picture D you can see how many of the shooting scenes are actually filmed. Without an arrow at all! They are just added with computer in post production. This is a safety reason, and I can be okay with that, but they should ask on which side of the bow the arrow should go, if they don't know.
6. Back quiver. In the scene where Bard tries to shoot Smaug with his bow, he takes all the arrows out of the quiver, and that would be a smart move, since they are harder to get from behind a shoulder. A hip quiver would work just fine.
7. This thing! What is it? Bard's longbow broke in half (conveniently, and the string left untouched), then he stabs the severed limbs of the bow into thick wooden beams! Excuse me, but what?!? He has the strength of ten men, or then the beams are completely rotten, in which case the bow limbs would totally not keep in place there. The limbs are now some meter apart, so how does the string still reach from one end of the bow to another? He also uses his sons shoulder as a rest for the black arrow, which is the size of a spear. This self-made ballista could probably work if the string would be longer and thicker and the bow limbs would be properly mounted. Bot now... well, no. Why didn't Bard use the four-arm ballista, which was on top of some tower already, the one Girion (Bard's ancestor) used to shot black arrows towards Smaug in the first place?

Good:

Nice longbow, sad that it broke. No, you can't make a working ballista from a broken bow in a matter of seconds.

Tauriel from The Hobbit

I decided to start my blog ranting with everyones favourite-to-hate non-tolkienite strong female character elf, Tauriel, from Peter Jackson’s the Hobbit-trilogy of course.


Let’s get down to business.


Mistakes:

1. The bow is way too powerless, or as we say in Finnish: “lussu jousi”. It can clearly be seen in the third picture in which you can notice the huge gap between the arc and the string. The proper size for that gap at the grip level should be the length of the archers fist and upwards protruding thumb (I have drawn there the proper measurements for a recurve bow for comparison). The gap in Tauriels bow is far wider and I do happen to know why.

The thing is with movies: they can’t really kill people, as sad as it is. Not even extras! So they use extra carefulness when weapons are present. And bows are always dangerous missile weapons. For that reason bows used in films are never as powerful as real hunting- or warbows would be. That’s a safety thing, if someone accidentally releases an arrow towards a person, that person probably doesn’t die, since the bows are not that powerful.

But there’s also another reason which I think has been behind this case. They probably made Tauriel’s bow more ineffective than Legolas’ bow, which seems pretty adequate, because Evangeline Lilly, Tauriel’s actress wasn’t as strong as Orlando Bloom. Womens bows are often less powerful than mens, for obvious reasons. Drawing a bow takes a lot of strength, and they probably thought it easier to make a less powerful bow, than to train the actress (much) more.


2. Tauriels bows back (the outer side of the arc) is carved hollow, which makes the arc less durable. Bows back should always have an unbroken layer of wood filament. But it is possible that this bow is not made of wood at all, rather from some artificial material.

3. In the first picture we see the tip of the arrow, which is ‘elvishly’ formed. Seems, if not a bad design, not very useful one. There have been asymmetrical arrowblade designs in history, but the curved blade does not do any good for the tip of the arrow.

4. Tauriel is also not pulling the string close to her cheek, which would be more proper method of drawing a bow, that makes aiming easier, since the arrow is nearer the archers eyes. She is also pulling the string with only two fingers instead of the usual three (in mediterranean release), and the fingers seem quite relaxed, which tells us further evidence that the bow is not very strong. Aiming may have been difficult for the actor in this shot, since it seems that the arrow is placed there afterwards with computer. The arrow should also go to the left side of the bow (from the perspective of the archer), not right as it is placed now, so it is more secure and doesn’t fall of easily.

5. Tauriels shooting stance is not optimal, rather strange indeed, why wouldn’t she stand while shooting? This posture is a thing which can be seen in many portrayals of female archers. That has more to do with sexism than the typical movie ‘coolness factor’. Even though a very slight form of sexism in this case, but still, the actress is instructed to pose in that stance, standing on one knee, which gives us the ‘sexy female archer pose’.

6. In the second picture Tauriel and Legolas are both shooting sideways, which is a very bad posture. They couldn’t draw full length if they tried, but seems that Tauriel isn’t even trying, but her bow still looks like it would’ve been drawn properly because it’s so overcurved.

7. She is also holding the arrow with her index finger, which is not a good idea. If released that way, the fletching (feathers) of the arrow will hit her finger, which both hurts and can distract the flight of the missile.


Good:

1. Apart from over-curveness, Tauriels bow is very nice looking and ‘elvish’ as it should – I particularly like how they gave her a recurve bow instead of the traditional-mediaeval-west-European-longbow, which Legolas and all the other characters in the Lord of The Rings have.

2. One other thing is very good in this portrayal of a film character: she has a hip quiver (holster for arrows), and not a back quiver, as does Legolas and every other bow wielding character in every movie ever filmed. Back quivers were historically used sometimes, but they were very rare, since it’s much quicker and easier to take an arrow from a hip quiver than from behind a shoulder. So a big thumbs up for prop maker there!


…


This post only deals with pictures released from the movies, not the archery action in the movies itself. I have seen the first two Hobbits, third one not yet, and I don’t have them on DVD to make a good film review at the moment. What I do remember is that the elves (although magical creatures) shoot unbelievably fast and have superhuman aim, which would not be possible in real life. But this is fantasy, so that is not an error.