Historical Martial Arts
Historical martial arts reconstruction developed in the later 20th century and became influential in cinema only from ca. the 1990s. Earlier sequences of combat with pre-Renaissance weaponry were typically based on classical fencing techniques, or choreographed as ad-hoc "blade whacking".
Influential movie heralding renewed interest in pre-modern swordsmanship were Excalibur (1981) and Highlander (1986). Lightsaber combat in the Star Wars films takes some elements from kendo, and The Lord of the Rings film trilogy employs some elements of historical fencing.
Historical drama films that feature combat based on historical swordsmanship include Rob Roy (1995), Gladiator (2000), Troy (2004), Kingdom of Heaven (2005), Alatriste (2006).
A Knight's Tale is an example of a movie that includes jousting performances (2001).
Read more about this topic: Combat In Film
Famous quotes containing the words historical, martial and/or arts:
“The analogy between the mind and a computer fails for many reasons. The brain is constructed by principles that assure diversity and degeneracy. Unlike a computer, it has no replicative memory. It is historical and value driven. It forms categories by internal criteria and by constraints acting at many scales, not by means of a syntactically constructed program. The world with which the brain interacts is not unequivocally made up of classical categories.”
—Gerald M. Edelman (b. 1928)
“Strike the concertina’s melancholy string!
Blow the spirit-stirring harp like any thing!
Let the piano’s martial blast
Rouse the Echoes of the Past,”
—Sir William Schwenck Gilbert (1836–1911)
“Self-expression is not enough; experiment is not enough; the recording of special moments or cases is not enough. All of the arts have broken faith or lost connection with their origin and function. They have ceased to be concerned with the legitimate and permanent material of art.”
—Jane Heap (c. 1880–1964)