What's your biggest gripe about weapon fight scenes

[Bannan_mantis]

Basically just what have you seen a lot in fight scenes where two or more characters use a weapon to fight that has really grinded your gears?

For me it's all the times when someone seems to be able to parry a huge heavy weapon with a tiny little dagger or short sword. A lot of the times this never makes sense since the momentum behind that huge sword would completely push the dagger out the way and then a lot of the times the person using the dagger is someone agile but not as strong as the opponent so they couldn't really have the strength to block them.

I've got a few more but that's probably one I see come up a lot which annoys me a lot and takes me out of the experience when I see it.

[Keltest]

Full on catching a weapon and halting it entirely with a dagger is unlikely, but redirecting the blow so that it misses is both plausible and generally the point of things like the main gauche.

In general, what bugs me is if they have somebody in super heavy armor (ie full plate) and then also make them fight with a kite or tower shield or something. The shield is just slowing them down, they don't need it, they have armor! The only time you should have a shield bigger than a heater shield with plate armor is if youre protecting the archers.

[snowblizz]

1) When edged weapons cut people in armour.

2) When edged weapons cut people and there's no blood.

3) That these two scenes are never connected.

If 2) followed 1) it would make sense but it never does. They are completely separate and just as "deadly" to the person receiving the cut.

And no coup the graces. Though that's more often a fisticuffs issue. When you beat someone prone, go for the kill, otherwise they just stand up. Every. Single. Time. It's like people have never seen an action movie in the action movies.

[Knaight]

Daggers and short swords can parry big heavy weapons just fine - it tends to come down to leverage more than anything, and the closer your hand is when parrying the better off you are there. Mass helps too, but it's by no means necessary.

That said, going back to the core concept, my big thing is spear use. There's valid counterbalancing reasons and the like to use more central grips, but when nobody ever uses a spear for a reach advantage it starts getting old.

[Bannan_mantis]

Full on catching a weapon and halting it entirely with a dagger is unlikely, but redirecting the blow so that it misses is both plausible and generally the point of things like the main gauche.

Daggers and short swords can parry big heavy weapons just fine - it tends to come down to leverage more than anything, and the closer your hand is when parrying the better off you are there. Mass helps too, but it's by no means necessary.

Yeah sorry I should've clarified. Directing or guiding it away is fine but I'm more talking about scenes where the dagger is just held in place almost and can somehow stop a big sword in it's tracks with just a "clink."

[Dienekes]

Well there are the obvious ones:

Armor is useless
Armor is terribly designed (I guess this is more costume design problem)
Combatants kit makes no sense together
Armored guy is moves like molasses
Combatants attack at nothing
Everyone completely opens themselves up when they strike
Katanas are better

But a growing peeve is just how unoriginal all the weapons used are. Everyone just uses swords, maybe you’ll get spears if you’re lucky. Let’s mix it up some. Give me pollaxes and halberds and maces and warhammers that don’t look like giant sledgehammers.

[paddyfool]

Eh. TV/film/stage melee weapon fighting must of general necessity be even further divorced from real melee combat than wwf is from mma, on account of both the injury risk, and, if being realistic, the likelihood of rapid brutal demise or incapacitation of unarmoured participants. In some ways, they can get closer to realism when using armour than not, since a dude in armour can take a genuine hit. But then you run into issues like people being harder to identify or empathise with when wearing essential gear like helmets.

There are exceptions, of course, like that fight from the chronicles of narnia.

Incidentally, shields and armour are not an uncommon combination. Spear and shield warfare was the standard across Eurasia for millenia, and the participants were generally wearing the best armour they could afford. Those not using shields often formed part of a combined unit; the viking long axe, for instance, was designed for striking over a shield wall from the second rank. The only real exception to this was pikemen. And similarly, cavalry were not shy of using shields and armour in combination either, be they genghiz khan's mongols (who'd switch between bows and lance + shield combos) or western knights.

Only in the late middle ages did plate armour get good enough that going without a shield became more widespread, and even then, there were many specialised places where it had a niche; a mounted knight, for instance, can turn an incoming blow with a shield that would hit his armour full on, with greater risk of injuring or unseating him.

And then, of course, increasingly powerful firearms rapidly did away with armour and shields both, for many purposes.

[Gallowglass]

in media?

Two guys banging their swords together in the air above their heads. Like what were you aiming to do with that swing? Cut imaginary cords holding them up?

[Magic_Hat]

Excessive amounts of CGI.