Live blogging my movie snark

[firecat]

Watching the Russell Crowe Gladiator movie for the first time, at 5:20 a.m., as one does when one learns it’s going to disappear from Netflix at the end of the month. Thinking to myself—

This montage (Maximus galloping his horse over miles and miles of countryside for days) seems very unrealistic as to proper equine management. I shall pretend these are aliens (Aliens?) that just look like horses. Or maybe they’re android horses. It is after all a Ridley Scott movie.

Comments

[noelfigart]

You know, it's only been in the last decade or so that I even gave that a thought. There's a David Eddings series where the knights are shown to take their horses' endurance into account and stops for resting them, and it kind of hit me between the eyeballs.

Then I can't NOT see it!

[firecat]

I mostly don't notice it with horses, so if I do that means it's egregious.

[lilacsigil]

Let's just call it a montage of the galloping moments, leaving out the resting and feeding and walking!

[which_chick]

As a person who owns a horse and is familiar with horses over the course of forty years of playing horse... there's a lot going on in movies and televisions with unrealistic horses. *sigh*

Here, for example is Arwen & Frodo Go to Rivendell This is a "white" (he's grey, technically.) horse cantering along under PRETTY TIGHT WRAPS and also the horse is not really going that fast. Horses that are running more "flat out" actually LOOK flatter. They have their heads stretched out in front of them flat, not all curled up like a carousel horse with his mouth gaping open. Horse's movement does not support the movie narrative of trying to escape Ringwraiths. Him is not going very fast.

On the other hand, here is the best, most-realistic movie horse doing a thing I have ever in my life seen in film or television. It's the buckskin horse (real-life name of Denny) in The Man From Snowy River. The reason the horse LOOKS like he's hellin' is that he actually IS hellin'. And when he looks like he's bombing down a really steep hill, it's because he is bombing down a really steep hill for real, like, they really did that.

As for proper equine management for covering miles and miles of countryside ... likely happens at a 7 or 8 mph trot most of the time. :) That's not nearly as photogenic and anyway neon-colored biothane tack probably isn't period-correct. (Little endurance rider joke there. Like one person got that joke. The person was me.)

[firecat]

Thanks for that analysis of the LotR clip. Fascinating! Yeah I see the horse's nose pointing down toward his neck and that wouldn't be the way any animal would run flat out.

And what a difference between that and the Man From Snowy River clips!

I volunteered with dogs at an animal shelter so I know dog body language very well, and that makes all the movies with hell hounds amusing, because they're coming at someone with their teeth bared and supposed to be scary but their body language is saying "PEANUT BUTTER!"

[which_chick]

Lol... okay, you have ruined all Hell Hound moments for me, too. :)