The swords in Lord of the Rings - Would they be practical in real life?

well here's another nerd talk for your amusement hopefully are the swords from the Lord of the Rings movies realistic would they be practical in real life this is something that many of my subscribers have asked over and over again one of the most common requests talk about a lot of the Rings is Glamdring realistic what about the uruk-hai machete is it practical what about this what about that and so far I didn't really want to make a video about it because I thought that it wouldn't be very interesting or entertaining because I simply don't find much to talk about here really and frankly I still think it's not gonna be all that good but you know considering how many people apparently want to see this and here here we go I'll finally do it alright okay so the reason why I think there isn't not too much to talk about is the answer is mostly yes pretty much for all of them the answer is yes I can end the video right here yes the Lord of the Rings swords are practical in general I mean you can clearly see that they are inspired by historical swords which obviously work because they were used in actual combat like Glamdring and and Uriel or and drill I forgot how it's pronounced but those are very clearly based on medieval long swords the hilt looks a little different it had they have their own individual style but you can very clearly see that it's pretty much the same thing so in terms of proportions shape everything is reasonable they are not overly thick they don't have bizarrely shaped handles they would actually be comfortable to hold and use looking at sting it's somewhat reminiscent of a Xiphos an ancient Greek sword I don't know if that's intentional or not but it seems somewhat familiar and there's nothing wrong with it in terms of design personally I think that if you're pretty short like but to begin with and you have a fairly short reach it might not be the greatest idea to pick a short sword personally I maybe go for a longer sword and attempt to compensate for the reach disadvantage but then again you can also go for the you know agile roguelike approach if you will so yeah nothing particularly wrong with it personally I think you should really be carrying a buckler or shield together with that because just a short sword can put you at a disadvantage against something like a long sword or an arming sword and shield or especially a spear anything like that the uruk-hai sword or machete or sometimes it's called a scimitar for whatever bizarre reason it literally has nothing at all in common with a scimitar so I have no idea why anybody would call it that but regardless so this is something that a lot of people were wondering about and nothing wrong with it once again in fact I think it's a very smart design because it fits the orcs really well it looks like a brutal weapon and the back spike would be very effective at penetrating armor or skulls and bone and you know other gruesome things like that so it makes a lot of sense it looks brutish but it doesn't look like it's it's poorly made by any means it doesn't look like it would fall apart they usually look like they have a patina because you don't really expect orcs to take good care of their weapons but at the same time it shouldn't be something that a complete imbecile try to forge that would fall apart as soon as you hit something so yeah it's decently made it's just it has a certain brutish character to it which makes a lot of sense and yes it would be effective no problem it doesn't have a guard personally I am NOT a fan of swords without guards but it depends on the fighting style many historical swords didn't have a guard either and it really depends on what you tactic is oh you in a fight so again no problem it especially combined with a shield that would work just fine how the Fang looks rather exotic and more along the lines of other fantasy designs at least to a medieval knight this thing would look very strange most likely but it depends on what you compare it to there are some pretty fancy historical swords from Asia especially India has come up with some well bizarre designs and other places as well and you know considering that I think some of the strangest things that existed this doesn't seem all that unusual really and it's it's a nice elegant design these little spikes they're wooden or whatever you want to call that wouldn't do all that much there is a chance that they might catch an opponent's blade but wouldn't really be all that effective I would think again no guard which yeah something that I don't like but it's not something that you have to necessarily criticize then there's or Chris another fancy and my opinion quite nice-looking sword and it would be a powerful cutter due to the extra mass between the center and the point of the blade and the recurve shape that helps the edge bite into the material in a slicing cut and well half a guard is better than no guard in my opinion also with this one there is nothing wrong so you see the thing here the theme going on with every single one I say yeah good no problem I think that they are very well designed like even from a fantasy artists point of view and in terms of practicality yep you could make one of these and you know use them depending on exactly how they are made of course and an incompetent blacksmith can ruin pretty much any design just like a very skilled blacksmith can make a lot of strange looking designs work out because the main important thing is how how's the weight how is it balanced you know what is the the grip like what does it graph in how's it shape is it ergonomic you know does it does it move does it flow well in the hand is the blade shape effective is is the the blade geometry good you know the the edge bevel end and all of that there are lots of you know detailed things that you don't see on just one picture those are things that you would feel if you if you held the actual reproduction I found one thing which I can criticize namely this dagger here I know not a sword but I'm just going to include it anyway the guard on this one is curved in the wrong direction the fact that there is a guard suggests that you should be able to parry with it but the problem is since the guard is curved downward if you were to actually parry a opponent's sword with it and the blade slides down on the guard hits the guard it's going to roll right off and onto your forearm if you're lucky it's going to go off the other side which could still be potentially dangerous depending on how you're placed or positioned I should say but yeah it seems a little strange to have a guard curve downward that will just redirect it exactly where you don't want it but that's the only thing yes there is the elephant in the room the witch king's mace which again is not a sword and I don't think I have to really say anything about that right it's obviously really add yeah realistic uh-huh derping around here it's obviously ridiculous I mean the filmmakers at the set were joking about how ridiculous and impractical that thing is they were fully aware of it so this is really more of a joke so there you have it all of this blah blah just to come up with a simple yes they are in fact practical designs hope you enjoyed it anyway and happy holidays thanks for watching

Channel: Skallagrim

Views: 3,783,000

Keywords: swords, lord of the rings, lotr, sword, practical, realistic, realism, martial arts, fighting, fantasy, design, real life, scrutinized, historical, comparison, orcrist, glamdring, anduril, arwen, gandalf, aragorn, hadhafang, uruk-hai, urukhai, machete, blade, nerdy, geek, talk

Id: we5yu1KKCuU

Length: 8min 53sec (533 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 24 2015