Blood & Guts

Diriliş "Ertuğrul" - Atabey'in İdamdan Kurtarılış Sahnesi (8.Bölüm)
(Resurrection "Ertugrul" - Atabey's Restoration Stage (Section 8))
In every episode of Ertuğrul there is at least one big sword fight where a handful of brave Turkish warriors slaughter a couple of dozen bad guys. Both sides are using broadswords, so hacking and slashing are the order of the day. Occasionally someone will get stabbed, but it's pretty rare.

What gets shown on the screen is kind of interesting. Whenever a sword makes contact we see a splash of blood fly, but every time a wound appears on the screen, the area is blurred out. So flying blood is okay, but actual bloody injuries are not. About once a season some scumbag gets executed by decapitation, but once the head has been severed it gets the blurring treatment even when it gets impaled on a spike and paraded around.

Frequently someone ends up being held with a knife or sword to their throat. Given the close contact and how we never see any marks on the victim's throat, never mind that we have dozens of three foot long blades of steel flying through the air, we can surmise that the edges on these props are properly dull. There is also a good deal of sword blades crashing into each other when one combatant blocks another's blow.

In season 4 the evil Templars have started wearing chain mail which you might think would provide some protection against a blow from a sword, especially a blow from the edge. However, because our Turkish heroes are faithful Muslims, chain mail provides no protection. The Templars suffer the same kind of injuries as they did in the previous three seasons when they weren't wearing chain mail. The Turk's blades must be magical.

These guys also have bows and arrows. They get used occasionally, but rarely effectively. I suspect the reason is that people enjoy watching other people in action, and there isn't much action with bows and arrows. They create a more intellectual effect. Swinging broadswords are more visceral.

Troy - Beach Battle #Clip - Achilles [1080p HD Blu-Ray]
Four men armed with broadswords killing two dozen similarly armed men with suffering any injuries seems a bit far fetched. However, people arrive at the fight with varying levels of skill and training. It might be a bit like a squad of professional basketball players taking on an entire high school team.


La Ballade de Buster Scruggs 2018. (Extrait - Attaque des Indiens) VF
[Indians 1st Attack Scene "Dog Hole" | The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018) Netflix]
Then there is training and tactics. I'd never heard anything about Indian tactics in the American wild west until I saw this scene from The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. So if you get a bunch of teenage boys, give 'em swords, fill them with religious fervor and send them out to kill a bunch of heathens, who just happen to be experienced professional killers, you might very well end up with a bunch of dead kids and the heathens will be untouched.

P.S. The video at the top is from season 1 and I totally recognized the younger of the two guys watching the fight from upstairs window. He's the Emir Al Aziz of Aleppo.

P.P.S. Yes, I realize I am indiscriminate in my use of the word 'heathen'. None of these guys have acknowledged me as the one true lord of the universe, so they are all heathens in my book.

Update March 2020 replaced the disappeared Buster Scruggs video clip with one that's been dubbed in French. Without understandable dialog, you are only getting about half the story. Sorry about that.