Katniss Everdeen has come down to history as one of the best archers in cinema. The main character fromThe Hunger Gamessaga was famous because of her archery skills, but it seems like the movie got it all wrong.
From Robin Hood to Kate Bishop, going through some other beloved characters like Legolas fromLord of the Ringsor Green Arrow, archers have been very popular within the world of movies and television shows, especially because learning the art behind using a bow and arrow is not easy, and the actors who have portrayed this kind of character had to put a lot of themselves to play their parts.
Jennifer Lawrencehas done a pretty good job taking Katniss skills from the pages of the books written by Suzanne Collins to the big screen, but although it may look really good, it should have been a little different, according to an archery expert.In a recent video published by Insider, archer Jim Kent offered a review of the Girl on Fire skills in the popular movie franchise:
“She actually has beautiful form in this film, and she was coached by an Olympic archer called Khatuna Lorig, an American Olympic Archer. Again, a fantastic Archer, so her form is an Olympic form, which is fantastic for target archery. Now, she’s in a hunting scenario, that type of archery isn’t necessarily going to work fantastically well in this sort of scenario. There’s so many variables, you’re uphill, you’re downhill, and you’re waiting at full draw for something to come into shot. She’s doing a bit of wing shooting there, she’s shooting a bird, shooting a moving target is also difficult, and you wouldn’t be able to use an Olympic style of shooting to shoot a moving target.”
Related:Every Lord of the Rings Movie and TV Show, Ranked by Rotten Tomatoes
Legolas from Lord of the Rings Didn’t Pass the Test Either
Orlando Bloom’s character is one of the best archers that has been taken to the big screen. The elf created by J.R.R. Tolkien has become an emblem of archery and one of the fan favorite characters fromLord of the Rings, but has not managed to impress the experts.
On the same video, archer Grizzly James evaluated Legolas skills during the Battle of Helm Deep inThe Two Towers, finding some pretty low points:
“His elbow is a bit high, but I’ll give him that when you’ve got some big orc dude with a stick coming at you, you’re not always going to get a chance to set and make the perfect shot. But to speed shoot to that kind of level, you’d need a pretty light poundage bow. I’m going to go four [out of ten], but it’s cool.”
Of course, whether is Katniss, Legolas or any other famous archer from film and tv, all their adventures are fictional, so the directors only want them to look good on screen and that doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll be showing off realistic skills.
