Middle Earth Ranger Forum

For your viewing pleasure.
Legolas has nothin' on these guys.

Holy crap!

I saw that yesterday, and I'm still trying to collect my jaw from the floor.

Mind you, I'm pretty sure they're shooting with elastic strings, or very, very light stunt-bows. Overall, it looks fancy, but it really has zero practical applicability.

But still, like Ringulf said: holy crap.

Screw practicality folks!
If you made just one of those shots while the whole opposing line was looking at you, They would:

A- think all your mates could do it too and lie down on the ground in dispair. saying: "kill me, kill me now."

B- Turn tail and run like hell afraid of so many twisty turny arrows of doom smacking "thud" into the middle of their backs, that they look like hedgehogs when they get home.

C- Get really pissed remembering how much they hate elves, thereby destroying there aim and not being able to survive the first volley.

D- Emmediately switch sides and sign up for the Elven Combat Bowmanship 101 class at your next event.

Very few options, in any case, see this ending with many more arrows being spent.

(now if I made any one of those shots they would certainly flee in terror just to have seen a fat old dwarf looking like he had been shot out of the infamous but deadly "Dwarven Cannon/Blender" and you know sh*t is going down when we bring that out, it is either war or flaming projectile margeuritas!...just sayin')

Haha, I can't argue with that

Makes me want to take up Parkour... more than I already did...

I am reluctant to refer to this exhibition as parkour. While it contains some elements of it in the vaulting/rolling, they are essentially taking a simple action (traverse point A-B, fire) and making it extraordinarily complex, which is fundamentally philosophically opposite of parkour, wherein one seeks to navigate the environment most efficiently. Because of that, to my mind this demonstration falls firmly in the realm of "tricking," thus the subject title.

That being said, it is nonetheless very impressive, and while wholly impractical for actual combat, were I producing a fantasy film I'd hire these guys in an instant (which is of course the point of the video!).

That's the confusion of parkour and free running. Parkour is french, but it's one of those words that didn't have a direct translation. Freerunning was an attempt. Parkour is getting from point a to b in the most efficient way possible, and freerunning has evolved into the fancy stuff from Paul Blart: Mall Cop and ninja warrior. The words, by definition though, are synonymous. So that is where the confusion comes from. Both of you are right due to synonymy.

Very impractical; not only are those bows obviously pretty light, but you couldn't carry a quiver while you did that - it would get in the way, no matter where you slung it, and all the arrows would fall out the first time you did a flip. (Though maybe you could solve that problem by stuffing it with wool or something to hold the arrows?)

But where this kind of stuff does become really practical is in general conditioning. If you have the kind of coordination it takes to pull off something like that, you're way ahead of the game.

Addreonynn, there's no confusion here in my mind over parkour vs. freerunning. This really is neither. I was present when one of the Yamakasi (if I recall correctly, Châu Belle) was asked of his opinion on the distinction between parkour and freerunning, and essentially his response was that it was wholly semantic and unneccessarily divisive. If there's going to be any pigeonholing here I vote for tricking, which yes, is a "thing" on its own.

Those guys must be half elf.