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Overthinking movies!
Jun. 7th, 2013 09:04 amSomething that bothered me about the 2011 Conan - a movie I was not expecting to enjoy as much as I did - is there's this scene where Conan's daddy, Ron Perlman, is trying to impart these Zen lessons while forging the kid a sword. So there's this montage where these supposedly master smiths pour molten metal into a sword mold, and the next sequence is Ron Perlman hammering away on a blade.
I was thinking about this in the shower and here's how I can justify it, since the molten iron has to be there for a dramatic NPC death scene, and the mold has to be there for the "it is my father's sword!" moment at the end of the movie. Cimmerians probably have access to bog iron, but not much, which'd explain them making an ingot at a time, and they're doing associative magic - by casting the ingot in a sword-shaped trench, they hope to pass sword qualities to the metal. Since the trench is lined with charcoal dust they're making steel, which is pretty noteworthy when everyone else just has iron. It's entirely possible they don't even know how the magic works.
I was thinking about this in the shower and here's how I can justify it, since the molten iron has to be there for a dramatic NPC death scene, and the mold has to be there for the "it is my father's sword!" moment at the end of the movie. Cimmerians probably have access to bog iron, but not much, which'd explain them making an ingot at a time, and they're doing associative magic - by casting the ingot in a sword-shaped trench, they hope to pass sword qualities to the metal. Since the trench is lined with charcoal dust they're making steel, which is pretty noteworthy when everyone else just has iron. It's entirely possible they don't even know how the magic works.