ARCHERY AT THE MOVIES: PART 1

It's harder to classify an 'archery movie', than it is to classify, say, a submarine movie. Archery is woven differently into different movies; some fundamental, and some trivial. The classic trope is usually to illustrate a character's rugged individualism or rarefied skill. Being the chosen one never gets old.

For the same reason, archery is frequently thrown in as a dumb shorthand for the same thing. Hey, we need something cool and tough… how about we make this guy an archer? To make our list, there has to be something a little more than just durrr, give that guy a bow.

So how were these chosen? On a carefully calibrated and weighted table of:

a) how inspiring they are (how much they might want to make you pick up a bow)

b) how much the filmmakers understood archery (how lazy the director was)

c) how integral archery is to the plot

d) the straight-out quality of the movie