Deadliest Warrior

This is a Spike TV show. Its inspiration comes from drunk arguments or smoke pontifications. What would happen if two different types of historical warriors who never came into contact actually get into a fight? It's a fun idea. The audience is introduce to a minimal history lesson, a few weapons from each fighter, and a faux simulation of the fight. The history lesson is only interesting for the less-known fighters. The weapons testing is the most interesting section. There are a few really obscure weapons. I've never seen the Chinese repeating crossbow. The Rajput weapons are weird. They also get to blow up stuff, slice and dice, and play with guns. The last section is the simulation section. It's the section that one could skip over. It's LARPing.

The third season tries to personalize the warriors by pinpointing historical leaders. It gives some unnecessary personal data and battle strategy. If you're comparing Joan of Arc with William the Conqueror, the personal size difference is of little interest to me. The battle strategy is intriguing in theory but this show is unable to do an in-depth dive into that subject matter. The show is grasping at straws by this point and Vampires vs. Zombies is the definition of jumping the shark. It's a fun little show while it lasted.

Deadliest Warrior turns out to be decent schlock entertainment, but like many good contemporary shows, turns out to be fairly informative. The notion that you could actually determine who is the deadliest warrior in history is silly, not because they compare warriors from completely different times who could've never met anyway, but rather because the match-ups are all out of context -- Gladiator vs. Apache? C'mon.

The show features a few regulars and then some guest warriors who specialize not only in knowledge of the particular warriors but who also are masters of the particular fighting styles and weapons of their particular historical warrior as well. The two different modern warrior groups usually trash-talk each other in goofy machismo fashion; I think they're being serious but it's good for a laugh.

Each show demonstrates the period weapons and their capability against fairly realistic human analogs. For instance, they smash in the head of a dummy with a tomahawk, and the dummy is a simulated skull with simulated brain matter surrounded by ballistics gel. When the skull flies apart, so does the brain matter; it's pretty graphic even though it's just a dummy. There are a few extremely impressive demonstrations of skill by the guest warriors, so that's cool to see.

The "computer program" they run at the end to determine who would win the most times out of 1000 appears to be some cheesy spreadsheet. I'm sure there's more to it, but they offer zero in terms of methodology, adding to the goofiness. The final battle simulation at the very end is pretty cool though, and it nicely ties in all of the weapons that were tested in the lab.

In all, I gave this show a 7 because despite several cornball facets to it, it really is entertaining to watch, occasionally funny, pretty interesting and -- the best part -- informative. I watch it with my two middle-school sons and they love it, and the show always evokes some good discussions of martial history between us. Oh, and although I can find no indication of who the narrator is, it sounds exactly like David Wenham from 300.

Explaining the premise of this show to someone is truly humiliating. I'd rather just not bring it up. For those who don't know, it's a "who would win" contest where they choose warriors from history who never had a chance to fight. Often times these warriors are separated by centuries or even millenia, but they try to make the matchups as fair as possible.

It's a fun show to watch. Certainly the best part of the show is watching the weapon experts at work. The horseback archery from Attila vs Alexander, the blademaster from William Wallace vs Shaka Zulu, and the quickdraw and trick shooting from Jesse James vs Al Capone come to mind as some of my favorite moments.

Unfortunately, it's got a lot of problems. They are very, very loose with historical accuracy, and often they do an awful job of picking weapons - especially with the modern day warriors. They rarely test armor and almost never test shields - only the Spartan and the Viking had a real shield test. The outcome is decided by a simulator which runs on magic, and the decisions are questionable at best.

The choreographed fights are hit or miss. Some are thrilling, like Apache vs Gladiator, but some are downright stupid, like Roman Centurion vs Rajput Warrior, where the Roman throws his shield aside for no reason halfway through. They also rarely, if ever, show actions in the choreographed fights that match up with the tests or results.

This is definitely "turn your brain off", guts, gore, and splodin'-style entertainment. Actually, who am I kidding? You already knew if you were going to watch this show when you read the synopsis. You are either the right audience, or you aren't.

I must first say about this series that the premise is outstanding, and one that has crossed my mind on numerous occasions. What would happen if a medieval knight met up with a samurai? Who would be victorious in battle?

The show then attempts to determine whom is the better warrior amongst two different kinds in history - in many cases two warriors that are separated by many centuries. The arms and armors available to these warriors are demonstrated, both in their lethal potential or in their stopping power in the case of armor. The demonstrations are fascinating, including weapons experts that strike or fire their weapons at ballistics gel encased, and presumably reproduction skeletons. A physician or medical specialist then examines the footage, or the dummy in some cases, and describes the type of trauma inflicted. At the end, we get a well choreographed fight between two re-enactors dressed in costume to simulate the potential outcome of such a contest, as well as a statistics model that determines the winner in 1,000 contests. I like this concept because despite the advantages a particular warrior might possess over another, the randomness of combat will ensure that even the presumably better warrior will lose at least a percentage of the time.

The problems with the show are many, however, and seriously challenge the credibility of the participants. As others have pointed out, a warrior is more than the sum of his weapons and armor, which the show spends the most amount of time demonstrating. I think the premise could be dropped and have the show focus on weapons demonstrations only. Although the mindset, culture, tactics, and goals of each warrior are mentioned, these descriptions are brief and superficial. In addition,the hypothetical combats displayed are all duels. Most of the warriors portrayed would rarely, if ever, be faced with a duel situation, instead fighting in a unit of many soldiers/warriors. The worst part for me has to be the banter or trash talk between the weapons experts representing each respective warrior. It reminds me of a WWE matchup or a pre-boxing/MMA trash session instead of a presumably serious and/or scientific look at a hypothetical combat situation.

At any rate, I do enjoy the show because it has many good aspects. But the flaws do not make for "must-see" TV. If they would focus a little more on the tactics, drop the banter, and perhaps consider tactical unit combat instead of duels, I believe the show would be much improved. The producers are obviously trying to cater to a younger, action thirsty crowd, perhaps in an effort to make history more interesting. I applaud this rationale if nothing else, but the more discriminating viewers with a desire for logical and factual history, such as myself, are often left wanting.

If any wish for a superior show with similarities to DW, check out an earlier History Channel series called "Conquest" with Peter Woodward. The latter is more mature, yet still with some light hearted moments. It covers nearly every criticism I have for DW and then some (see my review).

EDIT: I had not seen Season 3 prior to this original review, and S3 does cover some of my criticisms for the first two Seasons. The banter here has been toned down substantially and the combats all consist of units fighting each other. The warrior's mindsets, values, and motivations are explored with the addition of Richard Machowicz. I also liked the addition of the "X Factors" as well, or somewhat intangible characteristics such as mental health or physical fitness which could positively or negatively impact a side's performance. Overall the changes added a more serious and scientific component to the show that was a substantial improvement IMO.

There are still a few problems that I saw, particularly with the tendency to match two opponents who were not a very good matchup to begin with. Hannibal and Genghis Khan was a good example, as they were separated by nearly 1,400 years and Khan's armor and weapons technology was far superior. Same could be said of William the Conqueror and Joan of Arc. It was a little silly to see a unit of five men firing a heavy artillery piece at each other as well. The elite modern soldiers did not have weapons that they most likely would have carried. I am particularly thinking about the Rangers/North Korea and Gurkha/French Foreign Legion in that all these soldiers would have probably carried hand grenades and a pistol of some kind. Roosevelt/Lawrence of Arabia or even Washington/Napolean would have probably had pistols as well. Oddly enough, only Pancho Villa/Crazy Horse were depicted carrying pistols.

In general, the format changes in S3 were an improvement and I enjoyed it quite a bit more than the previous seasons.

Basic Story Guide:

Everyone has asked the question: If such-and-such fought this guy, who would win? Well, this show puts these fighters to test. Two fighters from both the pre-gunpowder and gunpowder eras, they have their weapons tested, and then in a simulation run over 1000 times, the winner is the one with the highest score.

Verdict:

I kind of enjoyed this series for a while. I really did. I enjoyed the series because it was fun, not because I am a history major, or ancient weapons expert, but because of what I am looking for when watching T.V. which is entertainment. I don't care about the logic behind the stunt, as long as the stunt is good. I'll throw the B.S. flag if I have to, but I'll continue watching the movie. Kind of a round about way to say I just want to be entertained.

But I really hate the announcer who does the whole David Wenham from 300 narration of the weapons. Overly exaggerating the weapons. Like saying "The Such-and-such spear, a three foot instrument of death." Two episodes later, "The some-screwed-up-tribes-name trident, a four foot razor sharp spear for maximum slaughter."

But if that is not bad enough, the guys who wield the weapons for their fighter are just annoying. Pardon my language, but they are constantly pissing and moaning, complaining that their weapon is better. God, it is so annoying. Some muscle bound jock who is either a member of the army, or just some know-it-all, arguing that an ax beats their sword, or that a gun is more effective than the other guys gun.

Either way I used to enjoy it, now it's just gotten annoying. And don't me started on season 3.

5/10