In London, Empire BIG SCREEN continued this Saturday with a series of presentations from distributors E1, Warner Brothers and Sony. The majority of the footage screened was identical to that shown at Comic-con, but the audience was treated to a few new clips.
First up was some footage of The Three Musketeers, with a video introduction from Paul W.S. Anderson, where he assured us that “all the swordfighting is real, and carried out by the actors.” The scene in question was a fight between the Musketeers and Rochforte’s men. For those who know the story, this comes immediately after D’Artagnan meets each of the musketeers in turn for a duel.
As D’Artagnan scraps with the guards, all of whom are clad in black tunics (presumably to make them seem more menacing), Porthos, Athos and Aramis mooch around in the background posing. At one point D’Artagnan swings off a wooden structure that looks a lot like something we’d see in a Disneyland Stunt Show, and just like at Disneyland, the structure moves slightly, and then inexplicably stops doing so. Indeed a stunt show is a pretty good description of what we saw well choreographed, but essentially a bit cheap.
