Great movie aside from one thing....*SPOILERS*

Oops sorry ronfirv. I usually don't look at all of the topics on the board. I just quickly went on and posted it. Guess I'm repeating what others have said. Anyway, it was just a small thing overall but I thought it seemed silly.

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Agreed Palisade. It was a great film, there were just a few moments where it seemed like the writers got lazy and introduced some impossible scenarios, like the highlands chase and the scene you described. Overall though I enjoyed it. I just don't like when directors and writers try to get one over on us. ;)

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I thought it was also highly improbable that the boy arrived at the river scene. No way did he run all that way and no one was pictured carrying him.

Agreed! I could accept Esca's line about the warriors' running ability and their use of short cuts, but the little bloke suddenly appearing amongst the warriors' lines at the stream was a real surprise.

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raf-33:

To use your choice of word, it's completely illogical to suggest that humans could keep up with horses, even at a gallop. A horses entire physique has evolved to be able to move long distances for long periods of time, not necessarily at a full gallop, but certainly a trot. In North America, where they were native (people forget they started in North America, were brought to Europe etc. at some point, and THEN came back to North America in the exploration period post 1492), horses had to travel long distances and be able to outrun predators like bears, wolves, wolverines, lynx, etc., ALL of which can run very fast, and can track something for a long time. A bear will sometimes track prey for an entire day before giving up, and stamina would have been entirely necessary to avoid death, especially for the colts and foals. Moreover, think of how many occasions in history during famous events where people ran horses for extremely long distances in a very short period of time. They didn't do it with humans in tow running with them.

Ancient peoples survived by walking most of the time, and only occasionally running. They had neither the stamina nor the food sources to keep their bodies healthy enough for anything else. Had they been able to do feats like the one suggested in the movie, humans would have developed larger lungs and MUCH larger legs to reflect the greater use of them for long periods of time.

I thought about this part of the movie, and then spoke about it with a kinesiologist that works at the university where I am, and he said it is insane to think that a human could ever keep up with horses moving that distance. He said they would have just collapsed from exhaustion. Actually his words were, "that's like suggesting that a human could beat a silverback gorilla in an arm wrestling match, not in a million years."

Coming from someone whose entire job for over twenty years has focused on movement, I think that's case closed.

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Very few people seem to have a logical mind these days, they just see a horse's top speed and a human's top speed and then compare. That's a very shoddy way of thinking.

No one in this thread has made the comparison you suggest, so either (1) you can't/don't read well, or (2) you can't think logically yourself, LOL.

A jogging person cannot keep up with a trotting horse over even a short distance, let alone over a period of hours.A human jogging is moving at under 6 mph, while a horse in a slow trot is going 8 mph or faster. Horses cover considerable distances and vary their pace. Humans have fewer pace options, and all of them are more tiring to a human than long-distance travel is for a horse.

A very fit person can cover 25-35 miles per day, but a horse can cover twice that distance (in both cases, this assumes relatively even terrain). For hilly terrain, both horses and humans move much slower. In both cases, however, horses cover more ground than humans with less effort and shorter rest periods.

Competitive trail riders regularly do 40 miles in a day; a human could not keep up with that pace.

There are always exceptions: one UK runner (a genetic and physiological outlier, apparently) can exceed all normal limits (interesting article here:

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/the-running-blog/2013/aug/30/d ean-karnazes-man-run-forever)

and there is a regular human-versus-horse short marathon that is run in Wales every year which has occasionally been won by a human.

But, the idea that a whole villageful of men on foot, including a child, could outrun men on horseback doesn't stand up to any serious scrutiny. It calls for "willing suspension of disbelief" as is often the case in the movies. In this film, of course, the time element isn't well thought out in several other examples. Esca's trip to round up the legionaries and back appears to take a matter of hours, while in fact it would have required days.

We are supposed to bleep over these minor details.

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One horse would have tired too quickly with two men in a hurry!

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That wasn't even really a plot-hole. The Western Highlands are such rough and hazardous terrain (bog, scree, hidden drops) that they're full of places where even on a native pony you can only ride at a walk - that's if you don't have to dismount altogether and lead your mount. Especially if you don't know the area well. It's perfectly plausible that a party of fit native warriors on foot who do know the ground could catch up with a couple of mounted strangers picking their way on horseback. It was the sudden appearance of the kid, who they would have had to be dragging with them all the way, that was the plot-hole.

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