Yesterday was one of those red-letter days in my public school career where I am at home enriching my life whilst my peers and classmates are toiling away at government institutions to earn their freedom from intellectual oppression. Actually, my school took our third annual trip to the Texas Renaissance Festival so I, being suddenly afflicted with a mysterious one-day illness, stayed home with Mac. Our activities of the day included watching portions of various movies, eating inordinate amounts of our famous bean and cheese dip (I can give you the recipe) and otherwise experiencing the R&R we so richly deserve. All in all, I think Mac will agree with me that the day was seized.
The glorious day was just beginning to really pick up when we were called upon by our mutual best friend (who we will simply call Tres) to watch with him what he has described as "the greatest show ever to pump testosterone into the veins of teenage males." The show Tres was extolling is none other than "The Deadliest Warrior", a SPIKE channel TV show which pits famous warriors in history against each other using virtual battles to decide the winner.
The particular episode we watched pitted the Japanese gangsters, the Yakuza, against the well-known Sicilian Mafia of the prohibition era US. The idea of the show is to bring in specialists in each style of fighting, give them the weapons and tools of their warriors, and use sensors and dummies to test the destructive power of each weapon in the hands of professionals. The data and observations are then fed into a computer which calculates 1000 battles and shows how many each side won and lost, with the final result being choreographed and played out by professional actors.
The concept is a tantalizing one for anyone with a vivid imagination. Imagine pitting ninjas versus Spartans or pirates versus knights. It puts the thousands hypothetical discussions of middle and high school boys everywhere into real-world situations. Not to mention that every dummy that is smashed, bashed, or blown to bits is filled with synthetic blood for a near-realistic gore factor.
The directors obviously focus more on the special effects and choreography than they do on the dialogue. There is enough wit passed between rival warriors to suggest scripting, but the comebacks are so weak that I hope for their sake that it is improvised. This is excusable of the brutes the show brings in to demonstrate weaponry, but when the medical professional they have on staff reviews a dummy who's head is cleaved in two and his only remark is, "You can see by the fracturing of the spine here, this guy is dead", I tend to think they just keep him around because of his overwhelming grasp of the obvious.
In all honesty "The Deadliest Warrior" is a very well-made show which combines imagination with hard fact and special effects with genuine observation. I find it to be both highly entertaining and informative at the same time.
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