Moved as per request.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mazryonh
I like that the line in the "Under Siege 2" entry here, saying how a "million-dollar mercenary hasn't yet figured out the wonders of the vertical foregrip!"
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I wrote that (quite a while ago now), and I should edit it. A few months ago, we declared a moratorium on any comments which critique actors' gun handling. The reason being that we found out some of the actors whose gun handling has been mocked on IMFDB have actually
looked at the site, and they weren't happy about it.
As for the reasons that actors handle guns in ways that seem ridiculous to us, several of the armorers on this site have explained it. They've told us that sometimes, when they come on set, they don't have time to train the actors in proper use of the weapons. Or, they do train them quickly, but the actors are so over-worked and focused on other things that, after multiple takes, they forget what the armorer taught them. In some of the most extreme cases, the actors never do anything except pull the trigger when the director yells "Action!" - the armorer actually reloads the weapon for them in between takes because they never even learn how to do that. It seems ridiculous to us, but remember, these are actors, and sometimes they've never even handled a gun before that particular show.
There are many explanations, but the bottom line is this: Unless the director is someone like Michael Mann who cares a lot about guns, or unless the actor happens to be a gun enthusiast (which we all know is rarely the case), proper gun handling is
usually just not something that actors spend a lot of time worrying about when preparing for their role.
That being said, I think that the quality of gun handling on many movies and TV shows has improved a lot in the last 10 years. In the 1990s, movies like "Heat" were the exception when it came to gun handling. Compare movies and TV shows that have guns today to those made in the 1990s, and I think the difference is often pretty striking. I've seen so many shows from the '90s where actors fire semi-automatic pistols with the thumb of their supporting hand wrapped around the knuckle of their strong hand - which we all know is a recipe for slide bite. Yet it seems to be getting a lot less common in recent movies.