Tom's commentary later was that he disagreed with that sentiment. "I disagree with those potential comments. Words change their meaning overtime. In modern English, you can fire an arrow, you can fire a torpedo, we were gonna fire that trebuchet"
However, I'm also aware that I'm kind of a hypocrite because I'm totally fine with current world grammar and punctuation for example.
The market for these variations is controlled by IP law, not by demand for writing them or reading them. Emily Wilson’s controversial (for silly reasons, in my opinion) translation of Homer demonstrates what’s available in this genre.
Perhaps one day Gimli will rizz up Galadriel and Sam will say “bye-eeee” as Gollum falls into Mt Doom. One might even get to the stage where an LLM sits in place of the text and translates live into your own hyper-personalized idiolect or more usefully into that which will never take you out of the scene.
It seems that "point blank" has come to mean simply, "a shot you can't miss".
https://acoup.blog/2025/05/02/collections-why-archers-didnt-...
The French are defending their castle at night from an English siege. They simultaneously exchange volleys of arrows with their tips set on fire. Very cinematic.
Then the dastardly English commander calls for "night arrows". What are those? They're arrows whose tips aren't set on fire.
The French soldiers, knowing there's a pile of archers at their door, and knowing exactly where they are thanks to the attackers all carrying torches, stand waiting for the signal to loose their counter-volley, and are surprised by the "night arrows".
Such nonsense.
I know nothing about arrows except to identify the pointy end.
The volley fire thing is from black powder musket/rifle days. Basically volleys were used so you can actually seen what you are shooting at (aim) and manuever (hard to move while reloading. Easier if everyone reloads at the same time). Most armies still had small groups sharpshooters/snipers running around the field and taking shots freely.
Some movies actually provide a plausible-sounding explanation for the volley fire thing. A dude in charge commands everyone to wait until the unsuspecting enemy enters the kill zone. But even in that case, I guess the archers won't wait with their bows drawn.
That makes a lot of sense, and is kind of obvious when you think about it. They'd just be wasting energy.
I suppose the way we see it portrayed in film (for some reason it's always LoTR that comes to mind), is for dramatic effect, with scores of arrows flying through the sky at once. But I was always mildly irritated (though without knowing why) by the fact that despite so many arrows flying, the vast majority would miss any target.
Just think of it as a translation.