This amazing for a ton of reasons, but it never really occurred to me it was more practical to hold more arrows in your bow hand than to hang them over your back.
I watched without sound, fair warning. No idea what you hear.
/r/Archery was on this guy two years ago. I haven't drawn a bow in like 10 years. This guy is definitely way better than I'll ever be. That said: 1) It wouldn't occur to me to shoot at something 10 paces away. 2) That's like a 20lb recurve bow at half-draw. I have no doubts that Hollywood has misinterpreted all sorts of shit. There may be all sorts of neat shit you can do while running and jumping if you hold things the way Lars wants you to. But archery came into its own at the Battle of Agincourt wherein English Longbowmen stood stock fucking still and reigned long-range death down on Charles VI. And the legendary archers of history, like Edo-period Japan or the Parthians, did most of their shit from horseback which, by Lars' definition, is also sitting still.
Yeah, I read that thread. It didn't seem nearly as conclusive as the title suggests. The best point I saw was that being able to shoot a lot of things quickly was a bit more helpful (until the rise of the longbowman) than being able to shoot the occasional thing from a long distance. At the very least, both are valid skillsets. They also wandered into a discussion about whether what he was doing could puncture chainmail, ignoring the fact that most of a medieval archer's targets wouldn't have had any, including many knights. Anyway, the interesting part is that if you had asked me yesterday whether I thought Legolas' back-quiver thing was the most efficient way to store arrows before shooting, I would have said yes. But in retrospect, that seems entirely wrong.
In every account of archers I've ever seen, they hold their arrows like this: As in, "come for me fuckers I'll be right here." That guy ain't doin' a lot of running and jumping. I'm with 'em on the chainmail bit. Yeah, most targets wouldn't be wearing any but 10 lbs of push behind a field point will bounce off drywall, let alone trees. It'll stab a foamcore target just fine but as far as actually doing anything useful in the way of death'n'such, not unless you're a squirrel. I have no doubts that the dude can run and jump and do all sorts of impressive things with a bow. I don't think that means we need to rethink everything about archery. Bows just aren't designed for melee no matter how nifty it looks in the movies.
From the audio track: It also mentions his ability to hit his own arrows mid-flight, and split incoming arrows with his own.There are even myths of archers being able to catch an enemy's arrow, and shoot it back at him. Lars took it a step further, and is now able to catch an arrow while jumping, and fire it before he hits the ground.