In the 2011 Korean film War of the Arrows, the hero twists his string a full quarter turn just before he releases his last arrow. The arrow then penetrates the leather armor and the bodies of two of his attackers. The implication is that the special twist gave the arrow greater power and penetration. No way! Absolutely not.

Let’s just forget for the moment that if you are drawing a bow with a fifty-pound draw weight or higher there is no way in heaven or hell you are going to twist the string around your fingers. Your fingers are not strong enough. The character in the film must have been drawing a five or ten pound bow to pull off that trick. Let’s also forget that if you twist your string like that, you will be changing the height and position of the nocking point on your string, as well as your rear anchor point—both of which would seriously disrupt your shot and send your arrow flying off in weird directions.

Let’s focus instead on the real crime here. Power and penetration are not, and cannot be, achieved by twisting a string. They are the product of the speed of the cast and the weight of the projectile. A heavier arrow will always penetrate deeper than a lighter arrow, and a faster arrow will always penetrate deeper than a slower arrow of the same weight.

In the 1991, Robin Hood Prince of Thieves, Robin takes the time to lick one of the fletchings on his arrow before he shoots to cut the hangman’s rope that is killing a boy he cares about. Byron Ferguson has shown that you can cut a rope in this manner—though it took him two shots; but that’s not the gimmick. Why does Robin Hood lick the fletching? I don’t know, but the implication is that by licking the fletching he was able to shoot more accurately. Maybe it was just for luck, but one wet fletching isn’t likely to stabilize the arrow better than three dry ones and might affect the trajectory somewhat—though I have shot plenty of arrows with very wet fletchings and have never seen a real difference in flight. So why lick the fletching? I have no idea. Perhaps, it was just some tomfoolery someone added because they thought it was cool. It didn’t work. I mean the kid was being strangled to death at the end of a hangman’s noose, and Robin Hood wasted precious seconds to lick his fletching!