Crossbows in Movies.

Hi All

I'm seeing "Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time" in an about an hour with my son.

I've seen the trailer and there's some ancient crossbow content in the movie.
They look like medieval cross bows but this movie is set in the Persian empire times.
It should be interesting to see what designs they have used in the movie.

More to follow soon.

OK... The movie was great. Good family entertainment. My son is 14 and he enjoyed it very much.
I did also. If your liked the Pirates of the Caribbean movies then you'll like this movie too.

The crossbows were interesting to say the least. As far as I could tell there were two types in the movie.

A heavy version. Which shot bolts as thick as broom handles.
They used two of these crossbows to create a ladder for the Hero of the movie to climb over a wall.
The scene was well done but as soon as I saw the crossbows I could help but feel they were a bit "ahead" of their time.
These were spanned with a metal "jack" with a cranking handle operating on metal teeth.
Similar to a medieval spanning device and as far as I could tell they had a metal prod.
So all in all not very realistic considering this movie was set at the Height of the Persian empire. (About 500 B.C.

A light version. This one was probably more authentic for the time because it had a compound prod.
It looked like it could have been made from strips of horn or wood bound together to create the prod.
These were hand spanned and you got a pretty good look at the Persian soldiers spanning and shooting them.
They were much larger than most Medieval crossbows.

The triggers on both were similar. Very simple lever and I'm guessing roller type release but you don't get a very good look in the movie.

As far as I know the Persians didn't have crossbows. Although they certainly had Archers.

Does anybody know for sure?

Getting a little late here, but I "just" saw that movie...KICK ASS!!!

I also thought that the "heavy version" looked pretty interesting...not as much the bow itself(it did look like steel ), but the cranequin used to span it actually looked "built-in"(indeed looked futuristic for the time...still cool though), we'll have to take another look to be sure.