A.V. Club readers can take an exclusive look inside The Last Duel’s titular melee in the clip above, which takes viewers onto the muddy, dead-horse laden battlefield where Matt Damon’s Jean de Carrerouge and Adam Driver’s Jacques Le Gris have it out. Take a gander at how jousts are shot, marvel at how director Ridley Scott picked the optimal angles for all the action, and get an inside glimpse into the anachronistic masking up behind the scenes.
As Damon remarks in the clip, both he and Driver are essentially having it out in “big tin cans,” wildly swinging at each other and hoping to hit weak spots. Jodie Comer’s Marguerite de Carrerouge, meanwhile, stands helpless, her fate in the hands of, as someone off-camera puts it, “the middle-aged man” who can withstand the onslaught the longest.
If this clip leaves you thirsty for more Duel, you can check out the trailer for the whole movie right here. It lands exclusively in theaters in October 15. To read more about how and why Affleck and Damon recruited co-writer Nicole Holofcener to join their mini writers’ room, you can check out this story about the film’s off-screen gender dynamics.
Of course, if you’re more interested in what you won’t see on-screen in The Last Duel, there’s always this story about the scripted kiss between Damon and Affleck that Ridley Scott declined to shoot, lest it “be distracting,” as Affleck relayed. There was good historical reason for the kiss, though, and you can read all about that in this story, and then go and write some fan fiction about what could have been.
