Props to the movies that shout the "Loose!" command
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Or that they're holding the bow drawn for a long period of time, waiting for the order to "fire".
Long bows averaged a 200lb draw weight. Try holding that for 5 minutes.
Archers of the day:

Literally - you can pick out English longbowman bodies from the shape of their skeletons
Now I'm imagining a swole skeleton with buff bones
It's mostly their twisted spine, as far as I'm aware.
I never blamed the archer on the walls of Helms Deep. Waiting for the enemy to get all the way up to your walls was dumb enough, but waiting while having drawn your bow for what must've felt like ages for a human archer, is fucking rediculous. Terrible leadership.
You don't want your archers to be excausted before the battle even starts, just so you can look really unbothered on top of your wall.
I agree, but it’s obviously done for the tension in the movie. It wouldn’t be as exciting, if the archers were just chillin’ while the Uruk-hai were charging. 😄
Who said anything about holding the bow nocked all the time?
Generally they would yell “DRAW!” And the soldiers would nock their arrows and take aim, then they’d yell “LOOSE” to release the arrows in one big salvo.
i usually complain to the wife when horrible tactics are used in medieval battles.
like... why is everyone always doing a full frontal assault, have the wrong weapons, not use fire appropriately, never flank, use cavalry inappropriately.....
miltary tactics in movies is usually abhorrent.
I loved the battle of Winterfell, where everyone took up defensive positions OUTSIDE THE CASTLE WALLS.
And then charged in to total darkness
That battle caused a mass-extinction event among the Total War community.
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Frontal cavalry charge without any follow up
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Siege engines positioned outside the fortifications against a mobile enemy
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Projectile forces unsupported outside the fortifications
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Melee infantry inside the castle, watching and picking their noses
My wife told me to shut up multiple times during that episode as I was screeching like a monkey. The wrong side won that battle that night.
Given the fact that any language used in such a movie is going to be wildly unlike the language spoken in the time and place of the movie, I think that's a mild anachronism
Old English / Norman French etc would be practically incomprehensible to anybody.
There was an interesting TV show called Barbarians a few years ago where all the Romans spoke Latin but with Italian accents but they had the Germanic barbarians speaking modern German. Not sure if that would please anybody.
If you were commanding a mass of archers "Spaff!" was the correct command.
The best part was when they said "ITS SPAFFFIN' TIME" and spaffed all over those guys.
"Ready your bows!"
"Nock!"
"Mark!"
"Draw!"
"Loose!"
Yeah they would just spaff all over the enemy, multiple times.
Well, this is going to bug me for the rest of my life.
Thanks.
for the haters :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volley_fire#Bows
The co-ordination and timing could probably be resolved with musical instruments, which were used to relay orders, messages etc.
EDIT : Also, what did OP expect, for all the characters to speak Old English?
"Loose" works. As in "Draw!" ... "Loose!".
Correct term was probably "loose!"
Yeah, or a sequence of "nock, draw, fire/loose/shoot" commands. Warbows cannot be held that long ffs.
More likely they didn't shoot in volleys at all. When you can only hold the bow for a second or two even with lifelong training you can't really have volleys.
I never gave it a single thought. But now I have been cursed with this knowledge and will fly into a fury every time I hear it now.
But thanks anyway.
Often times, I think of movies or stories as the story teller as translating for the audience. You don't watch Troy and think it's odd the characters are speaking English.
It's acceptable to complain if the work is nonfiction and meant to be for education.
Something I dislike in movies is when a movie is set in a non-English-speaking country, but all the characters are speaking English. I would rather have the characters speak the proper language for the country, with English subtitles. But I guess the movie execs have calculated that subtitles will make the movie less profitable.
Even worse in my opinion is when they use a generic British accent as a stand-in for literally any time and place in history. Ancient Rome? British accent. Ancient Greece? Also British accent. Ancient Persia? British accent again! Ancient Egypt? You guessed it! British accent! Even when the actors aren't even British, the accent is. It makes no sense. It's lazy and arrogant.
If I had a billion dollars, I'd make the most painstakingly realistic movie about Samurai in feudal Japan, and have all Japanese actors using a SoCal Chicano accent. Or maybe a hyper realistic Viking epic with a full Nordic cast, but they all talk like surfer bros.
The audience needs to be forced to see how insulting that shit is.
Archers also didn't usually shoot upwards to arc their shots. It loses power, reduces accuracy, and makes it more likely for them to hit armor, not less.
If they're using indirect fire they certainly would. Such as shooting over friendly formations.
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