Personally, I feel that there are two major advantages to filming swords vs. muskets in film and television dramas.

1. By describing the technological difference between the two sides, it creates the illusion that "it's not that our army doesn't work hard, but the enemy has Gundam" in order to promote that the Qing soldiers are not afraid of death, are brave and good at fighting, and are more capable. Arouse the audience's emotions.

2. Swords and spears cannot defeat muskets. Firstly, it can promote the idea that "if you fall behind, you will be beaten", and secondly, it can show the cruelty of the Western invaders. It kills two birds with one stone. It is a standard propaganda method of Social Darwinism.

In fact, if you think about it carefully, which country does not have this kind of strategy of using the weak to fight the strong? In "The Last Samurai", the shogunate army also held long swords and fought against line infantry. In fact, in real history, the shogunate army opened up earlier and more thoroughly than the anti-shogunate army (the shogunate army needed to suppress the uprising through Westernization, while the anti-shogunate army's slogan was "reject the foreigners"), but it was still portrayed as a backward image. For no reason, it's just because this setting is more realistic and close to the idea of ??"the shogun is backward and the government army is civilized".

In recent years, Chinese films and television have actually reflected on and improved the theory of swords and spears. Firearms appeared in the backgrounds of the Ming and Qing Dynasties, including the Jinyiwei, the Xiuchundao, the Blood Drops, and the Tou Mingzhuang. However, due to insufficient research on the effects, some of the props selection seemed nondescript. Tai Chi is one of them that needs to be severely criticized. It not only wants steampunk to be better than modern weapons, but also wants modern weapons to massacre traditional martial arts. In comparison, The Tribulation of the Ming Dynasty is a relatively complete film, and it has been well restored in the war scenes that are not the focus at all.