Quote Originally Posted by Kraxis
I find the problem with those kind of movies is not so much the exploding shots, at least they could have been used, but that they hardly ever, if at all use canister, which was the principal anti-personel weapon at short ranges.
One 3 pounder with canister could fire faster than an infantryman and had the total effect of a whole company, in terms of musketry to canister. Imagine a 6 pounder or 12 pounder... But I don't recall seeing that in any movie.
Much of this has to do with the general perception of *modern* artillery/tanks and how their rounds behave. This expectation is then applied to historical cannon. Probably 99% of the audiencence is unaware that the high explosive rounds are for anti-personnel, not for destroying armoured targets.

Hence, you get exploding rounds in earlier cannon movies, and little else. You don't see solid shot used for bowling down men. You don't see bolts and solid shot used to hammer through walls or to hit long range targets. You don't see cannister used to mow down a swath at short range like an enormous shot gun.

To be fair, illustrating solid shot and canister so that the audience gets it would be a bit of a challenge. You would have to educate them a bit first, costing maybe a minute or more of screen time as some characters discuss/demonstrate it somewhere in the movie. You can't really depict the devastation of canister easily without being extremely graphic. Exploding shot is easy: the audience sees a gun fire, the shell goes boom, people fall down/disappear. Canister misses the boom...but the people fall down...audience goes

The History Channel has done some interesting demonstrations of canister using Civil War era replicas against cut out targets at appropriate range.