The weapons master, Simon Atherton, corresponded with veterans by fax to match weapons to scenes.
"Would you be, like, an electronics expert or a weapons master, or what?" "I took a kickboxing class once — I could be, like, a ninja," Clark said, gamely.
Then there's the unintentionally hilarious use of experts with made-up titles such as "world champion knife-fighter" and "pirate weapons master".
For "Carmen," which opens Thursday, and "Il Trovatore," that fight director is Mr. Poulton, a 42-year-old Australian former actor, bar bouncer, security guard, martial artist and "edged weapons" master who divides his time between Brisbane and New York.
Its hero, Hildebrand, appears in Germanic legend as an elder warrior, a magician, and an adviser and weapons master to Dietrich von Bern, the poetic incarnation of the Ostrogothic king Theodoric the Great.
Mr. Goyer is a comics connoisseur, as is also evident when the weapons master Scud Norman Reedussaysays "the Dark Knight returns" as Blade strides into a room, a reference to the reinvention of Batman by Frank Miller over a decade ago.
Other figures in the Dietrich cycle are his weapons master, Hildebrand, with his nephews Alphart and Wolfhart; Wittich and Heime, Dietrich's traitorous vassals; and Biterolf and Dietleib, the king of Toledo and his son, who join Dietrich in battle at Worms.
The Provost, a weapons master, maintained the weapons and arms of the brotherhood, and himself wore a special medallion.
In the near future, weapons master James McCullen Christopher Ecclestonn) has created a nanotech-based weapon - nanomites capable of destroying cities.
