“Dude, when your character lands in Assassin’s Creed, or whenever any hot ass-kicking movie bitch or pretty boy movie star lands after jumping, and the concrete splits, and the knee is not blown out, yet they’re in a modified to look cool three-point-football stance, could that possibly work? Can people fight like that? And if not, why is it in every movie and video game, like the two lead actors walking towards the camera in slow motion while shit blows up?”

-Steevo Bristol

Steevo, the three-point crouch, or basically taking one knee, does have six combat applications that I know of:

1. Dropping rounds down a mortar tube

2. Getting ready to move at the beginning of a football play

3. Kneeling in the front rank with your Enfield rifle and peering over your open sights from the shade of your pith helmet as thousands of naked savages—who, do not have guns, thank God—charge your position.

4. Kneeling in the front rank with your pike butted on the ground while a bunch of armored dumbass rich dudes charge their very expensive war horses at you—warhorses that are smarter than their owners, and throw their asses off in front of your position so you can run them through when they hit the ground

5. Taking top in the referee position in American folk wrestling

6. Taking a knee in a gypsy rules boxing match or stick fight or machete duel to indicate you are done

The three point Keanu Reeves sexy combat stance has no practical hand-to-hand combat application, unless you are jello wrestling against Lucy Liu and you are hoping she takes you down. I can tell you that in any form of blade combat it is a huge mistake, and I know that from experience. You are taking a knee, after all. If you are the big dude now you have to haul all of that ass off the floor to meet his attack. If you’re the small dude now you are under all of that enemy ass. It is a death trap in shield combat.

I have often been disappointed in myself for feeling a thrill when I see this posture adopted in a movie. That is where I think this comes from. Movie makers are in the business of evoking our primal senses. For over a million years—much more, actually—of human evolution our primary predator was the leopard. Early humans were to the leopard what seals are to killer whales and great white sharks. This fear of the crouching predator is more deeply ingrained than that of the charging predator, and is more apt to weaken or sicken us then the charging lion, which is likely to trigger a crazed attempt to flee. Horror writers have tapped into this creeping, crouching menace for over a thousand years, and it remains with us in the form of the vampire, the aliens that never managed to eat that hot redhead, and even werewolves, which behave as creatures of horror in a much more feline fashion than canine.

When the human combatant in a fantasy gets low in a crouch, they need a weapon in hand to make it menacing, so it becomes a three-point crouch instead of a feline pouncing crouch.