Paul W.S. Anderson researched seventeenth century weapons when developing the story for new movie The Three Musketeers.
The director brings a new version of the popular tale to the big screen this week - complete with airships - and he reveals that some of the weapons used in the movie were not too far away from some of the weapons that were designed at the time.
Speaking to FemaleFirst the filmmaker said: "We did a lot of research on seventeenth century weaponry and they were really inspired in the 17th century into looking into different ways of killing each other - there are the most fantastic James Bondian style weapons that they built.
"We saw some in museums swords that were also guns, axes that also had guns built into the handle and that rotating cannon device that Luke uses towards the end of the movie is straight out of a Bavarian museum; we built our own version of it but it looks exactly the same.
"So there was a lot of very modern thinking going on and then that tied with the idea of Da Vinci and the fact that he designed so many futuristic things that were never built - but what if?
"That really became the basis of the airships - and also Richard Lester had them in his movie The Return of the Musketeers.
"I thought that this was a fantastic opportunity to take a classic story and the latest in visual effects and tell an operatic tale that would resonate more with a modern audience.
The movie sees Matthew Macfayden, Luke Evans, Ray Stevenson and Logan Lerman take on the roles of the Musketeers with Christoph Waltz, Orlando Bloom and Mila Jovovich also on the cast list.
The Three Musketeers is released 12th October.
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