Cornish pointed out that there were reasons behind all three of his big projects having young folks fighting fantastic foes with swords: in “Attack the Block,” one of the characters has a decorative samurai sword on his bedroom wall; in “The Kid Who Would Be King,” they find Excalibur and copy it; and in “Lockwood & Co.,” the swords are in the source material, as Stroud describes them being one of the effective methods for fighting ghosts. (My guess, having not read the books, is that it has something to do with the cold iron the swords are made of, which is extremely useful against fairies and other magical creatures in folklore.) Thankfully for Cornish, he has a little bit of experience with swords and sword-fighting from his school years. As he told /Film:
“I trained in fencing when I was at school. That was my sport, fencing. I wasn’t very good at it. The teacher used to call me lazy. He was a retired Russian Olympic coach who used to teach us fencing.”
While he goes on to say that he should have been good, according to his teacher, because of his long legs, a fencing career just wasn’t in the cards for Cornish. That’s all the better for all of us, honestly, because this way we get to see his movies and TV shows instead. That’s a win-win. Fencing is cool and all, but “Attack the Block” is way cooler.