No kidding. I know a lot of my interest in swords, knights, armor, etc came from a variety of sources, including movies and games. It's good that it gets people interested, but it's a shame that there is so much misunderstanding out there. It reminds me of a comic strip I saw once, where a young kid is in a karate lesson, and asks the teacher when they'll get to do the slow-motion stuff.
Because of the way Hollywood does things, it's no surprise that there's this preconception out there that Japanese katanas and samurai are the "ultimate" in swords and warriors. In actuality there's very little difference between the medieval European knight and the samurai. Similar sized swords, similar techniques, similar amount of weight of equipment and armor. They even had a similar ethos (Bushido vs Chivalry). The culture and styles differ the most, and as a result the weapons and armor fill slightly different niches. So I just chuckle when I see "samurai vs knight" arguments on message boards.
(IMHO, it's just as worthy as all of the other "holy wars", such as Kirk vs Picard, Emacs vs vi, Aliens vs Predators, etc)
The western martial arts are quite beautiful to watch, and fun to learn. They're simply more scarce, since they were allowed to die out as gunpowder took over, unlike the eastern arts that were kept alive as a living tradition. Anything that's done today with western sword arts is being revived from the surviving manuscripts (German fechtbuchs in most cases), and there are only a handful of groups out there doing so. But this revival movement is gradually growing as more people learn that it does exist, and that it's actually pretty cool.
