King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017), is not one of those. It's not that it takes so many liberties with the tale, that is expected. It's the liberties are fairly nonsensical and some are just bad. For starters, while Charlie Hunnam is ok as Arthur, he is really much too old for the role.
Jude Law reunites with his Sherlock director Guy Ritchie and gives us a decent enough Vortigern, but I felt he wasn't really giving the part all he could.
Supergirl's Katie McGrath appears as Elsa, Vortigern's wife, making this her second dip into the Arthurian legends. She had played Morganna in "Merlin" (I'll be getting to that soon).
Djimon Hounsou appears as Sir Bedivere. Frankly, I enjoy every role he has played, but I felt he was phoning this one in. I also felt Eric Bana was miscast, but honestly, I am not entirely I have seen him in anything that I liked him in. Even his Nero in Star Trek seemed a little off to me.
The movie feels like it has too much "Games of Throne" or "Vikings" envy. To that end, Aidan Gillen appears as Sir William, but all I could see was Little Finger. At least he was using his real accent here.
Of course, there were other things I could pick on, like there being Vikings in Britain at all at this time, or even Chinese people at this point; figuring this was between 550AD and 1040AD.
There is more, but not enough to write about, to be honest. Interestingly enough my wife, who doesn't care for the King Arthur story, really likes this one.
What good can I grab from this? Well, I liked Àstrid Bergès-Frisbey as the Mage, Merlin's apprentice. I always felt Merlin needed to have a couple more apprentices. I'll also talk about this when I discuss "Cursed."
Gaming Content
Back in Jr. High, I was playing in a D&D game (Basic/Expert) set in Medieval Britain in the time of Arthur. Of course, as most Jr. High games in the early 80s were, this one devolved rather quickly on who was going to kill Arthur and claim Excalibur as their own. I grew tired of that campaign rather quickly and instead wanted to play in Middle Earth.
But ever since then I have been very, very curious about the RPG Chivalry & Sorcery. Seeing ads in Dragon Magazine only added to the mystery of the game. I am going to have to spend some time with that.
Another bit of content, something that I think comes for the later retellings of the Knights of Camelot, is the notion of the New Religion (Christianity) vs. The Old Ways (Paganism). We saw this in Excalibur and it was a central focus of The Mists of Avalon (which I also hope to talk about). This movie did not feature it all that much, but the thought was still there. I like this sort of interaction and love putting it into my games when I can.
2 comments:
I'm a big fan of Arthurian movies as well, so I've been meaning to watch this film since it came out. I did watch the first five minutes when it was originally available on Sky, but it failed to hook me. Your honest write-up has not encouraged me to return to it ;)
I am easily displeased with deviations from lore, but if there are deviations, then I want them to be stark deviations. For example, I liked Baz Luhrmans Romeo & Juliet in the Streets of Verona Beach, as it is so obviously its own thing and not some sly faking of the original.
In that same way, I am rather allergic to all the usual "Arthur is actually a Roman and that is totally realistic" mumbo jumbo, but I liked this King Arthur movie here very much.
You are right about the actors and their relatively half-assed performance, but the film has a lot of the distinct Guy Ritchie-vibe (which also puts the presence of Giant elephants, African King's Hands, powerful Vikings, and Chinese martial artists neatly within the realm of the possible), it has the really inspiring style and fascinating performance of the mage, who managed to convey a good deal of "other-worldliness" by posture and facial expressions, and it has this epic motto of Arthur's that struck a chord with me: "Why have enemies when you can have friends."
I also liked the elegance of having Merlin himself not present, thus respecting the character's epic status by leaving him unchallenged.
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