I went and saw this movie today and I guess to sum it up in one word it's underwhelming. I had kind of looked forward to it, but it was definitely less than spectacular. This adaptation of the legend of Arthur was kind of fresh, and if you go see it you'll see what I mean. The background of all the principles: Arthur, Lancelot, Merlin, and Guinevere are non-standard. The following may be a spoiler but it's also in most reviews about this movie: Lancelot doesn't end up having an affair with Guinevere. I actually like that a lot. Because I always thought Arthur got a raw deal... you know? He's busy building Camelot for the glory of human dignity, and in comes Richard Gere to get with his wife. What's up with that? I guess every time this kind of movie comes out you want to compare it to Braveheart, Gladiator, and I'll also compare it to something more recent -- Troy. The battles in this movie uses less CG than say Troy, so they are less visually stunning, but the close up melee combat is very viceral and stirring, but not as stirring as say the combat in Gladiator. And where it doesn't match Braveheart and Gladiator is its character development, we don't feel the depth of the emotions of Arthur like we felt for William Wallace and Maximus. This is not to say Clive Owen does a bad job... it's just he had less to work with. But I guess it's also unfair to compare this movie to Oscar winners, I liked Troy much better, but I guess I can see how some people would like this better. Another thing is that I didn't feel Keira Knightley excuted her role real well... but maybe it's too much to ask for someone so young? A couple of side notes... historical inaccuracies bother me very little, the film doesn't have to be believable for me to like it. However, during the climactic fight, all of a sudden Merlin rolls in with some trebuchets, which were certainly not around in the dark ages. Anyway, that was just too superfluous and random for my liking. Also, I couldn't help but notice that this film shares a lot of plot elements with Musa: The Warrior, a recent Korean film. Purely coincidental, but kind of interesting. That movie, by the way, is awesome... much better than Arthur. While waiting for King Arthur to start we watched De-Lovely... a biopic about the composer, songwriter Cole Porter. That actually ended up being the best movie I saw today. De-Lovely is really quite a nice movie, if you're into musicals. It was VERY interesting. Kevin Kline stars as the switch hitting composer... which reminded me of him in that movie "In and Out." Is he being typecast or something?
Maybe I'm just a jerk, but this movie looks just plain awful to me, from the first movie poster to the long theatrical trailer. I have absolutely no desire to see it. Has anyone seen it and enjoyed it?
If Keira doesn't take her garb off for the camera, then I won't even bother renting this one. I agree that nothing holds a candle to "Excalibur". It had it all.
historical inaccuracies bother me very little That's good since there is very little history in King Author, in any of its tellings. King Author is likely to be 100% mythical. What little history that gets attributed to KA is more of a force fit than a dove tail. I read in a book of English History that the Author myth predates Christ and that the story migrated from Europe to Britian with the Celtic people.
I did research on King Arthur for 6th grade, and here's what I think happens. There was a king that was well liked during the dark ages where nothing was really written. He was probably made mythical and enterwined with some other myths but there was probably someone named Arthur that won battles and ruled. The thing that validates that there was atleast someone famous with the name Arthur imo is that before then, very few people were named arthur, but the name become more common after the dark ages. So someone with the name Arthur must of risen to fame during that time.
She's covered up the whole time, has a sex scene where you see her leg and thigh, and she fights at the end with a horrible bondage looking outfit that shows how skinny she is. I really wish she'd put on some pounds.
It's scary to think that she was only 17 whe she made that. BTW, her presence in the film is my only reason to see it.
Are you sure those were trebuchets? I didn't notice any counterweights, so I figured them to be onagers, which were certainly around in the dark ages. I actually enjoyed the movie. I thought there were plenty of great fight scenes, there were interesting characters, it had Hadrian's wall, which doesn't come up in movies very often, and it tried to tell the story of a historically possible Arthur.
The guy who played Lancelot, who was a badass with 2 swords, is now going to be Reed Richards in the new Fantastic Four movie.
I have to totally agreed with that. It's a classic. How sad that they couldn't do a better job. First Knight was a joke. Hollywood are damn greedy and stupid. By the way, Troy was damn horrible in my opinion. Brad Pitt as Achilles was laughably bad. Wasn't he suppose to be inlove with his cousin the boy that die?
I dont recall Richard Gere being in Excalibur. Is there another Camelot movie with Richard Gere? (not that I would be excited about that)
With this movie, Julie Ormond completed her hat trick of being the woman who came between two men after her roles in Sabrina and Legends of the Fall.
