King Arthur review in Boston Globe

[storyguide3]

More to the point are there any reviews that say "aside from the departures from traditional tellings, this is a wonderful film?" I don't think it was the historical pretensions alone that inspired the competitive dissing contest amoung reviewers.

Kahuna Burger

We, as one who dosen't give a rat's nbehind about what the self-appojnted doyens of "quality cinema" (critics) think, I'll put forward that in my personal opinion, it was an excellent film. It was exciting, well acted for a period-action film and the props and such "felt" right. It may not be the "true" story, but it was a darn good story. And I loved what they did with Lancelot.

 

[takyris]

Actually, to butcher from memory some of what I remember from my Arthurian Lit class back in college, "La Morte D'Arthur" wasn't so much a deepening as a reimagining. King Arthur was given a lot of traits he'd never had before in order to make him more similar to the relatively recent Norman Kings -- he was described as flying into a kingly rage, for example, which is what the Normans were said to do. And Lancelot was added. And Myrdden's name got changed because the Norman kings had trouble figuring out that a double-D was pronounced "th" in English at the time, and kept thinking that Arthur's wizardly advisor was named "Excrement-Head".

There's actually an ineresting tradition by which the legend of King Arthur and Camelot get grabbed and modified by different governments and cultures as a propaganda tool, from the Norman kings with Arthur's transformation to the "no more 'might makes right'" deal that turned King Arthur into a proponent of Democracy, and even to the Kennedys, who made a conscious effort to connect JFK with metaphors for Camelot.

The professor even showed us a turn-of-the-century handbook for an organization that was somewhere between the KKK and the Boy Scouts that taught young boys "good white values" by "training them in the tradition of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table".

Personally, as far as the movie goes, I thought it was odd to have what looked like the old chief-king version of Arthur with Lancelot in 6th-century Britain, but I guess tossing Lance back in time is doable...

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

He directed, among other things, Training Day, Tears of the Sun and The Replacement Killers.

The closed-miondedness indicated by your comment is unfortunate, but to each his own.

The Replacement Killers was ok, haven't seen the other ones.

My close mindedness concerning Jerry B's flicks has been honed through several horrid movies that seem to be everything I hate about Hollywood. Maybe this one is different, if I ever catch it on TV I'll find out. I'm sure not going to pay to see it based on the past work of his I've seen. Movies like The Rock, Con-Air, Enemy of the State, Coyote Ugly, Pearl Harbor, Gone in 60 seconds, & Bad Boys I & *shudder* II were all not just bad IMO, but terrible. Jerry B makes bad movies so consistantly that for me to pay hard earned money to see his crap would be foolish.

I forgot Crimson Tide and Dangerous Minds! Man he can produce a bad movie!

And how can I forget Days of Thunder?

 

[Dark Jezter]

Jerry Bruckheimer movies I liked:

Pirates of the Caribbean
Black Hawk Down (the best cinematic depiction of modern infantry combat ever made)
Armageddon (not very realistic, and awfully cheesy at parts, but it had fantastic action scenes, sound effects, and visuals)
Con-Air
Enemy of the State
The Rock
Crimson Tide
Top Gun
Beverly Hills Cop
Remember the Titans

Jerry Bruckheimer movies I didn't like:
Pearl Harbor (the bombing sequences are visually stunning, but the rest of the movie focuses on a boring love triangle)
Coyote Ugly
Bad Boys II

Any Jerry B movies not mentioned here are ones that I haven't seen. Going by this list, though, I find myself unable to join in on the Jerry B bashing, because he's made a lot more movies I've enjoyed than movies I hated.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

Good Lord he did Beverly Hills Cop? He sure has declined then. And I will admit that Blackhawk Down was at least good.

 

[Farganger]

OK, that doesn't sound like something a splash screen would say, so can someone enlighten those of of who haven't seen it as to the actual phrasing of the "recent archeological evidence" blurb? Aside from that blurb of course, there was an ad campaign of several TV spots all ending with "The TRUE [or REAL, either way] story" So, yes, they claim its historicly accurate, and it set itself up for much well deserved mockery.

Kahuna Burger

I'd be interested to see it quoted in full as well, as I'm pretty sure the wording was a bit stronger than Abraxas's charitable recollection. If not, a lot of film critics were as confused as myself . . . I found quite a few references to the title card and a consensus that it did in fact deserve mockery. For instance:

http://www.dailytexanonline.com/new...g.A.Legend.Without.The.Old.Magic-691796.shtml

 

[Storm Raven]

King Arthur was first identified in literature by Geoffrey of Monmouth, a Welsh monk. In his book Historia Regum Brittaniae ("History of the Kings of Britain"), which was completed in 1138 AD, Geoffrey places King Arthur's reign shortly after Britain's seperation from the Roman Empire, around the year 410 AD. That alone refutes your claim that the legend of King Arthur never takes place in any known historical period.

No it doesn't. It merely indicates that a single source of portions of the myth set him in a particular time. There are dozens of versions, some dating earlier (he appears as a character in many Welsh tales, for example, Pwyll, a character from the Mabinogion, meets him in some tales), and some dating later. There is no specific "time" for Arthur, since he is the result of compositing several characters (and several myths from unrelated sources) together. What time period is Lancelot from? What time period is Galahad from? What time period is Tristan from? There is no "one time", because it is a myth cycle primarily developed over at least a thousand years.

Now, I haven't watched Excalibur in a couple of months, but I believe that the movie opens with the text "The Dark Ages" on the screen.

And? Many mythic stories are set in a generic "dark ages". It doesn't necessarily refer to the period immediately following the collapse of the western Roman empire. I would have thought that including a wizard who called upon the magical powers of "the dragon" to cast illusions and cure injury, a magical water maiden handing out swords that can be magically locked into stones, and a magical cup that can only be found in a dream sequence, and the other fantasy elements would have clued you in to the fact that Excalibur was set in a fantasy world with limited relation to our own.

 

[Dark Jezter]

No it doesn't. It merely indicates that a single source of portions of the myth set him in a particular time. There are dozens of versions, some dating earlier (he appears as a character in many Welsh tales, for example, Pwyll, a character from the Mabinogion, meets him in some tales), and some dating later. There is no specific "time" for Arthur, since he is the result of compositing several characters (and several myths from unrelated sources) together. What time period is Lancelot from? What time period is Galahad from? What time period is Tristan from? There is no "one time", because it is a myth cycle primarily developed over at least a thousand years.

And yet, nearly all of these tales have Arthur uniting the warring English lords under a single King, a period of chaos that did occur after the Romans left Britain.

It is possible to set a story in a different time period than the one it was written in.

And? Many mythic stories are set in a generic "dark ages". It doesn't necessarily refer to the period immediately following the collapse of the western Roman empire.

"If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family anatidae on our hands." -Douglas Adams

I would have thought that including a wizard who called upon the magical powers of "the dragon" to cast illusions and cure injury, a magical water maiden handing out swords that can be magically locked into stones, and a magical cup that can only be found in a dream sequence, and the other fantasy elements would have clued you in to the fact that Excalibur was set in a fantasy world with limited relation to our own.

It is possible to make a point without thinly-veiled insults, you know. But, going by your logic, Highlander takes place in a fantasy world with limited relation to our own rather than 1980s Manhattan because it has sword-fighting immortals.

 

[Shadowdancer]

Here is Roger Ebert's review of King Arthur: The link.

I think he fell asleep during the movie, because there are some errors in his review, most notably

Spoiler

stating that Arthur and Guinevere are wed at Stonehenge. They weren't at Stonehenge; they weren't geographically anywhere close to Stonehenge. And Stonehenge is not on the coast, either.

As far as the "historical accuracy" of the movie, they combined several stories and composited several possible historical inspirations for Arthur, then condensed several hundreds of years of history into a few weeks.