King Arthur review in Boston Globe

[trancejeremy]

Most accounts of King Arthur I've seen are stated as taking in or around the 6th century AD. That's why I don't buy it whenever I see King Arthur movies where people are wearing Renaissance-era plate armor.

Think of it like this. Pecos Bill, the legendary Texas cowboy who was raised by coyotes, was also a myth. However, Pecos Bill stories take place in the old west, they don't take place in modern times with Pecos Bill riding a Harley Davidson around.

The real Arthur was the leader of the British forces who fought against the Saxons in the early 6th century, as you said.

However, just about every literary story about Arthur dates from the 13th century or so, and so used the trappings and technology of the time.

A better example would be Westerns from the 50s. If you watch one of those, everyone is clean cut, no one bleeds when hurt or shot, the people have clean white teeth and are attractive, etc.

Or movies about Jack the Ripper. None of them are even remotely as gritty or dirty as London was back then, they have tons and tons of fake fog, the victims are models, while in real life, they were largely were closer in resemblance to Ernest Borgnine or Ted Kennedy in drag.

 

[Dark Jezter]

Personally, I think a Pecos Bill movie that was re-engineered for the modern era would be pretty cool (consider Ian McKellan's Richard III for an example of this).

What wouldn't be cool is a Pecos Bill movie that used Harleys and then claimed to be the "untold true story".

And this is why Excalibur doesn't set my teeth on edge the way the add for King Arthur does - it never pretends to be historical in any way, shape or form.

I'm still going to see the new film - I'm just going to ignore the pretensions that it is in any way 'more accurate' than the other (wildly inaccurate) versions.

Actually, I'm really not a stickler for historical accuracy (despite the fact that I find it amusing how King Arthur movies always have him and his knights wearing armor that won't be invented for hundreds of years). Braveheart is one of my favorite movies ever, and it contains numerous inaccuracies. The reason I don't like Excalibur is because it's sloppily-edited, disjointed, frantically-paced, and has some really bad casting decisions (especially the actors who played Lancelot and Guenevere) not to mention that many parts of it are downright silly (apparantly knights wear their armor 99% of the time, even when eating dinner, taking a nap, or having sex). The movie did have a couple of good points, such as great performances by Merlin and Morgana. Still, the bad far outweighs the good.

 

[Mark]

"A bubbling cauldron of liquid poop" - Jon Stewart The Daily Show

 

[Storm Raven]

And your comparisons (Conan the Barbarian and Lord of the Rings) do?

Yes, because, like Arthur, they are set in a mythic background with no fixed relation to any "historical" period.

To be fair, Goldeneye dosen't claim to be set in the 1960s as Excalibur and other King Arthur movies claim to be set in the early dark ages.

I don't recall Excalibur (or really any other Arthur movie save this one) claiming to be set in the early dark ages. Mostly they seem to be set in "mythic England, or unnamed equivalent".

 

[Storm Raven]

The real Arthur was the leader of the British forces who fought against the Saxons in the early 6th century, as you said.

The real Arthur is a composite of several characters, many of whom may or may not have formed part of the basis of the original legend. Upon this tiny base was piled a thousand years of oral storytelling and myth, sometimes bringing folk tales originally made centuries earlier than Arthur into his story, and sometimes bringing elements from French (like Lancelot and Galahad) or German (like Tristan and Isoulde) legend and tying them to the Arthur cycle.

The "real Arthur" basically didn't exist anywhere except literature.

 

[Wombat]

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and sometimes bringing elements from French (like Lancelot and Galahad) or German (like Tristan and Isoulde) legend and tying them to the Arthur cycle.

The "real Arthur" basically didn't exist anywhere except literature.

While I agree with the idea that the "real Arthur" is a composite character, I must take very, very minor exception with Tristan and Isoulde -- Tristan is one of the few characters from the tales who we can actually place. There is a stone near Fowey, Cornwall, erected to Drustanus (Tristan), son of Cunomorus. It dates from the 6th century. Tracing back story elements, it appears that the Tristan story probably did originate in this area, albeit much embellished later on, especially by the German poets.

 

[Farganger]

Well I saw it today - I liked it.

They didn't pretend it was historically accurate in any way. They made up their own Arthur story, which was fine by me.

Actually, they did. There was a splash screen at the beginning of the film that said something along the lines of this being the "true" story based on recent archaeological finds. That said, I don't think the scriptwriter believed this: he mentioned in an interview that his script was just an interesting take on the Arthur story, inspired by seeing a graduate student's paper on Artorius Castus many years ago, and poking about doing a bit of his own research.

 

[reanjr]

Talking about "Arthur's time" is about as silly as talking about the "historical Conan", or "the real history of the Lord of the Rings". Arthur is a myth, set him in the version of history you want to set him in.

I have to disagree with you real quick on the LotR thing. There's a significant amount of history to that world, and a whole bunch of mythology as well. And one can have very real conversations about which is which.

 

[reanjr]

That's why I don't buy it whenever I see King Arthur movies where people are wearing Renaissance-era plate armor.

Yeah, I don't buy it whenever anyone refers to him as King. There's no evidence he was anything more than a captain or maybe general.

 

[Storm Raven]

I have to disagree with you real quick on the LotR thing. There's a significant amount of history to that world, and a whole bunch of mythology as well. And one can have very real conversations about which is which.

But arguing that the Lord of the Rings is set in the wrong historical period because people didn't have mail armor, or did or did not have crossbows is silly. The Lord of the Rings, in relation to the real world, is set in "no-time", or "fantasy-era", just like Arthur.