posted
I've seen the ads for the new Arthur movie, and can't help but wonder at what I'm almost certain are extreme historical innaccuracies, and it galls me to see them write "THE TRUTH BEHIND THE LEGEND" when it's clear that all this is far from true.
What I'm asking about is something I read a while back, which is that Arthur is often confused with the Welsh legend of Macsen Wledig (I believe that's right), one of the many stories from the Mabigonion (I believe that's right, too, but who knows): the story of a Roman general who came to Wales, married a Welsh princess and then turned against the Romans. Here they seem to have mixed the two. Is this right? I mean, surely with all the money Bruckenheimer is fronting they could've done some research.
EDIT: Also, if they were really going for the historical accuracy of the damn thing, why would they throw Lancelot in there when everyone knows he never existed?
[ May 28, 2004, 02:53 PM: Message edited by: Book ]
Posts: 2258 | Registered: Aug 2003
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Ooooh, I've been spending too much time with the kiddos lately. I automatically assumed that the "Arthur" was the Arthur from the cartoon on PBS.
posted
I didn't get the name, but I was under the impression that many scholars thought Arthur *was* a particular Welsh Warrior-King that sought to unite, and for a time succeeded in uniting, the celtic clans and Roman Imperial government under one rule... <shrugs> dunno if this is relevant to your post, but it's what I heard Posts: 3846 | Registered: Apr 2004
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Legends are often based on particular people... for example, there probably was a real Robin Hood... and Davy Crockett, Daniel Boone, John Henry and others were real men about whom legends have grown.
Sorry, FG, I didn't read that very closely and for some reason I thought you were talking about legends in general, not just Arthurian legend.
I have heard theories for the "factual basis" behind the legend of Arthur and this movie appears to be running with one of them.
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Yeah, that tagline bugged me too, just looking at the costumes. Keira Knightly is wearing nothing more than braided leather straps. The historical "accuracy" of that is hilarious.
Posts: 5948 | Registered: Jun 2001
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posted
There is also a belief that Arthur was actually based on a naval captain, and not actually on a real king. There was some archaeological evidence for this that we studied in one of my university classes 20+ years ago (and I don't remember any of the details).
Now, if you want to know the real story of Arthur, just go to your local Blockbuster and rent of copy of Monty Python and the Holy Grail!
Posts: 279 | Registered: May 2004
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Somehow, Jeniwren, I think you and I disagree on whether making Keira Knightly wear "nothing but braided leather straps" is an "error", whether or not it's historically accurate Posts: 3846 | Registered: Apr 2004
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Isn't she only 16 or something like that? I remember reading something saying that her mother pretty much baby sat her on the set of PotC.
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
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I actually took a whole class on Arthurian ledgend. Like a lot of ledgends the Arthur tales as we know of them are actually probably the conglomeration of a bunch of different people's actions. However there is archelogical evidence to show that for a period of time after the Romans left that there was some type of orderly peace that existed. I can't remember all the details though.
As for the tag-line. Well I mean no one can really claim to know the *truth* behind the Arthurian ledgend. Unless of course they've built a time machine in which case one would hope they'd start with other historical instances before this one. I suspect that they're just doing what Jim-Me said, just running with one of the ideas behind the ledgend. And as for all the stuff they're going to get wrong, well if it's a good movie I'll probably forgive them.
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It seems that Kiera Knightly is now nineteen, not sixteen. So she was probably a minor while filming Pirates.
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All that the movie is doing is trying to say, "Hey Read history and you might find we don't need all this magic garbage."
Posts: 11895 | Registered: Apr 2002
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movies love to claim that old stories are true, as it gets people more excited about it.
Hell, disney claimed that Hildago was a true story when it was just the ramblings of a know liar. They even found that out themselves when they did fact checking...they just chose to ignore the fact that the race that he entered never exsisted...and the long distance horse racing community concidered the main character to be a joke.
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My mind is totally out in left field because I kept rereading Book's first paragraph and thinking, "Dudley Moore's dead ! How are they making another one ??"
Posts: 349 | Registered: Feb 2004
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I wasn't aware that Macsen Wledig was in the Mabinogion. The Roman name for him is "Magnus Maximus," which seems a really silly name to me, and makes me think his story is mythological. But supposedly he was a Roman general in Britannia who decided to challenge the Emperor. He withdrew his troops, and was successful for a time but was eventually defeated. This would have been at least a hundred years before "Arthur," at my best guess. Something in the back of my mind is telling me Maximus was in the 300s, but I can't verify that so it may just be my imagination.
As for Arthus, this movie has me caught between hysterical laughter and tears. If they could have resisted billing it as "the HISTORICAL story," I'd go see it, munch my popcorn, and enjoy it as a fun movie. But by billing it as historical they've killed it in my mind. Oh well.
I'll go watch Monty Python now...
Posts: 2849 | Registered: Feb 2002
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quote: Somehow, Jeniwren, I think you and I disagree on whether making Keira Knightly wear "nothing but braided leather straps" is an "error", whether or not it's historically accurate
Well to be completely historically accurate, the group that knightley leads in the movie went to battle naked.
So I think you really want them to be historically accurate!
Posts: 107 | Registered: Apr 2003
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The only King Arthur stories I've read are the ones by Stephen Lawhead and the ones by T.H. White. Apparently the White ones are closer to Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur which I haven't read, but I preferred the Lawhead ones - they seemed more culturally authentic. For those who've read them and know the Arthur legends better than I do, how close are they to people's interpretations of the legends that sparked them off?
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I confess, though, that it'll be a real detraction for me if the movie is taking itself seriously, and yet makes no effort to be reasonably accurate on the costumes. One of my favorite medieval-style movies is "First Knight", solely because the costuming in it is the worst I've ever seen. When I saw it in the theater, I was rolling with laughter -- literally. I suspect that this was the beginning of the end of my first marriage, as we were divorced shortly after seeing the movie together. Poor Sean Connery looks like he's doubling as a couch in most of the scenes. At least, however, "First Knight" doesn't have pretensions to accuracy on any level, and so may be considered comic. "Arthur", with a tagline purporting historical accuracy, figuring that the costuming was simply for comic relief (or other purposes ) might be difficult for me to reach.
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posted
I think Mary Stewart talks about the Arthurian legend's source in the introduction to one or more of her Merlin series books(The Crystal Cave, The Hollow Hills, The Last Enchantment and The Wicked Day)...
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