posted
Yeah. This movie is not good. If you're even vaguely familiar with the stories, or even with British history, this movie will irk you endlessly. And even if you're not, the film itself is of extremely low quality.
Yelling is big in this movie. There's a lot of unneccessary yelling, the first of it taking place in the unneccessary backstory (the knights are all Samaritans, apparently), and then it's fairly frequent in the rest.
Arthur and his knights are paper thin and uninteresting, and if anyone knows anything about any of them they'll have problems. The Celts in this movie are called the Woad, for whatever reason, the filmakers deciding to name an entire race after a type of warpaint they used to use. There are also such hilarious problems such as hand-driven trebuchets, shaved-head Saxons, and the snowy Alps apparently existing in Britain in some parts.
Huh. Never see those in any pictures.
The real story of Arthur is the quintessential tragedy of Britain. The first tragedy. There is none of it here, not from Guinevere's infidelity to Arthur's defeat by the Saxons. This is not the story of Arthur. This is trash.
(p.s. Keira Knightly is hot)
Posts: 2258 | Registered: Aug 2003
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posted
"The Celts in this movie are called the Woad, for whatever reason, the filmakers deciding to name an entire race after a type of warpaint they used to use"
posted
I've been working on a script that's kind of a sequel to The Morte D'arthur, the book for a long time.
So being very familiar with Excaliburian legend, I knew this movie would not be of the best storytelling quality.
<T>
<<<---Note: I also knew the Movie Honey would suck David Hassellhof style, but I will one day see it, along with Keira Knightly's Gwenaverish turd. King Bruckhighmerd--->>>
Posts: 2752 | Registered: Feb 2001
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posted
Well, as no one really knows who Arthur was, or if he really existed, I guess they have the right to mutalate the events as they wisk.
Did anyone see the History Channel's In Search of King Arthur ? I thought it was very well done, and I even learned a few things. I love how they traced the progression of the story of Arthur through the ages, adn commented on how it reflected the different ages concerns.
posted
Well, there's is the fact that right after the title is shown there's a claim that this story is the truth, based on recent archaelogical findings.
Also, I too was offended by the use of the word Woad repeatedly. Why not just call them Celts?
Posts: 2258 | Registered: Aug 2003
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posted
What did you expect from Jerry Bruckheimer?
When will Americans realize he insults them regularly by supposedly appealing to their tastes. The man is a hack and a complete loon. I avoid his movies at all cost.
Posts: 4753 | Registered: May 2002
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Well, I thought, "Hey, Pirates of the Caribbean was pretty good! I mean, it's not going to beat out the Godfather or anything, but I'd definitely watch it more than once!"
But retrospect has 20/20 vision.
Posts: 2258 | Registered: Aug 2003
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posted
I love how they claim that it's the "real story" of King Arthur, and in the next shot they show Gwen in a leather bra fighting alongside the big burly men. You know, ordinarily kings in the dark ages didn't let their wives dress like strippers and fight with their armies, but Arthur was such a brilliant visionary, he realized that in 1,000 years this would make his movie appeal to feminists and horny 15-year-old boys, and sell more tickets. Lucky break for Bruckheimer, eh.
After all that this cheesebucket has done to stupify our culture, he's now going to pervert and disgrace one of the greatest legends in the history of western civilization just for the sake of cashing in on LotR fever. Absolutely disgusting. You couldn't pay me enough to see this movie, and I hope it tanks in a way that makes Around the World in 80 Days look like a Spiderman 2.
posted
::sigh:: I LOVE Arthur legends. I eat them up.
This is NOT arthur.
I would have been more happy if they had just renamed the characters to something i don't have such a strong connection with. As it is, I left the theater feeling cheated.
And, did the saxons seem to be yelling "trogdor!" a lot?
posted
I watched Excalibur today. It's one of my Mom's favorites, been in the video collection forever, but the first time I'd seen it. I really liked it, in all its 1981 special effects glory.
What would be really great would be if someone developed a film off of the French versions of the Arthur tales by Chretien de Troyes - which substantially pre-date anything in English. I mean, Malory wasn't half-bad, but he's all anyone ever goes off of.
I did see one French film called Perceval about the grail quest, and really liked it. But then again, it went for totally abstract as opposed to historical. *shrug*
Posts: 8504 | Registered: Aug 1999
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posted
mmm... Excalibur... the movie rocks outright, but on top of that introduced most of my generation to Patrick Stewart and Carl Orff. Much goodness.
Sounds like you are much better off going to Blockbuster and renting Excalibur than seeing the latest Bruckheimer... but I have to disagree that all his movies are crap. Even excepting Pirates of the Carribean-- Top Gun is still a blast and The Rock was quite enjoyable, as well as not being totally preposterous except for the chemical agent and how it was handled.
Posts: 3846 | Registered: Apr 2004
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quote: I watched Excalibur today. It's one of my Mom's favorites, been in the video collection forever, but the first time I'd seen it.
Ummmm.....wow. Ditto to all of this, believe it or not.
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I'd be happy if they just made a movie based on "Once and Future King". I don't know if it would be accurate, but I'd really like it. That's why my favorite Arthur movie is "The Sword in the Stone."
posted
Oh my that looks good! but please tell me people know Hank Azaria from more than "the Simpsons"...
Posts: 3846 | Registered: Apr 2004
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Bah, I liked it. Granted, there are few movies I _don't_ like, but I thought it was a good movie.
Posts: 9057 | Registered: Nov 2000
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THere are two movies based on different parts of "The Once and Future King." Disney's "Sword in the stone" and the musical turned movie, "Camelot".
However, we now realize why Arthur once said, "Camelot is a silly place."
Posts: 11895 | Registered: Apr 2002
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quote:Ummmm.....wow. Ditto to all of this, believe it or not.
Er ... ditto to the fact that Annie's Mother likes Excalibur and keeps it in her video collection, but that Annie only watched it recently? Okay, then yes, I agree as well Posts: 1907 | Registered: Feb 2000
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posted
Hee hee. Even funnier is that my mom knows the spell of making and has been using it for creepy magic-word effect for years.
Posts: 8504 | Registered: Aug 1999
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posted
You're right, Book - Monmouth pre-dates de Troyes by about 10 years. De Troyes's work dates mostly between 1160 and 1180. However, his body of extant work is a lot more extensive - he wrote epic poems on Eric & Enid, Percival, Yvain, and Lancelot.
His sources are unknown; it is uncertain whether he had access to any of the Welsh versions of the Arthur legends. His Camelot is in Brittany and Arthur a Breton king.
From what's known of Monmouth, however, he may have had Breton ancestry. Whether the Breton & Welsh legends had a common source or one borrowed from another is hard to tell.
Posts: 8504 | Registered: Aug 1999
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Excalibur is one of MY mom's favorite movies, has been in our collection for years, I just watched it for the first time, and I liked it.
Posts: 6367 | Registered: Aug 2003
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I didn't think it was as awful as every here seems to. Technically, I thought it was fairly good. I don't know the history, so I can't comment on that, but I liked the dirtiness of the scenery and the lack of very much melodrama. There was only one really short scene that looked like it might have been out of Braveheart.
My main complaint was in the story. The story was remarkably incomplete, we were apparently supposed to make a lot of connections on our own that were not obvious at all. Does anyone know why that little boy was there?
The whole movie felt like exposition. I didn't realize the climax was the climax until I looked at my watch and figured out that the movie had to be over soon. I kept on figuring that sometime soon, he would actually become King and do Kingly things. Didn't happen. Also, I wasn't quite sure exactly why they were fighting at the end, I thought it was to save the villagers, but then all the characters were talking about freedom, so I don't really know.
What I did like: I liked Arthur. I liked the incorporation of the Round Table not as some huge symbol in it's own right, but as a facet of Arthur's personality. I liked the relationship between Arthur and the nights. I liked that they argued with him but ended up going with him anyway, and that he listened to them. I liked Merlin's makeup, because it was just cool.
I think it was worth the $5.75 I paid for the matinee, but I doubt it would be worth the $7.50 for an evening showing.
Posts: 4655 | Registered: Jan 2002
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I liked it too, but I didn't go into it expecting Morte d'Artur. This version of Arthur was still the kind of guy a legend could be built upon. His knights loved him and would do anything for him.
As blackwolve stated, there were several holes and things that I didn't quite follow. I'm not quite sure, but somehow I got the feeling that Guinevere was the girl that gave Lancelot the locket at the beginning -- kind of from the way he was looking at her and then focused on the locket at one point. Of course, that wouldn't make sense unless Merlin's group stole here from her village sometime after the Romans took him away.
I have no idea what the deal was with the kid.
Posts: 159 | Registered: Jun 2004
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posted
Here is an amusing review. Click on the audio icon to hear it. NPR is always good for a laugh, eh?
Posts: 2804 | Registered: May 2003
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posted
I love Ionn Gruffudd in Horatio Hornblower. How is he in this? If he gets any of his usual honor and duty speeches, I'd see it just for that.
Posts: 2283 | Registered: Dec 2003
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posted
He's the narrator. He's Lancelot only in name, he's not the unstoppable fighting machine he is in the stories.
Posts: 2258 | Registered: Aug 2003
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posted
Ionn Gruffudd is relegated to the narrator?! I was planning on waiting for the dollar theater. I may not bother now.
Posts: 2283 | Registered: Dec 2003
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posted
I read an Ain't It Cool trashing of this movie (I know, I know). One of the most interesting points he made was this:
quote:By stripping out the fanciful elements of myths and legends, one strips out the very elements that make the story worth retelling.
Imagine if you will, the story of Clark, a small town Kansas boy who was an all state track champion. Now Clark was a nice guy, one of the best, as long as you never made him mad. Oh, he wouldn't do much about it, but he'd let loose his gaze, a mean, intimidating look that felt like lasers were piercing right through you. One day, on a dare, he raced across train tracks just as a train was passing by. He was so close to the train that it almost clipped him, yet he escaped death and his friends began to boast of his speed. Faster than a speeding locomotive, they said. But Clark had another gift, that of being in the right place at the right time. One night, while trying to buy booze with a fake ID, he ended up in a store that was being held up by a local thug. Clark tried to intervene, but the thug shot him. The bullet, however, ricocheted off of the whiskey flask he always kept in his breast pocket. Stunned by Clark's seeming imperviousness to bullets, Clark was able to get the drop on the thug and knocked him cold with a single blow. And thus began the legend of the super man from Smallville, Kansas.
Now honestly, which story would you rather spend two hours of your life watching? The story of Clark, the lucky son of a [gun] always in the right place at the right time? Or Superman?
posted
I love reading King Arthur stories, and I was very eager to see this movie. But I was dissapointed. I expected more from a King Arthur story. I knew the movie was going to be horribly innacurate, but it still had much coolness potential.
[rant] I guess what I liked most about the legends was the magic, , fantasy, fairy-tale-ishness, etc. The movie just didn't have any of that. And Merlin was just a Woad leader.
Woads? C'mon, they're called Picts. Or Celts. Either one, but not Woads.
Arthur was supposed to be this great King, who united Britain under him to fight back the Saxon hordes. It took him years to do that, and the war was going on for years. In the movie he was just a commander of a small legion, who kind of happened to be there when a group of Saxons attacked. The whole war was that little battle there at the city! They could've at least made it as big a battle as Helm's Deep!
And thay made Excalibur some sword that was stuck in his father's grave, and he just pulled it out of the dirt!
And Stonehenge being on a cliff by the sea? What the ****!!!
quote: the knights are all Samaritans, apparently
Sarmatian. What was with that anyway? They were supposed to be from various parts of britain (and normandy I think). Weren't there supposed to be more of them, too? And just the fact that they tried to make Lancelot look loke Orlando Bloom...grrrrr. [/rant]
I guess the movie did have a few good points, though. The fighting was still cool, even if it wasn't accurate with the times. And some of the knights were pretty good looking. Like I said, horrible inaccurate, but still kinda cool.
Posts: 4174 | Registered: Sep 2003
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posted
Okay, my "date" and I are trying to decide on a movie for tonight.
He wants to see King Arthur -- and I told him you all said it wasn't worth the price (of course, he has no idea who "you all" are). I want to see The Terminal.
someone settle this for use? Which movie would be worth it?
posted
Go for The Terminal. The movie is very funny.
As I said above, I liked King Arthur once I suspended any expectations for it to be like what I've previously seen of Arthurian legend, but the Terminal is by far the better of the 2.
(Edit: The Association Committee to Stamp Out and Abolish Repetitiveness and Redundancy)
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(and I agree, in an impish sort of way)
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And Merlin was just a Woad leader.![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
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They could've at least made it as big a battle as Helm's Deep!![[Wink]](wink.gif)
