King Arthur: Legend of the Sword
by Joby Harold (story & screenplay), Guy Ritchie (screenplay), Lionel Wigram (screenplay), and David Dobkin (story by)
Safehouse Pictures
First, I must report to you that Charlie Hunnam doesn’t spend much (any?) time shirtless in this movie, so if that’s all you care about, I just saved you $13 ($18 if you were gonna see it in 3D).
Objectively, I can’t say this is a good movie. But it’s Guy Ritchie making a Guy Ritchie movie, which I liked, and it’s better than the (allegedly) “historically accurate” King Arthur movie they made with Clive Owens and Kiera Knightly back in 2004. (THAT ONE IS SO BAD. WHY IS THERE A ROMAN DUDE NAMED LANCELOT? WHY.)
So this is a version of King Arthur that pulls in some of the threads from the legends. Merlin exists, sort of. Uther Pendragon is still Arthur’s father, and Arthur is raised as an Everyman, not a prince. There’s a sword, and a stone. And the bad guy is Vortigern, who shows up in histories and literature of Britain (but is, I think, a fairly recent addition to Arthurian lore?) But beyond that, it’s a mostly invented story.
In this version, Uther and Vortigern were brothers, and Vortigern made a deal to become king by killing Uther and his heir, but Uther manages to get Arthur safe away to Londinium, where Arthur grows up in a brothel. By the time he’s grown up, he’s got a crew that protects the brothel and makes money through basic street gang shenanigans. Vortigern is a mean king, and there’s a Resistance against him. He’s building a tower to make his magic powerful or something… it’s not really important.
Anyway, he’s heard a prophecy that the Born King will come and take the sword from the stone, so his great plan is to round up every man of the right age and have them try to pull the sword. If he finds the Born King, then he’ll be executed and Vortigern will have no challengers for the throne, boom, done, everything is great.
Of course, things don’t go that way, thanks to Uther’s former general Bedivere and a Mage (sent by Merlin), and there’s a muddled mess of a lot happening before Arthur wins and becomes king and builds himself a Round Table.
One thing that makes a Arthur movie work (or not) is how much you lean into the idea that there is magic and wizards and moistened bints lobbing scimitars as a form of government. If you take out that parts that make it awesome, it becomes a bad movie. Guy Ritchie at least understands this concept: there’s magic and giant snakes and yes, a Lady of the Lake. While this was set in vaguely post-Roman England (the Roman bits of Londinium were in various states of decay, which was a nice touch), it’s not pretending to be actual history in events or clothing.
Ritchie’s biggest strength is in sharp, quick editing. The montage of Arthur growing up is in spurts of a few seconds that tell the story in images. He’s also very good at sharp and witty dialogue. Some of the accents are a little strong (very East End, I think?) but all the parts where Ritchie was at his most Ritchie-ness, those were by FAR the best parts.
Charlie Hunnam (who we love) is good at all of that. He’s charming and likable, and he can sell himself as a leader of men. I think he did Sons of Anarchy for so long that his accent got a little mushy here and there (he’s English, but he wasn’t using his own accent for Arthur, and a few times he sort of slid into his Pacific Rim accent).
We also now know what a bunch of the dudes from Game of Thrones did on their summer vacation – Aidan Gillam (Littlefinger) and Michael McElhatton (Roose Bolton), for two. Also included are Djimon Hounsou (who doesn’t get enough to do) and Eric Bana and Tom Wu and Kingsley Ben-Adir. A number of the supporting actors aren’t white, which is great (but why is there a kung-fu school in the middle of post-Roman Londinium? I don’t know and neither do you). Still a dearth of women of color, though.
But the plot is a mess, and Jude Law as Vortigern is by far the weakest part of the movie. He was doing his best, and we know that he does well in Ritchie movies (please see the Sherlock Holmes movies as proof), but his parts of the movie were the LEAST Ritchie parts, so it was kind of a waste.
The other part of the movie that was the most disappointing (but not surprising) was that there was only one major female character, and she doesn’t even get a name. She’s just The Mage. Katie McGrath got four lines before being murdered, which I am TIRED of, Hollywood! (Although casting a woman who made a name for herself playing Morgana in Merlin in a King Arthur movie is something I appreciate.) Annabelle Wallis plays a woman who probably was more important in previous drafts of the script, but has no real point. None of the major female characters speak to each other. DO BETTER.
My final verdict is this is fun, but not good. If you like Guy Ritchie and/or Charlie Hunnam, this is worth your time (but maybe not at full price).
King Arthur: Legend of the Sword is in theaters and tickets (US) are available at Fandango and Moviefone.
I’m a huge fan of the Arthurian mythos, and T.H. White’s THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING is still a favorite of mine. I didn’t think I wanted to see this latest lame attempt to update the story for the times, and now that I know we don’t get Charlie shirtless you’ve saved me some money.
Thank you too for the “moistened bint” line. When I want to watch a great take on the Arthurian tale, I can always turn to HOLY GRAIL.
One King Arthur movie I would recommend, although it didn’t get much notice at the time, is KNIGHTRIDERS (1981) with a young Ed Harris in the Arthur role. I think it’s underrated, and worth a viewing, if you can find it.
Djimon Hounsou never gets enough to do, as Djimon Hounsou doing enough would be Djimon Hounsou doing everything. Djimon Hounsou as Arthur. Djimon Hounsou as all the knights. Djimon Hounsou as Katie McGrath.
Based on the box office results of this movie, you may be the only person in your state who saw it. And while I love the Arthurian legend — studied it in college, can quote MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL, enjoy playing SHADOWS OVER CAMELOT — I’ve found that Guy Ritchie directs movies like a hyperactive teen who just chugged a bottle of Jolt, so I though he’d be a bad fit for this genre.
Charlie Hunnam was fine in Pacific Rim, where he needed to be hunky and taciturn. He was so bad in Crimson Peak that King Arthur was an immediate “no see” for me.
Vortigern was tied to the Arthurian backstory early on, by Geoffrey of Monmouth in the mid-12th century. In that version, Vortigern was a usurper who murdered the young king Constans and forced the king’s two young brothers, Uther and Aurelius, to flee to Brittany. Vortigern built the tower that kept sinking into the swamp, giving young Merlin his first opportunity to spout prophecy. Eventually, Aurelius and Uther returned and killed Vortigern. It sounds like this movie moved Vortigern a generation later so he battled Arthur rather than Uther.
Thanks for watching this movie and writing about it, so that I won’t have to. I have been a fan of Arthurian legend since I was a teenager and read Mary Stewart’s Merlin trilogy, followed by The Once and Future King.
It has been awhile since I read the Stewart trilogy, but I think that she includes Vortigern as a character that Merlin encounters.
I’ve been in a bit of a reading slump, but perhaps a re-read of the Merlin trilogy followed by T.H. White will help.
Thanks for the review and I do want to see this movie, bad notices notwithstanding. I’m a big fan of Arthurian mythology/legend and love all of the same books–Mary Stewart, T.H. White and my latest fave, Bernard Cornwell’s Warlord Chronicles. I highly recommend the Cornwell book:
The Winter King
Enemy of God
Excalibur
If you like The Last Kingdom and his Sharpe books, then Cornwell’s Arthur books will be a treat. They bring all the same well-written blending of myth, legend and history.
No, Djimon Hounsou never has enough to do. I really liked his work in The Four Feathers (the Heath Ledger one), but he’s always marvelous. Glad to see he gets so much work, even if it’s never a good enough opportunity.
Disappointed in the lack of shirtless Hunnam, but I’ll go see it anyway. Seems like a great too hot/too rainy afternoon visual escape!
Our local theater was giving away tickets to a pre-opening showing and I couldn’t even muster the will to see it for free. I like some of Ritchie’s work, but felt confident this would not be one of those films. Thanks for proving the validity of my hunch.
And, yes, all Djimon Hounsou, all the time.
Thanks for taking one for the team and seeing this so we don’t have to! I adore adore adore the Arthurian legend, can go way back in time/iterations, etc, and even like Guy Ritchie, when I’m in the mood, and I took one look at this and was all aww F no. This review basically confirms my oh ick response. Alas. I’ll just go back to watching The Last Kingdom on bloody, muddy repeat.
I really enjoyed this movie and thought it was great fun. If you are an appreciator of Guy Ritchie, or shameless testosterone action flicks, or Charlie Hunnam, then this movie will probably be enjoyable for you. I like all three of those things so for me this movie worked fantastically well. That is not to say that it should win any oscars, but most of my favorite movies wouldn’t. 😛 I saw it in a small but packed theater and the audience clapped at the end which is not all that common. So FWIW, we liked it.
One more thing I wanted to mention, I loved the setup of the mixed race knights of the round table and I would have enjoyed another movie focused on them. Really bummed that’s probably not gonna get made.
@qqemokitty they said there were EIGHT films planned for after this one, so perhaps the international box office will be better than US receipts (much like WARCRAFT) and at least one more will get made? I’m going to go see it anyway 🙂
Unless something is truly horrifying, then I try to support innovative and creative endeavors like diversely casting a movie based upon a myth where there surely would’ve been diverse peoples 🙂
EIGHT movies?!?! Dayum…
I am also a fan of Arthurian legend and have loved T. H. White’s take for a while. I also really enjoyed Elizabeth Wein’s Arthurian sequence, loosely based on Arthurian legend and starting with Mordred as the main character:
The Winter Prince
A Coalition of Lions
The Sunbird
Those are more YA and diverge a lot from the legends, but they are very original and highly recommended for a change of perspective.
Can I just say, though, that I’m also getting tired of all these sausage fest movies? Like WHY is it still okay to make/market a movie with NO female speaking parts in the trailer, 0-1 women on the poster, etc.? Not to mention the script itself???
Another lover of all things Arthurian here. Don’t really like Guy Richie’s films, so I think I’ll skip this one.
Isn’t Katie McGrath sadly wasted on stuff where she appears for five minutes or so? I adored her Morgana. I think you’ve inspired me to rewatch BBC’s Merlin. Or possibly re-read The Mists of Avalon.
@Anne: It has been awhile since I read the Stewart trilogy, but I think that she includes Vortigern as a character that Merlin encounters.
Stewart pretty much based the first book on Geoffrey of Monmouth, so Vortigern plays a large part in events. It’s about Merlin’s early life and Uther’s ascension to the throne.
By all means, read these books if you haven’t already. They’re about the only Stewart books available in the US as e-books. There are three from Merlin’s POV (Arthur doesn’t show up until the second) and one about Mordred. The books in order are: The Crystal Cave, The Hollow Hills, The Last Enchantment, and The Wicked Day. The first three are available in an omnibus edition.
I saw this movie and actually liked it. ( I thought the giant elephants in the beginning were kind of silly- all I could think of were the “oliphants” from the Lord Of The Rings trilogy) but overall it was pretty much what I expected it to be. It was Guy Ritchie mixed with medieval/ pseudo Arthurian/mystical/adventure/special effects as played by “the lads”.
Charlie Hunnam is the head of “the lads” and of course there is a caper and a plan and they fight against the “big silly posh bastards”. Eric Bana shows up briefly and looks very fine doing so. Jude Law is a big disappointment, he’s mostly sad and pathetic and awful rather than lordly and intimidating. His best scenes are where he has to make his “sacrifices” where he gives up anything he loves for the power that doesn’t make him happy.
I must disagree about shirtless Charlie as I saw him shirtless more than once in this film. He trains shirtless and there is a scene of him shirtless from the back that look likes an arty magazine shot. The mans physique is in a word…stunning. To borrow a line from Crazy, Stupid Love, he looks photoshopped. In a good way. Add to that he does a very good job acting, the hair and beard are really working for him and overall I was entertained for two hours.
I’d say if you are a Hunnam fan I’d call it a must see.
early on, by Geoffrey of Monmouth in the mid-12th century
And there’s the rub. The legends involve things happening in the, what?, 5th or 6th century … but the canon is from the 12th-13th century and even later (Malory, anyone?) building on a whole different literary tradition. What would the Arthur legends be if we only used material from, let’s say, before 1066? (Someone upthread mentioned The Mists of Avalon. Yeah, there’s your pre-courtly-romantic-love version. Also with a heck of a lot more female characters.)
Oh well. At least it can’t be as bad as the one from the 80s–was it Excalibur?–that had everyone clomping around in plate armor.
I read a few sources that The Mage character was supposed to be Guinevere. A magical Guinevere could have been an interesting twist. Too bad the filmmakers were presumably waiting for sequels that will never come to pursue that.
Slight tangent, but for fellow fans of Arthuriana, Nancy McKenzie’s Queen of Camelot is an enjoyable romance from Guinevere’s perspective, and Rosemary Sutcliff’s Sword at Sunset is, imho, brilliant. Like the Stewart trilogy, it’s not primarily centered on romance, but includes some steamy scenes.
@Louise – There isn’t really any pre-1066 material, partly because as far as anyone can tell Geoffrey of Monmouth made the whole thing up, and conveniently based it on a “Welsh” source that most scholars believe didn’t actually exist. (Sort of the like “Arabic” original of Don Quixote. A polite cover for fiction.)
I really enjoyed The Mists of Avalon, but it’s hardly building on earlier material. If you look at the VERY few Anglo-Saxon works we have they’re not exactly big on speaking parts for women. Beowulf doesn’t abound in strong female characters, and The Seafarer doesn’t have any at all. What you come down to is that the Anglo-Saxons were not a particularly literate culture, in spite of King Alfred’s best efforts. Courtly love has a metric ton of problems, but it pushes women INTO the narrative, not out of it.
This isn’t to say you can’t write great books (or movies) with lots of female characters. But let’s call them the fiction they are, rather than pretending that we’re “recovering” an earlier tradition that doesn’t exist. (Personally, I’m in favor of making more stories with King Alfred as a hero. You have to love a man who tried to implement a primary education system in the vernacular, and he DID fight a cool guerrilla war against the Danes. Maybe we could retire Arthur and give Alfred another run?)
My recommendation for Arthurian stuff is the “Camelot” series. Solely because it has Eva Green as Morgana.
And, okay, Jamie Campbell Bower as Arthur.
@Rebecca:
I think there’s a Netflix series on King Alfred? It’s somewhere inthe queue.
From everything I’ve read (and I did a heavy Arthurian immersion back in college, including all the Stewart, all the White, and a lot of actual history), to the extent the Arthur legend has any basis in fact it would have happened around 400 A.D. There are scant primary sources for that time in the British Isles. If something wasn’t literally carved in stone, it usually didn’t survive. The Book of Kells was one of the earliest known texts (circa 800) until some really ancient Roman documents (carved on wood) turned up during a dig in London a couple of years ago.
See http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/archaeology/ancient-roman-texts-first-londoners-uk-most-important-ever-archaeological-discoveries-a7059271.html
All that said, I’ve enjoyed Guy Ritchie’s movies, I love Jude Law and Djimon Hounsou, and will undoubtedly see this when it comes to my TV. My next theatre movie, though, will be Wonder Woman.
p.s. if you haven’t seen The Tempest with Hounsou and Dame Helen … do!
Seriously, the Bernard Cornwell books can’t be recced enough, IMHO. They have a ton going for them. They a) take place in the correct time period (post-Roman Britain) with the correct peoples in place Romano-Britains, Celts, Picts and invading Saxon/Angles/Jutes. They have appropriate religious influences for the time period. The fighting is stellar and involves tiny groups of people from tribes. And he goes back to some of the earliest forms of the stories to make Bedivere the narrator. Even the women (and it’s not about them) get to have some agency and their own agendas. Why don’t they just make them into a movie or a TV series instead of nonsense like this?
“WHY IS THERE A ROMAN DUDE NAMED LANCELOT? WHY.”
Lancelot in the 2004 King Arthur isn’t Roman. He and the rest of Arthur’s Knights in that version of the story are conscripted Sarmatian soldiers. Kind of Eastern European / Russian, though the name “Lancelot” may not fit well with that either.
@Morgan, they *have* made The Last Kingdom into a tv series. Netflix has picked it up, I believe. Seasons 1 and 2 are streaming now. It is incredible.
@Rebecca:
I really enjoyed The Mists of Avalon, but it’s hardly building on earlier material.
Yes, you’re right. I realized that about five minutes after posting. (I’m more accustomed to forums where you can edit yourself, at least temporarily.) But at least it isn’t as “pretty” as some versions.
I completely lost the plot of this movie review, because when you mentioned Vortigern, I mistook it for Etrigan (a DC comics demon hero) and was just beyond confused.