Tags
Charlie Hunnam, Guy Ritchie, King Arthur, King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, Medieval England, Medieval Europe
The first trailer for Guy Ritchie’s King Arthur: Legend of the Sword has dropped. Charlie Hunnam is playing Arthur.
Take a look.
It’s pretty clear that the film has approximately 0 interest in anything to do with history or the literary King Arthur. Just a few points worth making:
The primary location seems to be some sort of late medieval castle-cum-Roman fort located on a high cliff. No such location ever existed, although some 11th century castles did incorporate surviving Roman walls.
The armor is totally crack-addled.
The Sword in the Stone is a 21st century fantasy version of a high medieval-style sword, perhaps 12th or 13th century, apparently circulating in 6th century Britain. It has faux-Norse runes on it, which makes no sense in a pre-Viking Age Britain.
Arthur is wearing an early 21st century hairstyle.
Arthur was “raised on the streets”, an impressive accomplishment in 6th century Britain, since there were no cities in Britain at the time.
There are giant elephants wandering around. That’s nonsense. Everyone knows giant elephants died out in the Roman era.
An Historian Goes to the Movies 
They keep coming out with movies on King Arthur, I keep hoping they’ll do the story justice, and they keep disappointing me. This one looks to be no different. I know in the centuries since the first mention of the Arthurian legend, it has gone through changes. But what they have done to it in the last 30 years or so is just painful to watch. “Excalibur” had it’s issues (wearing full plate mail to dinner or even during sex? Highly doubtful.), but it was still the best representation of King Arthur ever put on film. And the way they are going, it will probably remain so.
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The King Arthur movies of the last 30 years seem to be representative of the times in which they are made more than any kind of historical accuracy. EXCALIBUR (1981) came out in the shadow of STAR WARS: A NEW HOPE so it’s not surprising it carried over elements and tone from that movie. FIRST KNIGHT (1995) came out during the spat of Hollywood epic films that were ushered in by THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS (1992) so it had a similar high romantic vibe to it. Both KING ARTHUR (2003) and THE LAST LEGION (2007) drew heavily from GLADIATOR (2000) which had reignited Hollywood’s love of Roman epics.
So in the end KING ARTHUR: LEGEND OF THE SWORD (2017) looks exactly like what you would expect from a Hollywood that just finished three movies of THE HOBBIT and is still enthralled with GAME OF THRONES. I figured Hollywood had it’s one and only shot at doing a historical Arthur, I’m just hoping this movie has some good sword fights in it.
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Fun fact–First Knight started life as a contemporary rom-com about a love triangle involving a guy named Lance and a woman named Jenny. The script Doctor noticed that the names suggested the Arthurian legends, so he threw out the whole script and wrote the script that wound up getting filmed.
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LOL! Is that true or a joke??
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I heard the story at an academic conference about a decade ago. The person who told me was giving an academic paper on medievalism in First Knight, and she interviewed the screenwriter for the film, who told her that’s how the script developed. He said the original script was awful, but he was told he had to do something with it, and the Arthurian angle was the only thing he could come up with. He didn’t know much about the Arthurian mythos, except stories he remembered hearing as a child in school.
It explains a lot about the film, doesn’t it?
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Well I still enjoyed it. I never for a second thought it was accurate, but then again this is a myth so I just enjoyed the story and sword fights. And yeah I know they were anachronistic too.
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Herds of Elephants still roam the hills of Wales! I don’t even know what you are talking about, Mr. “Historian.” OK, Dr. “Historian.”
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I think you’re confusing elephants for sheep. Or perhaps Wekshmen.
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Have you ever thought of doing Monty Python’s Holy Grail? Although I prefer Life of Brian.
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I may get around to it at some point. It’s actually a fairly smart film in some ways.
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Yes the fight between the Black Knight and the Green Knight was a good representation of two handed sword fighting.
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Nothing against the Beatles, but if I had to choose, I would take George Harrison for his financing of Life of Brian over the entirety of the Beatles musical output.
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They even have swords in back scabbards! Its like a check-list of cliches in modern fantasy films. But quite a few medieval Arthurs are put together from a jumble of cliches and myths and have more to do with the author’s world than the world that those cliches and myths came from …
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