Hey folks, Harry here... well, Pyul really makes this film sound like an amazing ... fantastic... unbelievable... excruciating... LOAD OF SHIT! This sounds so bad, that I think literally... I'm waiting for dvd. Fuck this...
Mediocrity, thy name is Fuqua.
There exists in our history great tales of wonder - stories that have been passed down for centuries - legends of men who upheld such great ideals that they drew uncommon and superhuman power from their belief. With heroes like Gilgamesh, Odysseus, Beowulf and Robin Hood many a generation has found itself inspired, dreaming of their adventures and reveling in the wonder of their long exaggerated tales. Who among you hasn't before heard the story of King Arthur and his knights? Whether through literature or such excellent films as Knights of the Round Table, Camelot, Monty Python and the Holy Grail or arguably the best of the bunch, John Boorman's 1981 version of the legend - Excalibur - most of us have at some point been exposed to the story. And odds are, you've loved it.
One of the great things about the Legend of King Arthur, aka Uther Pendragon, is that the story has become so vast, so large and grand a tale, that it cannot be told in it's entirety in one sitting. Thus, no one movie could ever be expected to capture the whole story. In fact, most films attempt merely to tell one aspect of the story, rather than being a highlight reel of the most popular elements. Films like Merlin (which tells the story solely from Merlin's point of view), The Mists of Avalon (which focuses upon the women of the story), and First Knight (which puts it's lens on the betrayal of Lancelot and Guinevere) all pick a small segment of the story and attempt to explore it.
When it comes to a story like this, picking and choosing what stays and what goes has to be epic task unto itself. Do you bring in the Green Knight? The Black Knight? The Holy Grail? Mordred? Morgana Le Fey? Do you focus on the tragic love triangle of Arthur, Lancelot & Guinevere or let it simply fall into the background, manipulating the events around them? Do you focus upon the sorcery or downplay it?
Which brings us to the latest retelling of the Arthur story, Antoine Fuqua's King Arthur, another attempt in Hollywood's current historical revisionism movement to demystify the legends of old and make them harsher, grittier and positively mundane. Like The 13th Warrior (Eaters of the Dead) and Troy before it, King Arthur tries to peek behind the curtain and pry out the truth of the matter. "The Untold True Story That Inspired The Legend" as the poster so boldly puts it.
Wow. Who knew the real story of King Arthur could be so god damned boring? Personally, I put as much stock into this being true as I do Disney's "de-bunked but we don't care we'll still sell it as a true story" Hidalgo and New Line's "we'll still say it's based on a true story even though it bears zero resemblance to the real events" Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
But how is it as a film? On it's own, and ignoring any comparison to the mountain of superior films covering the same material, it's actually not that bad a movie. It's pretty alright at points. Sure it's a nigh bloodless bevy of banality and boredom, but it has it's moments. The Knights, as characters, are a pretty cool rag tag bunch of 5th century cavaliers, and at times their dialog is intentionally hilarious. But what the film itself ultimately lacks is soul. We don't really care about these guys, or their plight.
Many of you may have, as I did, scratched their head when they saw modern action director Antoine Fuqua tapped to direct a historical epic. After all, his only really good film (Training Day) isn't much of an action film at all. However, after seeing this, I now understand fully the decision to bring him on board. He's directed this film before, back when it was called Tears of the Sun.
"But Tears of the Sun has NOTHING to do with King Arthur!" you might be screaming, and I would agree with you whole heartedly. Thus begins my evisceration of King Arthur.
One of the reasons stories rooted in truth often become legend is because they make better stories that way. Someone once said "A stranger loses half his charm when he ceases to be a stranger." 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 bitch always in the right place at the right time? Or Superman?
If the current batch of films is any indication, Hollywood thinks you'd rather watch the former. Forget the fact that 16 of the 20 highest grossing films of all time are fanciful high adventure stories that involve wizards, aliens, dinosaurs, ghosts, mysticism and epic heroes chosen by fate and prophesy (or in the case of the Star Wars movies, all of the above.) Forget that the stories that they're retelling have existed for centuries in their current form and have never fallen out of favor in the minds of young and old alike. Forget that even though many of these figures are rooted in historical fact, the stories were recorded as we've been told them, not - as King Arthur states in it's opening title card - as archeological evidence suggests. Clearly, Hollywood knows what you want, as does Antoine Fuqua. And what you want is Tears of the Sun 2: 5th Century A.D.
'King Arthur' doesn't simply mangle the legend of King Arthur, it guts it. Gone are the noble intentions of the Knights, replacing them instead with a coarse, bitter group of malcontents - forced into 15 year slavery by the Roman empire - who desire nothing more than to go home, which isn't, might I add, anywhere in the Isles. Quests aren't quests at all, but missions from Rome to be bitched and moaned about. Sir Galahad the Pure? Well, he objects to killing for pleasure, if that makes him pure. Bors the Chaste? Well, he's got 11 kids by a women he hasn't the decency to marry. And Lancelot? The greatest knight of all? A punk ass bitch who jokes with his friends about sleeping with their wives and cares for nothing but returning home.
Gone is the tragic love triangle of Arthur, Guinevere and Lancelot, reduced simply to a couple of longing glances, a single night of screwing and a wedding stolen right out of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (without the coolness of Sean Connery), that feels more like a marriage of obligation than it does anything resembling love. They kind of hint at some kind of tension, but rather than the classic story of betrayal, Guinevere never seems to even notice Lancelot until the end of the movie, and while Lancelot himself mildly seems to lust after Guinevere, he simply seems to shrug her off as the boss's piece of ass.
And what of their quests? Well, as the knights are about to go home, they're presented with one last quest. The Romans are pulling out of Briton, but there are Romans in an estate who are endangered by invading 5th century eurotrash Saxons. Arthur's mission, to make his way deep into enemy territory with his elite group of knights, and retrieve the family, at which point they decide to bring the local villagers with them, and begin the perilous trek through the wilderness while the barbaric Saxons are hot on their heels. Um, yeah. This movie is one Bruce Willis and a machine gun away from actually BEING Tears of the Sun.
Ultimately, King Arthur is anything but. In fact, were you to change the names of the characters and retitle the movie something like "Briton", it would be entirely unrelatable to the Legend of King Arthur in any way, shape or form. No one, save perhaps Arthurian scholars familiar with this supposed "recent archeological evidence", would even make the comparison. Unfortunately, that still wouldn't make it a very good movie. At least Troy, while forsaking the entire element of the gods, managed to maintain being entertaining - but this reduces itself, at times, from the mildly ridiculous to the downright ludicrous.
And Fuqua, who was able to direct Denzel Washington to his Best Actor Oscar, manages here to piss away almost every bit of talent he's given here. Clive Owen, for one, deserves better than this. While most people now remember him as 'that BMW guy', he is one of those fantastic actors on the verge of becoming huge. But this ain't gonna help him much. Ioan Gruffudd plays the part of Lancelot with all the gusto and intensity of a flaming Shakespearian actor. Kiera Knightly, no doubt chosen for her tomboyish beauty, is caked with so much mud and makeup that the few scenes they clean her up never quite sells us on why she's supposed to be beautiful (the only reason they actually give us that Arthur is sweet on her), and her character is as two-dimensional as they come (not that Kiera isn't trying, just that she's given zero to work with.) And lets not forget Stellan Skarsgard, who has seemingly taken a cue from Billy Bob Thornton's performance in Bad Santa and decided to spend the entirety of filming falling down drunk. When he utters the line "Finally a man worth killing," it made me cringe muttering "Finally a line worth speaking clearly." In fact, the only member of the cast to shine here is Ray Winstone (Sexy Beast, Nil by Mouth) who really makes Bors, despite it's serious departure from the Bors of Legend, not only interesting, but entertaining.
But Fuqua doesn't simply stop at milking bad performances from his actors. He paints with a visual palate of blues and reds, dulling the film down to look more like it was shot in 1983 than it does 2003. Every emotional beat is punctuated by a cliché, ensuring that every noble death is sold to us as just that but instead becomes a cinematic punchline, worthy of laughter rather than tears. And every scene of violence attempts to be gritty in a very Braveheart/Gladiator sort of way, while also attempting to maintain a PG-13 rating, a tough line to walk that Peter Jackson accomplished with LOTR but Fuqua totally manages to bungle.
No, friends, this isn't King Arthur after all, and it's not even a pale imitation. It's a film all it's own, that borrows its power from one of the greatest legends of all time and gives nothing back. Bland, uninspiring and worthy of nothing but ire and ridicule. No, Antoine Fuqua couldn't have better pissed upon the legend of King Arthur had he directed X-Calibre and the Quest for the Holy G, the story of Arthur "King" Pendleton and his gang "The Knights" (Gives-her-lance-alot, Gals-I-had, Bore and G-Wane) who clean up South Central with his trusty pistol (the movies namesake.) Yeah, that's the movie Fuqua SHOULD have made. Instead, with King Arthur, he gives hope of movie he can't deliver.
Oh and one final spoiler for those of you who want to know just how ridiculous this movie is: SPOILERSPOILERSPOILERSPOILER:
They all turn into ponies and ride off into the sunset. I shit you not. Ponies.
END SPOILERS END SPOILERS END SPOILERS
Pyul Mactackle
