I mean, what were they thinking? This could have been a nice story, but instead they started the damn thing with BOOM-BOOM-CHAH, BOOM-BOOM-CHAH and the whole damn field of spectators boogie-ing to the sound of Queen???
I’m a Queen fan, but I am also a bit of a traditionalist, and I shut the movie (it’s not a film!) off when I heard War’s Low Rider.
Am I being an “old fogey”, or what?
Quasi
Well, I wouldn’t say you’re an old fogey–just that you weren’t approaching the movie with your sense of humor tuned to the right setting. I am also a traditionalist, but I had seen enough of the trailers to tune my sense of humor and actually enjoyed the movie pretty well, anachronistic music and all. Some of it was kind of appropriate to the plotline, even…
We rented that on Friday night, and I was expecting the modern soundtrack. When I saw the characters dancing around to the music, I turned to Mr. Del and said “I knew it was modern music, but I didn’t realize the characters would be able to hear it!”
After I got used to it (sorta) I thought it was a fairly interesting idea. I also liked how the tournaments were set up to seem like modern sporting events. Sadly, the completely terrible acting of the main character guy offset any possible benefit of the non-traditional elements. I’d be curious to see how these general ideas would play out with good actors.
The one thing that surprised me especially was that they didn’t use more music. I would have thought that once the decision was made to go with that concept, they would have pushed it to its limits.
Keep in mind that classical music, as we think of it, would have been equally anachronistic in a medieval setting.
People who weren’t history buffs just wouldn’t have been able to tell, is all.
Not that I’ve seen the movie or can comment on it’s quality…
Ahh mindset. TroubleAgain is right. This is NOT a historical film nor does it even try to be. It’s just supposed to be fun. I thought it worked really well, my fav scene was when they all go to the dance do a little bit of the traditional dancing and then it turns into David Bowie, YEAH!!!
p.s. I spotted a really neat oops in the film. In the scene that shows all of London in the upper right corner of the screen you can see the giant ferris wheel they built for the millenium. But it still didn’t hurt the film for me because I went into it with a childs wonder. Also make sure you stay till the end with the ‘extra bit.’
Also did you notice that this movie came out at the same time as Moulin Rouge? They both worked with the same concept, although I didn’t see Moulin because Knight’s music sounded much more enjoyable then Moulin’s.
That’s a shame. Moulin Rouge is actually worth seeing.
I didn’t see A Knight’s Tale, but I did see the video for “We Are The Champions” that came out of it. I loved it! The whole medieval minstrel cum modern rock star thing worked wonderfully, groupies and armored security folk alike. And I loved the whole Lennonesque “I never said we were better than the king; I said we were more popular than the king.” LOL!
And Robbie Williams sounds eerily like Freddy Mercury…I was absolutely fascinated by the similarity the first four or five times I heard it.
…I’m not so much of an “old fogey” that I shut myself off from new ideas, but wasn’t A Knight’s Tale based on an original work by Chaucer? In that instance I would have expected some period music, anyway. There are so many Celtic and medieval music consortiums that I am sure something fitting could have been found.
Could this concept have worked with, say Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon?
Maybe I wasn’t prepared for the “tongue-in-cheekedness” of the movie and therefore reacted as I did. Dialogue-wise, I expected it from Holy Grail, but I am very interested in the medieval period and so this took me aback somewhat.
In a related subject, does anyone know if Michael Crichton’s Timeline is being made into a film?
Thanks for your responses!
Quasi
I still don’t see how the guy could be a squire if he couldn’t be a knight.
Squire=Knight-in-training
I LOVE Chaucer in that movie. He’s so great :D.
I’m trudging…
But not all squires even became knights.
“The Knight’s Tale” is one of the Canterbury Tales, but from what I know of the movie (I haven’t seen it), it bears little resemblance to Chaucer’s story except for the fact that it has knights and tournaments in it.
The movie had nothing to do with Chaucer (other than using him as a character).
The confusion is due to the fact that people expect “realism” nowadays. But sometimes it’s a lot of fun to ignore it and try something different. (“Moulon Rouge” – a much better film – also gets some amazing effects by simply ignored the need to be “realistic” and instead go for dramatic).
It wasn’t all that unusual in the 30s to have film musicals as costume dramas (say, “DuBarry Was a Lady”), and still use contemporary music of the time the film was made. Why should anyone object to it now?
Menocchio’s point is well taken.
When John Boorman used Orff’s “Carmina Burana” as the theme music for “Excalibur,” did ANYBODY complain? Did ANYBODY point out that Orff’s music was anachronistic, because it was written over 1000 years after the death of King Arthur?
No! So, how is it any sillier to use 70s pop or rock music than to use classical music?
Because from what I understand the characters in the movie heard the music; not just the audience. I’m pretty sure Excalibur didn’t have Arthur chatting away with Merlin (or whatever) and mentioning how great Orff’s music is…
The way I saw it they were trying to make a sports movie which just happened to be set in medieval times. They used more modern music (and other anachronisms) to make it more familiar to modern audiences. Take the dance scene, if they shot it with music from it’s time most of the audience wouldn’t see it as a social situation which young people enjoyed and had fun at, they’d probably imagine that the characters weren’t having fun with their extremely formal dances to quaint music. With the modern music and dance moves, it becomes just another dance. I’m sure audiences at sporting events had their equivalents of doing ‘The Wave’ or stomping and clapping to that Queen song, but a modern audience might not even notice them and probably wouldn’t be able to relate to them.
Anyway, anything set in Chaucer’s time in which you can actually understand what the characters are saying is anachronistic in that they are using speech patterns from several centuries in their future.