On checking out the reviews of Fantastic Four, I was surprised to learn that Ioan Gruffudd (Reed Richards) had been in King Arthur. I didn’t really quite remember him in it. Then I realised I didn’t remember anyone being in it except for Clive Owen, and I could hardly remember him (I didn’t even remember Keira Knightley!). I know I saw the movie. I remember going to the theatre. I remember that my wife hated it. Can anyone remind me what the heck happened in that movie?
I remember that Authur and the knights were local boys, drafted into the Roman army, they traveled abroad learning how to fight and ride horses and then came back to England as the Roman occupation was ending.
There was a semi-cool fight scene on a frozen lake.
Keira broke her fingers and Arthur set them.
Oh and for some reason Arthur was fighting for freedom for all English peoples. Which is kind of like a monarchy.
Weren’t they from Tartary or something?
No memory of these.
You mean, kind of like a anachronism?
Wasn’t there a scene in which people were being starved in a cave?
I thought they were all Scythians? They all kept saying that they wanted to go home, but they’d miss the English women, or something like that.
Personally I only really remember Ray Winstone’s Bors - the only character in the whole film that wasn’t vying with the round table for Most Wooden Appearance.
All I remember from that movie was Tristram, who was a total badass. He was some sort of late Roman/ Medieval ninja or something.
acsenray, your mind is trying to do you a favor here. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. You are doing yourself a grave disservice by pursuing this line of inquiry. Just trust your wife in this matter.
They (Arthur’s men) were supposedly from Sarmatia. Arthur himself was portrayed as having a Roman father and a Briton mother.
I remember Kiera had a lot of tats and wore skimpy clothes even when it was cold.
The bit with the people in the cave though I don’t recall. There was a part where they were going to escort some sort of Roman bigwig back to saftey and he was going to burn down his house and he had locked some people inside and Artie saves them.
The knights of the Round Table were the pastiest Sarmatians ever and had very British sounding names. One of them was Owen Lars.
Tristan was a samurai, for some reason.
Apparently Arthur became King so that he could defend democracy.
Keira Knightley had NO chemistry with either Clive Owen or Ioan Gruffud, proving that she is, in fact, a robot.
Also, the Saxons decided to invade Great Britain from the north (above Hadrian’s Wall), instead of from the south, where they had a much more direct route.
There will never, ever be a good Arthur movie. It makes me so sad.
All I remember is the fight on the lake, which was pretty awesome.
And that Clive Owen and Ioan Gruffud were extremely sexy in it. But that’s kind of a given isn’t it?
Yep - that’s where someone (a priest?) was keeping a bunch of Briton natives (I believe we’re supposed to believe that these are Celts), presumably for witchcraft and such, but really just because he’s an evil guy that gets off on torturing people. This is where Kiera was found, and where her fingers were broken (because of the torture, don’t you know, perhaps because she wouldn’t bed the good priest). They’re locked up at his stronghold, and Clive/Arthur gets all righteously pissed off about it (because they’re his people, of course). So he frees them, then boards up said priest in the dungeon before leaving them to their fate (wasn’t some army coming? Like the Saxons or something? Don’t think it was the Romans here, but don’t remember.)
Yeah, really - take it as a blessing that you don’t remember much. It wasn’t very good.
Since no one else mentioned it…Ioan Gruffudd play Lancelot.
Oddly, this movie has been off my radar for a while, but the wife went out of town this weekend, so something moved me to rent it.
Also, oddly, I was going to start a thread about it yesterday but after searching the archives, I didn’t have anything to add. Since someone else did it though. . .
Personally, I went into it with lowered expectations, because I’ve never liked a Bruckheimer movie (except Top Gun when I was like 12, and “Pirates Of The C.”).
I kind of liked King Arthur. I thought it was closer in tone and seriousness to say, “Galdiator” than it was to “The Rock”. There was some anachronistic writing, but for the most part, the screenplay was pretty basic and didn’t try to do too much. (an IMDB check shows the writer also wrote “Gladiator” and is working on “Hannibal” with Vin Diesel as Hannibal)
Yes, I’m sure that Arthur talking about free men was a little early, but I think they just wanted to show that somewhere back in time, someone was planting the seeds for that kind of thinking.
Furthermore, Stellan Skaarsgard as the leader of the Saxons was AWESOME. I could use a “Cedric” movie. A real bad ass with a great voice, and this tired staccato affectation. (“Finally. . .a man. . .worth killing.”)
The fight scenes were all right, quite physical. The scenery was excellent.
Good performance by Clive Owen, rounded out by – pretty much – an entirely British cast.
All-in-all, not such a bad movie. Seems that the Arthur story is a tough one to tell since “Arthur” seems to be an amalgam of several people and all the writings post-date anyone they are about by centuries. So, Bruckheimer got a good director (“Training Day”) and took his shot.
It didn’t achieve what Gladiator did, but it’s far from being in the same bin as “Coyote Ugly”, “Twister” or “The Rock”.
I hope you’re wrong (and actually there are a few flicks I like). But it’s not for lack of material – there are multiple versions of the Arthurian stories that come to us from medieval and renaissance sources, not to mention the hundreds of reworkings in the past few decades. Why they can’t come up with a gripping script is beyond me.
What really bugged me about this movie was the marketing. If you want to do your own goofy, grubby version of Arthur, fine – just don’t give me any bullshit about “the truth behind the legend.” It was clear that was nonsense as soon as I found out Lancelot (medieval romantic invention) was a character.
When the all girl ninja squad came in on motorcycles to rescue Artie the movie lost all credibility.