Movie: King Arthur (spoilers)

[celestina]

While I found this movie’s take on Arthur & Company to be refreshing, I would have liked to know more about the history this film claims to be revealing. The movie was good, but it would have benefited from a lot more character development, better dialogue and plotting.

Characters
I thought that Stellan Skarsgard did okay, but he and his character seemed more bored with everything and actually rather more snobbish–he doesn’t want to mix his genes with that of the people he conquers–than fierce and barbaric. I found it interesting how honorable he was in his fight against Tristan, but I’m not sure what to do with that. Whoever played Cerdic’s son, Cynric, was miscast because he just seemed to be nice for a raiding, looting barbarian, and his beard looked ridiculous. I just didn’t find the Saxons portrayed in this movie to be credibly barbaric enough.

Folks have been complaining about Knightley’s lack of body armor, but IIRC, weren’t most of the Woads–men and what few women were fighting with them–rather scantily clad and lacking armor when they fought? I did find Knightley’s portrayal of a fierce warrior to be realistic and refreshing. Back then if you couldn’t kick ass, you didn’t live long.

I liked Clive Owen and the other fellas that played the men under his command. They looked hot [celestina fanning herself], and they did as much as they could with the crappy dialogue they had to work with. Ray Winstone stole the show IMHO.

Language
Okay, I’m a nerd so I would have liked to have been able to hear more of the Woad and Saxon dialects. I couldn’t tell what the hell they were saying. Any linguists out there want to tell me if the Saxons were actually speaking Old English, and if the Woads were speaking some dialect of Gaelic? I found it irritating how the movie would have the Woads speaking in dialect with subtitles, but then halfway through the movie all they spoke was English. The Saxons only spoke their dialect when they were getting ready to fight. It seemed that they said the same phrases over and over again. And why not have the Romans speak Latin or whatever they spoke back then? I don’t mind subtitles. Let’s have a little consistency please?

It’s been years since I read anything about King Arthur, and I don’t remember if I ever saw Excalibur so the extraction of the love triangle, the myths about Excalibur and the Round Table didn’t bother me since I personally don’t care about that stuff anyway.

[august9]

Woad is a plant from which roots you can extract an indigo dye. Is there really a people/nation in the movie that are called “The Woads” ?
As far as I know, it was the Picts who were supposedly dyeing or tattooing themselves with a blue dye.

[RogueRacer]

@august9

Woad is a plant from which roots you can extract an indigo dye. Is there really a people/nation in the movie that are called “The Woads” ?
As far as I know, it was the Picts who were supposedly dyeing or tattooing themselves with a blue dye.

No, the term woad was never used in the movie that I recall. We are using the term to refer to the indigenous people in the movie. The seem to be led by Merlin, but they were never given a name (again, as I recall). They wore the blue, woad dye. After Braveheart, various video games, and other sources, most of us know what that is called and it’s about the best way to distinguish them in this discussion.

[annieclaus]

@Hodge

If you haven’t already, definitely see Excalibur. It has all of the knights in shining armour, wizardry, love, sex and betrayal of the legend all served up with a healthy dose Jungian subtext. I think it’s the best version of the King Arthur legend yet to make to celluloid. Certainly better than anything Antoine Fuqua or Jerry Bruckheimer are capable of making.

I couldn’t agree more! In my mind, Excalibur is the definitive King Arthur film. And it’s beautiful to watch! I was very disappointed in King Arthur, partly because of the liberties taken, but mostly because it was just such a ham-handed piece of film making. Too dark. Too grainy. Too silly with Keira Knightly in the middle of hand-to-hand combat wearing little more than a leather sports bra and harem pants. . . and not a scratch on her! Too difficult trying to figure out which knight compared to which knight in the legend.

But the trebuchets were cool!

[august9]

@RogueRacer

No, the term woad was never used in the movie that I recall. We are using the term to refer to the indigenous people in the movie. The seem to be led by Merlin, but they were never given a name (again, as I recall). They wore the blue, woad dye. After Braveheart, various video games, and other sources, most of us know what that is called and it’s about the best way to distinguish them in this discussion.

Ok, sorry, I didn’t know the word “woad” was used that way. The thing is, it’s never been a hard fact that the Picts actually used woad to paint or tattoo themselves with, it’s a statement made by Ceasar in in gallic history, and there’s several problems with that statement.
Firstly, Ceasar had the “fact” from hearsay, he never got near the picts. Secondly the latin word used by Ceasar to describe what they painted themselves with is “vitro”. At the time Caesar wrote his history, vitro was a blue-green glass. So what he actually meant was either that they were coloured like vitro, or were “glazed” with colour, or they used glass for some sort of scarification or tattooing. Thirdly, as anyone who’ve tried it themselves can confirm, woad is not a very good bodypaint. It won’t stay on the skin and it doesn’t give much colour overall. Fourthly, woad is not a very good colour for tattooing either. It’s very astringent and closes up wounds very quickly - including tattoo “wounds” and after the tattoo is healed there is no colour left.

So, by all accounts, the use of woad is most likely a myth, and I thought that the movie was perpetrating the myth and even exaggerating it.

[Go_You_Big_Red_Fire_Engine]

I liked the movie, Merlin… but then again, I was 12 when I saw it last. Because of it I was looking forward to King Arthur.

[drm]

Hmmm.

I saw a matinee today on my day off. I was expecting a typical Jerry Bruckheimer movie and I pretty much got it.

It seems to me that they introduced characters and lead the audience to believe they’d be important then proceded to forget all about them. I guess the curly haired boys purpose was simply to remind the oaf that his family is important. Did we see the curly haired kid at the end? He did do a good job of bringing out the big oafs soft side which is important I guess. He was the fullest character, I figure.

What was the purpose of showing the kids broken arm? It seemed a bit unnecessary except to add gross factor.

The beginning where we met Lance, there was a girl who gave him a little statue before he left. Unless I’m confused, did we just forget about that girl? I assumed we’d see her again…

Merlin confused me a little as well. I like to have a little backstory into some of my main characters. We found out some things about him but one would think they’d have delved a little deeper when the audience realises he’s a good guy. We learned just enough not to like him okay but not enough to really have any feelings for him.

[spoiler]The last battle scene kind of all of a sudden turned out victorious for arthur. I understand Arthurs battle with Cedric (that’s the Saxon leader, right?) was like a microcosm for the entire battle (I guess) but at least show Arthurs men start to dwindle the Saxons down to nothing instead of just showing them dead on the ground[/soilers]

The religious aspect to this movie was a little ridiculous. I’m not even all that clear why it was there? It seemed sort of unnecessary to me.

One question: At the end of the movie, what happened to the boy who would be pope. They went to all this trouble to explain him to us as a decent human being who has a good head on his shoulders despite his father and I don’t even remember what happened to him when he returned other than him hugging the bishop.

I didn’t hate the movie but it was definately a missed opportunity.

[drm]

regarding merlin:

*We learned enough to like him okay instead of we learned enough not to like him okay.

[Beauty_Personified]

All I have to say is that I loved the movie. And I’ll be seeing it again with my father. (Saw it with a friend the first time.) I think I liked it more than almost every movie I’ve seen since February. (Maybe I’ll hate it the second time around. :rolleyes: )

Anyhoo…

[ShibbOleth]

Sorry for dusting this off, but I saw this in the theater last night with “the guys”. I have very low expectations for any movies I see with the guys, so this wasn’t bad by that standard, but seemed a mish-mash of wanting to be a historical drama and mindless fluff. The preface to the film did state that recent archaelogical finds indicated something about Arthur and the fifth century. One thing this film did do for me was to point out how woefully lacking my understanding of this period of history is. Of course, per the movie the Saxon invasion of England failed due to seven warriors (Salmations? Samarians? Sumerians? – often couldn’t understand the words spoke) back up by some half-wild men led by Merlin (Woads? Wools? Wolves?)

There were lots of WTF? moments in the film, many of which have already been mentioned. But the one that was driving me nuts was, if the peoples to the north of Hadrian’s Wall were so dangerous, wtf was that little Roman settlement doing up there in the north, essentially undefended? How did it manage to survive long enough to grow crops? Was the main Roman dude so nasty that the wildmen just left them alone?

Beyond that, why were the Saxons invading with a scorched earth policy? And from where? Did this have any semblance to any real Saxon invasion? (Put in somewhere in Scotland and march south to conquer Britain?) Also, how did the Woads (most often used “name” here) come up with trebuchets from the middle of the forest? Did the Romans leave these for them to use? I guess that would make the most sense, their technology was not very advanced, save the very nicely implemented arrow trap in the forest :insert sarcasm smiley here:

I liked having the different languages/dialects and was disappointed when they just went to badly accented English. Why did the Romans have modern Italian accents?

We also talked afterwards about how arrows were working effectively for the “good” guys during the ice battle and final battle. So why not keep walking backwards and raining arrows (in the ice battle) or keep firing from the sides (main battle)?

Was the Pope in charge of fifth century Rome already? I thought at best it would have been the Holy Roman Emperor. Gotta dig up some facts on that one? And who would the Pope have been during this time period?

One other point I didn’t get: the main Saxon army was heading directly south, but Arthur and his pursuers went East. Wouldn’t the Saxon army have reached the gates before any of them?

To address some points already raised:

Drm - Lancelot was given the charm by a girl in the village, not clear if his sister or a young love? He vowed to return (but obviously didn’t). The film did show him holding the charm and looking wistful toward the end, as a way to say “shall I see my homeland again?” I forget if this was just before the final battle or the rescue mission north.

As to the love triangle, I thought that was got at by the longing glances by Lancelot and then it’s Lancelot and not Arthur that rushes to Guin’s rescue during the final battle. There was definitely a subtext there, but Guin goes for the alpha male instead of the one who obviously longs for her, which makes sense.

And we also were wondering about the magic doors which open and closed almost on cue, but in the first scene needed a team of draft horses straining to open them (and no clue as to how they’d close them and stay inside the wall). Our best guess was a medieval Genie[sup]TM[/sup] garage door opener was rigged to do this.

Okay, I checked the credits and they definitely list the native people’s as “Woad”. Woad Advisor and Woad Killed by Lancelot are two of the credits listed. Which reminds me, someone asked about the Roman traitor to the Saxons. It was my understand that this guy was a Woad (or at least some sort of British native), there’s also a credit for “British scout”.

[RikWriter]

@ShibbOleth

Of course, per the movie the Saxon invasion of England failed due to seven warriors (Salmations? Samarians? Sumerians? – often couldn’t understand the words spoke) back up by some half-wild men led by Merlin (Woads? Wools? Wolves?)

Sarmatians. And the “Woads” were actually supposed to be the Picts, a Celtic people who painted or tatooed themselves with blue marking using the dye “woad.”

Beyond that, why were the Saxons invading with a scorched earth policy? And from where? Did this have any semblance to any real Saxon invasion? (Put in somewhere in Scotland and march south to conquer Britain?)

The real Saxon invasion occurred mostly in the central east coast region and involved the Saxons coming in, driving out the British locals and starting their own farms.

Was the Pope in charge of fifth century Rome already? I thought at best it would have been the Holy Roman Emperor. Gotta dig up some facts on that one? And who would the Pope have been during this time period?

Don’t remember who the pope was at the time, but he would have been a bigshot, and probably a more stable political force than the emporer by the 5th Century. (The Holy Roman Empire was a German thing btw and was neither holy nor Roman nor an empire.)

[drm]

originally posted by ShibbOleth
Drm - Lancelot was given the charm by a girl in the village, not clear if his sister or a young love? He vowed to return (but obviously didn’t). The film did show him holding the charm and looking wistful toward the end, as a way to say “shall I see my homeland again?” I forget if this was just before the final battle or the rescue mission north.

Now that you mention it, I remember the part. It would have been a little more effective if we had any idea exactly how strong their bond was. Ten more minutes of Lance at his home spending time with the girl would have been plenty. Intellectually I get that she was important on some level but that’s about all I got. I dunno, I may be in the minority here.

[ShibbOleth]

@RikWriter

Sarmatians. And the “Woads” were actually supposed to be the Picts, a Celtic people who painted or tatooed themselves with blue marking using the dye “woad.”

The real Saxon invasion occurred mostly in the central east coast region and involved the Saxons coming in, driving out the British locals and starting their own farms.

Don’t remember who the pope was at the time, but he would have been a bigshot, and probably a more stable political force than the emporer by the 5th Century. (The Holy Roman Empire was a German thing btw and was neither holy nor Roman nor an empire.)

Thanks for the info. I should be more specific but when I said “Holy Roman Emperor” I meant a Christian ruler versus the earlier Caesars. I think for the time frame of the movie it might have been Petronius Maximus? Was the Popel already more powerful by that time, or do I have the timeframe incorrect? One reason I like even bad historical dramas is that it generally forces me to fill in some of the gaps in my history education (quote from my eight year old daughter after yesterday’s school orientation: “History? We already learned that last year!”)