Perhaps the greatest fantasy myth of all western literary traditions is that of King Arthur and his knights of the Round Table, and Merlin. So of course every filmmaker has been attempting to bring this epic story to the big screen, and although there has been moderate successes attempting to thus, there has never been a resoundingly epic success. Guy Ritchie's King Arthur: Legend of the Sword ranks among the least of the least of these attempts. I am a fan of a lot Mr. Ritchie's work, but what he tried to do was blend what he did in Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels (which I didn't like) into a fantasy, gritty blend of fantasy mythological extraordinaire adventure. Needless to say, it didn't work quite well....at all...whatsoever. The story doesn't really follow the traditional "Sword and the Stone" version that Disney created based off The Once and Future King, but rather follows a very loose telling of the original ancient myth, with many, many poor changes. Basically, Arthur's father, Uther defeats the evil wizard Mordred, and then his brother Vortigern overthrows and kills him and attempts to kill Arthur who gets away. Then Arthur grows up in the streets, learns to survive and fight, and then by accident comes to pull excalibur out of the stone and is hunted born as "the born king" thus pitting him against Vortigern. Charlie Hunnam plays Arthur and does a fine job, although he really lacks any finesse or depth really in his portrayal, but that could be due to the direction and style that Director Ritchie wanted to go. Jude Law played the villain Vortigern, and he had the look down, and I suppose he was exactly what Mr. Ritchie desired and especially how he played the character, but I wasn't really that enthralled or impressed, or even that interested. Djimon Hounsou played a knight by the name of Bedivere who served Uther and then helped Arthur. Eric Bana played Uther, but that was a rather static character so there wasn't much for him to explore there whatsoever. Aiden Gillen had a small, but amusing role as a knight known as Bill I guess (not a lot of thinking went into his character I guess). Astrid Berges-Frisbey played "The Mage" which I guess was supposed to be some sort of Merlin (oh yes, Merlin did not appear in this film at all). She was odd and interesting at times, but fairly static and not much was done to grow what should have been quite a pivotal character. And those are most of the big name players. The casting in this film wasn't done quite that well for the characters being played. Not to mention there was just too many of them. Ritchie should have stuck with a handful of key players and went from there, rather than starting out with such a large cast. It turned out to be a costly mistake on his part.
As writer and director, Guy Ritchie could probably single handedly be blamed for the outcome of the film, but writers Joby Harold and Lionel Wigram also share some of that blame too. So the writing was relatively atrocious, but what was actually worse than that was how the film was shot; it reminded me of one of his gangster thief films, which didn't mesh with the fantasy genre very well. The film editing by Jamed Herbert was so poor that I believe it was a major participating factor to the poor quality of the end product. The music by Daniel Pemberton was pretty good, although I am struggling to recall it amongst the agonizing two hour length of the film. The cinematography by John Mathieson, was perhaps the only real bright spot of the film; it was dark, beautiful at times, and yet was for the most part able to capture the grittiness of dark age Britain, but I don't think he quite captured anything quite evoking a fantastical environment. The action was fairly boring, the special effects were fine, but honestly I was bored out of my mind for almost the entire length of the film, which I didn't like at all. Do not waste your time watching this film; it is terrible. If you want to watch the myth of King Arthur done well, watch the BBC series Merlin, or The Mists of Avalon, or The Sword in the Stone. Don't bother with King Arthur: Legend of the Sword. I'd chat briefly about the news, but I think everyone one the world is cognizant that there isn't much good news at all from any part of the globe. May the Force be with us all; we're sure gonna need it.King Arthur: Legend of the Sword trailer
King Arthur: Legend of the Sword scene
Peter Rabbit trailer (looks somewhat amusing)
