The *real* review of King Arthur.

So today I went to the movies with my mother again, and we saw King Arthur . Her choice. This is highly odd, as my mother is completely averse to gore and violence. She liked it, which is even more bizarre. I will be checking under her bed and in her closets for pods, I assure you.

So since the film did give me some thoughts, I shall write some stuff, which may or may not have to do with the film. The parts that may will contain major spoilers, so watch out for that.

[Begin Spoiler for King Arthur. — Highlight to view]

I must proclaim first that I appreciate any movie where the Germans are evil and the heroes kill them. The two head Germans were played by Stellan Skarsgård. (! Dude, Stellan Skarsgård is evil? Totally a positive point!) and Til Schweiger playing his son, whom I remember from the totally awesome film, SLC Punk! . His acting is exactly the same, only in this movie, he has a shaved head and a braided goatee! That's actually pretty awesome. For a further note on the cast - Gawain, whom the IMDb tells me is played by a boy called Joel Edgerton, is pretty darn hot. I will add him to the list of husbands I plan to acquire. Also - how typical is it that I zero in on the blond one? Am I that predictable! I mean, Ioan (hey Stephenpat - cool "I" name!) Gruffudd I found kind of pretty, but he just didn't do that much for me. Also, the kid that played the little pagan was so freaking cute. He has the sort of look that tells me he is going to be wickedly hot in approximately ten to fifteen years. I hope I'm not going to hell for these thoughts. So I seriously hope he continues to be cast in movies.

Okay, so my main pickle with this movie is the fact that it proports to be the "real" story of King Arthur. This is more than slightly disingenuous. The premise for the movie is pretty soundly historically based. There was a Roman general named Artorius in Britain, son of a Roman officer and an Angle woman, who commanded a ... thing ... of knights from Russia. (Incidentally - least Russian looking people to be cast as Russians since Antonio Banderas. Also, the names Lancelot and Gawain really do not bring to mind images of Siberia. Call me crazy!) I have no trouble believing that these are the people from whence the Arthurian legends sprung. However, that's pretty much the extent of what's know about the real Arthur. Whether he actually united all the Britons is completely up for grabs. I don't know. This movie claims to clear up the plot line of the myths, however all it does is create a replacement mythical plot. While the people themselves may have been real, the entire plot line of the story is fictional. Sure, it might have happened that way, but then again, any one of us could come up with a King Arthur story and our chances of being correct would be just as great. Also suspect is the fact that certain parts of the movie are completely false. There was no tribe called the "Woads." The people in the film are based on the Picts, a warrior tribe that lived in the highlands of Scotland. They did tatoo themselves and use blue war paint that they produced from the woad plant. They did not have any deep or important mysticism, and they did not live in the woods. There are no historical records for anyone who might have been Guinevere or Merlin. Guinevere, in fact, probably didn't exist, as she didn't show up in the legends until the 1500s, and even then you'll note, she's not in the story very long, she runs off. I suspect she was invented because someone decided that Arthur needed to have a queen. Which, I mean, he probably did, but her name wasn't Guinevere. I also suspect that the "Woads" were created in the film because the name sounds very Olde English, and it suited their purposes better. But the tribe as a whole, and the specific purposes portrayed are fictious. Another chink in the armor is the fact that the Saxons actually did conquer Britain! Oops! Granted, they only show one battle one in the film, but it's sort of depressing to think that what they don't show you after is how they all lose.

So, if you can put all that aside, and I'm not so uptight that I can't, the movie itself is pretty decent. It's not great, though. It's not as epic as I think it would have liked to be. If you're going to provide a replacement legend for what is arguable the most famous legend of all time, you need to come out with something better than this. This should have been the culmination of years of historical research, not a pet project of Antoine Fuqua. I mean, come on. The acting was pretty decent, though. But nothing really happens. There is nothing that epic going on. Perhaps they were going for "understated" but it came off more as lacking something.

I've decided that I do like Keira Knightley. She's attractive if you don't look at her body, and there's nothing about her acting that offends me. She's actually rather good. And she got that problem with her jaw fixed! I think what was causing it was an underbite. Often when she talked, her bottom teeth showed prominently, and her jaw appeared to protrude too much, and it caused her to have a slight whistling lisp. It's not very pronounced, more like the sort of thing you'd only notice after an hour of watching her: "Hey, is there something kinda wrong with her jaw?" But in this movie it seemed to be just about completely gone. Either she got a jammin' speech therapist, or maybe she had corrective surgery. Either way, definite bonus point. I also liked her character in the film. I liked that Guinevere wasn't a stupid slut, as I feel is how she's typically portrayed. She zones in on Arthur, and she's pretty set on him. Even though he's a lot more reserved and soldierly. The expression on Clive Owen's face when she goes to see him at night is awesome. And Lancelot, who is supposed to be Arthur's closest friend, does like his girl, but instead of fucking her, dies saving her life. Now that's the kind of friend I'd like to have. It's really kind of a downer when Arthur's girl and best friend betray him. I mean, dude! You don't do that shit to King Arthur! What's the matter with you? So this version was, I felt, definitely an improvement. The relationships were carried out with much more subtlety. Incidentally, the most played line in the movie, "I won't let them touch you" is actually not in the film. Probably because the real line would be hard to market.

The one scene on the river was pretty sweet. It's the sort of scene that's so well done it could and should become classic. If the whole movie carried the feel of that one scene, it might have achieved the epicness it was going for. As for the battle scenes, perhaps the reason my mother was fine was that they weren't really gorey at all. For the amount of people that die in the movie, there's actually very little gore shown. There's some blood splattered on faces, but when there's an axe blow to the chest, there's not much blood and they cut away quickly. Most of the injuries occur under the camera. Oh, there is another scene that's really great, when the Saxon infantry is standing in the fog, and the arrows appear in front of them, and then the horsemen sweep through them and disappear into the fog. Very well shot. This movie also displays some pretty good battle tacits, so that was cool.

[End Spoiler]

In think that's all. I'm gonna go look up pictures of Gawain.
Ex cellent.