| King Arthur | |
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A USA movie poster for King Arthur |
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| Directed by | Antoine Fuqua |
| Produced by | Jerry Bruckheimer |
| Written by | David Franzoni |
| Starring | Clive Owen Keira Knightley Ioan Gruffudd Mads Mikkelsen Joel Edgerton Ray Winstone Stephen Dillane Stellan Skarsgård Til Schweiger |
| Music by | Hans Zimmer |
| Cinematography | Slawomir Idziak |
| Editing by | Conrad Buff Jamie Pearson |
| Distributed by | Touchstone Pictures |
| Release date(s) | July 7, 2004 |
| Running time | Theatrical Cut: 126 min. Director's Cut: 141 min. |
| Country | UK / Ireland |
| Language | English / Gaelic |
| Budget | $90,000,000 US (est.) |
| Gross revenue | $203,877,963 ($51,877,963 US/$152,000,000 International) |
King Arthur is a 2004 film directed by Antoine Fuqua and written by David Franzoni. It stars Clive Owen as the title character.
The makers of the film claim to present a historically accurate version[1] of the Arthurian legends, supposedly inspired by new archaeological findings. The accuracy of these claims is subject to debate, but the film is unusual in representing Arthur as a Roman officer rather than a medieval knight. It was shot in England, Ireland, and Wales.
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Arthur, also known as Artorius Castus (Clive Owen), is portrayed as a Roman cavalry officer and commander, the son of a Roman father and a Celtic mother, who leads a military force of Sarmatian cavalry in Britain at the close of the Roman occupation in 467 A.D. He and his men guard Hadrian's Wall against the Woads, a Celtic people who resist Roman rule, based on the historical Picts,[2] led by the mysterious Merlin. He is not the first Arthur — over the years, many of his ancestors have manned the Wall, leading auxiliaries.
As the film starts, Arthur and his remaining knights Lancelot (whose voiceover is heard at the beginning and end), Bors, Tristan, Gawain, Galahad and Dagonet - are expecting discharge from the service of the Empire after faithfully serving for 15 years (Lancelot's entry into service as a youth in 452 A.D. is depicted at the very beginning of the film). However, on the night they ought to receive their freedom, they are dispatched on a final and possibly suicidal mission by Bishop Germanius in the freezing winter to rescue the important Roman family of Marius Honorius, his wife, and their son, Alecto, who is the Pope's favorite godson (and, according to Bishop Germanius, may be "destined to be Pope one day"), from impending capture by the invading Saxons, who are led by their chief Cerdic and his son Cynric. The knights are charged with this rescue because Rome is withdrawing from Britain, it now being considered an indefensible outpost.
At the remote estate, Arthur explains his mission to Marius, who becomes defensive and refuses to leave his grand home. Arthur speaks to the serfs, who ask him if Marius is a spokesman for God. While being shown an elder who is tied up out in the elements for holding back food, Arthur advises that Marius does not speak for God. He frees the elder & tells them all that they were "free from their first breath". Arthur soon discovers & frees Marius' imprisoned pagans: a Woad with an injured hand, Guinevere (Keira Knightley) and a small boy, Lucan. Arthur makes the heroic — but also risky — decision to take Marius' serfs along with the family back to Hadrian's Wall.
Along the journey, Guinevere tells Arthur of the "fairy tales" she'd heard of him, and Arthur is revealed to be half Celt (on his mother's side). Arthur resets the fingers in Guinevere's hand. One night, Guinevere takes Arthur to meet with Merlin, the leader of the Woads. At first, Arthur thinks Guinevere has betrayed him, but Merlin cries out for peace between them on this night. Arthur remains on the defensive, his sword drawn, reliving the memory of his mother's death. Merlin explains that he did not wish for Arthur's mother to die; she was of their blood, as is Arthur. Arthur's famous sword, Excalibur, is also shown to be his father's, which he drew from the tombstone on Uther's burial mound as a boy (inspiring the legend of the Sword in the Stone) in an effort to rescue his mother who died during a Woad attack. Merlin suggests an alliance between the Woads and the Sarmatian Knights, and Arthur leaves in silence.
Along the route one dawn, Marius conspires with his four soldiers, who surround Dagonet while Marius takes the rescued child prisoner hostage. Suddenly — an arrow flies through the air and kills Marius. Guinevere emerges, recovered from her injury, holding a bow. Lancelot and Arthur are on either side of her, and Bors comes in on his horse, axe raised. The four soldiers, having reached an ultimatum, drop their swords and aid the knights in getting all the people to the wall. Tristan returns from scouting the area and tells Arthur that a whole Saxon army is on the move.
The group soon encounter the Saxons at an ice-covered lake. The knights stay behind to hold up the Saxons and allow the refugees to escape. Greatly outnumbered, Arthur, Guinevere and the knights attempt to repel them with their deadly archery; the battle is won when Dagonet runs to the middle of the ice and breaks it with an axe, at the cost of his life — however, many Saxons are killed.
Struck by Rome leaving its subjects to the mercy of the Saxons, Arthur is further disillusioned when he learns that Bishop Pelagius, whose teachings about the equality of all men inspired the brotherhood of his Round Table — has been executed as a heretic by order of Bishop Germanius himself. Guinevere convinces Arthur that what he chooses to do is what will make him remembered, as well as implying to Arthur she is in love with him.
In due course, Arthur and his remaining men forsake Roman citizenship and form an alliance with the Woads to fight the Saxons. In the climatic battle, the Battle of Badon Hill, the Woads catapult flaming missiles at the Saxon army, and when they enter battle, Guinevere engages in combat with Cynric. Cerdic fights and kills Tristan, but, just before delivering the final blow, he looks around to make sure that Arthur is watching. Arthur sees Cerdic kill Tristan and rushes to fight Cerdic himself. Meanwhile, Guinevere disarms Cynric, but Lancelot foolishly intervenes and duels Cynric alone. While another Saxon captures Lancelot's attention for a moment, Cynric shoots Lancelot with a crossbow. Though mortally wounded, Lancelot manages to kill Cynric, and he himself dies with Guinevere at his side. Arthur kills Cerdic. As the smoke clears, Arthur weeps over his fallen comrades.
The film ends with Arthur and Guinevere's marriage. Merlin then proclaims him to be their king. King Arthur and his remaining knights promise to lead the Britons, united with the defeat of the Saxons and retreat of the Romans, against future invaders. The last scene shows Lancelot, Dagonet and Tristan reincarnated as horses and roaming the lands freely, while Lancelot speaks of the fact that their names will live forever in legend.
The movie was produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and directed by Antoine Fuqua; David Franzoni, the writer for Gladiator, wrote the screenplay. The historical consultant for the film was John Matthews, an author known for his books on esoteric Celtic spirituality, some of which he co-wrote with his wife Caitlin Matthews. The research consultant was Linda A. Malcor, co-author of From Scythia to Camelot: A Radical Reinterpretation of the Legends of King Arthur, the Knights of the Round Table, and the Holy Grail where possible non-Celtic sources for the Arthurian legends are explored.
The film's main set, a replica of a section of Hadrian's Wall, was the largest film set ever built in Ireland, and was located in a field in Ballymore-Eustace Co.Kildare. The replica was one kilometre long, which took a crew of 300 construction workers four and a half months to build. The fort in the film was based on the Roman fort named Vindolanda, which was built around 80 AD just south of Hadrian's Wall in what is now called Chesterholm, in Northern England.
The film's storyline is mostly original, save for the elements of Saxons as Arthur's adversaries and the Battle of Badon Hill.
Many of the traditional elements of the legends are dropped, like the Holy Grail and Tristan's lover Iseult. The film omits the love triangle between Arthur, Lancelot and Guinevere except for mutual attraction between the latter two.
The knights' characterizations in the legends are also dropped. The boorish and lusty Bors, father of many children, is very different from his namesake whose purity and celibacy allowed him to witness the Holy Grail.
The film does not feature Kay and Bedivere. Along with Gawain, they already appear as Arthur's companions in very early sources, like Culhwch and Olwen in the Mabinogion. The portrayal of Bors, however, is much closer to the traditional depiction of Kay than his legendary namesake.
Lancelot and Galahad are portrayed as having similar ages while according to traditional versions they are father and son respectively (this approach is also found in modern Arthurian fiction — such as Bernard Cornwell's The Warlord Chronicles, in which they are brothers).
In the film, Lancelot fights using two swords. In Arthurian legend the "Knight with Two Swords" is the ill-fated Sir Balin, but this refers to a cursed sword he keeps, not his fighting style.
Guinevere is drastically altered from Arthurian legend — she is portrayed as a barbarian warrior who joins Arthur and the knights in battle. While there was historical precedent for this portrayal (for example, the warrior queen Boudica[3]), no source, early or late, describes Guinevere in this way; also, Boudica and her ilk lived centuries before the film is set, making the film's portrayal anachronistic. Nor is there any evidence for her depiction as a rustic Celt; in fact, in Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae, which contains one of the oldest accounts of the character, Guinevere has Roman blood while Arthur is an indigenous Celt.
Dagonet, a self-sacrificing warrior in the film, has Arthur's court jester as his namesake. The character appears in Le Morte D'Arthur and Idylls of the King.
Tristan has a pet hawk. In Welsh legends, a figure named Gwalchmai is commonly considered identical with Gawain (both are nephews of Arthur); a popular though unlikely proposed meaning of his name is "hawk of May".[4]
The role of traitor, typically ascribed to Mordred, is given a smaller part in the form of a young British scout, played by Alan Devine, who betrays his people to the Saxons. The character is unnamed, but called "British Scout" in the credits. Tristan kills the traitor with an arrow from the other side of Hadrian's Wall during the climactic battle.
Despite the film's historical angle, Merlin was not originally part of the legends. It is generally agreed that he is based on two figures - Myrddin Wyllt (Myrddin the Wild), and Aurelius Ambrosius, a highly fictionalized version of the historical war leader Ambrosius Aurelianus. The former had nothing to do with Arthur and flourished after the Arthurian period. This composite Merlin was created by Geoffrey of Monmouth.
It would appear that the Arthur depicted in the film is based most closely upon Ambrosius Aurelianus, the Romano-Briton who fought against the Saxons in the 5th century, and was probably the leader of the Romano-British at the Battle of Mons Badonicus (Mount Badon). Nevertheless, Arthur's full name in the film is Artorius Castus, referring to Lucius Artorius Castus, a historical Roman active in Britain in the 2nd century.[2] It is specified Arthur was given the ancestral name of a legendary leader.
Also, the film is heavily based on the "Sarmatian connection" theory, which holds that the Arthurian legend is based on the activities and legends of Sarmatian heavy cavalry troops, originally from modern-day Russia and Ukraine, in Britain.[2] Some historians such as Kemp Malone and Linda A. Malcor have proposed that Lucius Artorius Castus himself may have led Sarmatian troops and thus became the "original" historical Arthur; however, since this Artorius lived in the second century, the film's Artorius is probably meant to be his descendant. Despite being Sarmatian, the knights retain their French (i.e. Lancelot) and Celtic-based (i.e. Tristan, original Drustan) names.
Despite the film's historically grounded approach, much artistic licence regarding historical figures, peoples, events, religion and weaponry is taken:
In the film, the Roman legions withdraw from Britain in 467 AD; in reality, it was completed in 410 AD, nearly 60 years before.[5]
The opening text dictates that "King Arthur and his Knights rose from a real hero who lived [...] in a period often called the Dark Ages", whilst the film is set in 467 the Dark Ages actually occurred in Sub-Roman Britain after the last Emperor of the Western Roman Empire, Romulus Augustus, was deposed by Odoacer in 476 ten years after the date for the setting of the film. The current Roman Emperor in the films time would have been Anthemius.
Sarmatian cavalrymen did come to Britain in the 2nd century, when 5,500 Iazyges were transported there as auxiliaries during the Marcomannic Wars,[6] but despite the film's suggestions, the evidence for them remaining there until the 5th century is slight. There is some but little evidence for the continued importation of Scythian-born immigrants to late Roman Britain.
The ninth-century Anglo-Saxon Chronicle mentions the arrival of the Saxon leaders Cerdic and Cynric in Britain (at Hampshire) in 495.[7] According to the Chronicle Cynric succeeded Cerdic as king of Wessex in 534 (Cerdic was the founder of the kingdom).[8] Thus the two could not have died at the battle of Mount Badon. The battle is thought to have been fought sometime between 490 to 516.[5]
The Picts are called "Woads".[2][9] This word is a reference to one plant the Picts may have used to make blue paint;[2] however, the use of woad by the Picts is contested by scholars,[6] and the historical Picts were never known by this name.[10] In an interview Antoine Fuqua stated that they used "Wodes" (sic) instead of "Picts" because they thought the latter sounded "a little weird".[11] Nevertheless, John Matthews said in an online article that the name substitution was "meant to echo similar belittling titles given to enemies".[2]
The Saxons are shown attacking Hadrian's Wall from the north. By 467 the Saxons were already occupying parts of Britain far south of the wall,[5] and never invaded Scotland. Later in the film, Cerdic stops a warrior from raping a woman because it would lead to less-than-pure Saxon blood. This scene references the long-held belief that the Anglo-Saxons eradicated the Romano-Celts from the eastern part of the island. This contention, largely based on linguistic evidence, has been challenged by modern genetic analysis, which suggests extensive mixing between Anglo-Saxon and Briton populations. Some historians (and fiction writers[12]) have even suggested that Cerdic himself, who bore a Celtic name, was at least part Briton.
Archbishop Germanus' second (and last) mission to Britain was twenty years before (447 AD) and he died the following year.[13] Pelagius is believed to have died decades before 467 AD, likely of old age and nevertheless was not burned at the stake by the ecclesiastical authorities.[14] The Pelagian heresy is misrepresented — it denied original sin, and was not about political freedom as the film implies.[14] The movie implies that the Pope was in control of the Western Roman Empire,[5] although it was actually ruled by the Emperor and de facto controlled by the Magistri Militum and other regional governors.
Historically, Sarmatians were armored in the manner of cataphracts (full-length coats of scale armor);[15][16] the film's Sarmatians are armoured with a mishmash of pseudo-Roman, Turkish, Mongol, and Hunnic designs. The Saxons historically used bows (to a limited extent) and spears instead of crossbows during the period. Though there is evidence for the use of some form of crossbows by Romans (calling them manuballistae) and, some claim, the Picts[2] — the weapon was still not widely used in England until much later. Similarly, the Woads use a trebuchet-like weapon to hurl flaming missiles at the Saxons, though the trebuchet was not re-introduced to Britain until the siege of Dover in 1216.[5] The Romans, however, reportedly used an early form of the trebuchet in their sieges.[5] Roman soldiers displayed in the movie are depicted as legionnaires with 2nd century AD armour. By AD 400, legionaries were no longer in use and comitatenses were the new replacements.
The Roman family which Arthur rescues lives north of Hadrian's Wall. This mission would be unlikely because the Wall represented the extent of Roman rule in Britain, except for brief periods of occupation during the second century AD.[5] (It should be noted that Romanized client states such as that of the Votadini did exist north of the wall even into the Sub-Roman era.)
Arthur refers to his fellow soldiers as Knights. The concept of Knights did not come about until the Middle Ages. Also, the idea of a woman warrior is highly unlikely in that part of the world in antiquity.
Elements of the film's promotion have likewise been criticized as historically unsound. Its tagline "The True Story Behind the Legend" has been criticized as false.[6][17] A trailer for the film claims that historians now agree that Arthur was a real person because of recent archaeological findings; however, historians do not.[6] There is no consensus amongst historians on Arthur's historicity[18] and no recent archaeological find proves Arthur's existence; the so-called "Arthur stone", discovered in 1998 in securely dated 6th century contexts amongst the ruins at Tintagel Castle in Cornwall, created a brief stir but proved irrelevant.[19][20]
The film received mixed reviews. It has a 32% Rotten rating on Rotten Tomatoes as of 2007-10-10 - with 57 positive of 180 reviews.[21] It has a 6.2/10 rating on the Internet Movie Database as of November 23, 2008.[22]
Some critics viewed the representation of the Roman Catholic Church as unfavorable in comparison to the depictions of pagans, as shown by the unscrupulous Germanus and the priests who help the Roman landowner exploit the British peasants and who lock up Guinevere in prison, as contrasted by the non-Christian knights (especially Lancelot, an atheist) and the freedom-loving Woads.[23] Film critic Fr. Brian Tubbs wrote: "Overall, the film serves up a stereotype of a corrupt, sinister Catholic Church. And Arthur’s character arc goes from idealistic Catholic to neo-pagan. It is Merlin, the pagan mystic, who marries Arthur and Guinevere in the end. And it’s fairly obvious that Arthur is turning his back on more than just the political Rome when he refuses to abandon Hadrian’s Wall in the film’s third and final act."
Robin Rowland (author) criticized critics who disliked the film for its Dark Age setting.[24]. Rowland pointed out that several Arthurian novels set in the Dark Ages, like Rosemary Sutcliff's Sword at Sunset and Mary Stewart's Merlin trilogy (The Crystal Cave, The Hollow Hills, and the Last Enchantment). However, these works have little in common with the film's story and Sarmatian angle.
Consultant Linda A. Malcor said: "I think these film-makers did a better job than most could have done when it comes to giving us something besides knights in tin foil and damsels in chiffon. ...[they] deserve a lot of praise for the effort that they made."[17] Fellow Arthurian scholar Geoffrey Ashe's opinion was negative.[17]
A director's cut of the film has been released; it has extra footage of battle scenes as well as more scenes between Lancelot and Guinevere, whose traditional love triangle with Arthur is only hinted at here.
Several scenes are also omitted from the director's cut, including one where the knights sit around a camp fire asking about their intended Sarmatian life, in which Bors reveals that his children do not even have names, most simply have numbers. In addition, a sex scene between Guinevere and Arthur is shifted to be chronologically before he is informed of the incoming Saxons towards Hadrian's Wall. This seemingly minor change arguably helps the story flow more smoothly. In the original film he is seen in full battle armor, contemplating a broken image of Pelagius on his floor, and then is disturbed by a call to come outside. When he comes outside, he is hastily putting on a shirt, and his hair is disheveled. In the Director's Cut, after an intimate moment between Arthur and Guinevere explaining Arthur's morals, they carry on into their sexual encounter, and are thus disturbed so that Arthur can be briefed on the Saxons. During the sexual encounter, he is wearing the same outfit he wears during the briefing. The scene where he is examining Pelagius's image is removed.
After the premier of the film, Keira Knightley's breast was enlarged in the US poster.[25] Although she approved the decision, when the first print came out, she discovered she had droopy breasts in the posters. Later in 2006, Keira claimed she is 'not allowed to be on a magazine cover in the US without at least a C cup because it turns people off.'[26]
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