Wow. I don’t even know where to start with this trainwreck. King Arthur is one of those classic stories (like Robin Hood or Zorro or Tarzan) that Hollywood likes to dust off every decade or so, spend an ungodly amount of money on it and then promptly regret it. There have been many King Arthur movies over the years, but this one is something special. This movie is fucking hilarious. I laughed so hard that I cried at one point. The problem, of course, is that this isn’t a comedy. But I haven’t laughed this hard at the movies since Crimson Peak (note: also not a comedy).
This adaptation (and I use that term pretty damn loosely) begins with Camelot under siege by the evil wizard Mordred who controls evil elephants the size of skyscrapers (elephants, of course, being native to medieval England). Arthur is a child at this point and witnesses his father’s death at the hands of his uncle, who was secretly conspiring with Mordred (I think). Arthur gets away and is brought up in poverty until he eventually pulls the sword from the stone and begins a quest to retake the kingdom. Even if you only have a passing knowledge of the Arthur legend, you may have noticed that I didn’t mention a few key characters. Characters like oh, I don’t know, fucking Merlin. And Lancelot. And Guenevere. And Morgana. Aside from a brief mention of Merlin, none of them are in this movie. That would be like remaking Star Wars and not mentioning Han Solo, Darth Vader, Princess Leia or the force. Maybe they were saving them for the sequel, which we sure as shit aren’t getting. It is one thing to take liberties with a story that has been told a million times. It is another thing to leave out the main fucking characters.
Let’s talk about the editing in this film. One of my core beliefs with film editing is that the audience should be able to tell what order the scenes should go in. This movie somehow manages to fail that criterion. Scenes are interspliced with preceding scenes so that you are simultaneously watching an action scene and the scene in which the characters are planning what to do in the action scene. Did that sound confusing? Try watching the fucking thing. I often didn’t know if a scene was taking place in the immediate past, present or immediate future or if it was a dream or a hallucination. There is one scene that I still can’t figure out when it was supposed to take place. That is an almost stunning failure of basic narrative structure. Additionally, large patches of time are covered in montage sequences. Arthur’s entire upbringing and a sequence when he is dropped off on Kong Island to fight monsters to make him stronger (or something) are glossed over in about two minutes of quick-cut scenes. Word around the interwebs is that the film’s original cut clocked in at a mighty excessive 3 and ½ hours and their solution to this was to edit entire groups of scenes together into these montages to get the movie down to 2 hours. If you make a 3 and ½ hour fantasy epic, then fucking release that and put an intermission in the middle. Don’t butcher the shit out of it and make me pay full price for a bullshit, nearly incomprehensible Cliff’s Notes version of the goddamn thing.
Also, Excalibur has been upgraded in this film and can now turn Arthur into The Flash. When wielding the sword, he seems to slow down time and can casually mow down dozens of people single-handedly. Why doesn’t he just do that all the time, then? Good question. Even in the final battle with the big bad (who looks suspiciously like Shao Kahn from Mortal Kombat), he completely forgets that he could end the fight in 2 seconds. The only conflict or suspense in this film only exist because the hero conveniently forgets that he has fucking super powers. Similarly, he has a female wizard friend (let’s call her Not-Merlin) that can control animals. She spends the whole movie controlling birds and dogs and whatnot, until the end when she suddenly summons a snake the size of the freaking Lincoln Tunnel that decimates a room full of bad guys. Dumbass, why didn’t you do that in the first place? If I was Arthur, I would ask Not-Merlin why she has been screwing around this whole time when her death serpent could have solved all of this before the opening credits ended. Movie, if you are going to give such powers to your characters, you also have to give reasons why they can’t just solve all their problems with such powers. Otherwise, you have failed.
This movie is a perfect storm of modern cinematic bullshit. It’s too dark (both literally and figuratively), it’s terribly edited, it has awful CGI that reduces every threat to a video game character and it sacrifices character and story in favor of flashy nonsense that insults the audience’s intelligence. If you want to watch a King Arthur movie, I highly recommend watching Excalibur from 1981. It’s not a perfect film, but it’s a hell of a lot better than this pile of crap.
Image By: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a4/King_Arthur_LotS_poster.jpg
