King Arthurathon: "King Arthur: Legend of the Sword" (2017)Hey there, Trash Muties, welcome to another installment of my ever-prolonged King Arthurathon. If you don’t remember what my King Arthurathon is all about, basically, I like King Arthur. But I’m very picky about what I will accept as “true” to King Arthur. So this series sees me taking a look at different King Arthur stories, first and foremost as a King Arthur fanboy, and deeming if it is a noteworthy installment in the Arthurian mythos. I’ve talked about a couple of King Arthur things from the past, so if you’re interested in seeing just how much of a nitpicky fanboy I am, go see at this very website!
The King Arthur things I looked at previously were from 1963 and 1972, respectively. And unless you’re a huge King Arthur fan, you probably wouldn’t have ever watched those. (Heck, I’d wager a lot of huge King Arthur buffs probably haven’t watched King Arthur, the Young Warlord). So today I wanted to shake things up and talk about something much more recent that the general audiences are much more likely to have seen. That is the 2017 movie "King Arthur, Legend of the Sword", directed by Guy Ritchie, and starring Charlie Hunnam, Djimon Hounsou, Aidan Gillen and Jude Law. Talking smack about this movie really hurts me, because this is the most excited I have gotten for a movie in a really long time. Before it came out, there were talks that this would kick off a six film King Arthur shared Universe. And while I vomit in my mouth a little bit every time someone in the movie-making business says “shared universe” these days, I actually thought that the world of King Arthur was one that could have easily supported this kind of franchise-building, unlike, say, Robin Hood, which was another one they talked about doing a “shared universe” for. The King Arthur mythos has been in a constant state of construction ever since the 9th century. Different people take the characters and the world out for a spin, some of them add stuff, some take away, some merely alter existing elements. But in a little over 1,000 years, a lot of characters and stories have come and gone through the world of King Arthur. So doing 6 movies to explore all of that got me really excited. If you recall, one of my complaints about the 1963 Sword of Lancelot movie was that they tried to shove so much of a very crowded mythos into a 2 hour movie, which would be difficult for anyone to do. But if they took their time, and spread all of the thousand plus years of King Arthur characters and stories in to 6 movies, that’d give each movie more room to breathe, but also let us get to see all of the stuff from the legends that we want to see. It’d be the best of both worlds. 
Now THAT is a sword
Or at least, that’s what I thought before I watched the movie. The movie was a financial disaster. Like, I’m very surprised they are letting the people who directed and wrote this thing continue to make movies. The budget for this movie was $175,000,000, and in its opening weekend, it didn’t even make a tenth of that, grossing $15,371,270. Yikes. But ignoring how little money this movie made, when I first watched this movie, I was very okay with this not kicking off the beginning of a King Arthur film franchise. And, again, it hurts me to say that. But this just does not feel like a King Arthur movie. That’s a little hypocritical of me to say, because the King Arthur story really isn’t set in stone (pun only kinda intended). Like I said earlier, each person who contributes to the mythos adds and takes away. So things like Merlin as an Obi-Wan Kenobi to Arthur’s Luke, Morgan Le Fey trying to destroy Camelot, Arthur’s nearly dead body taken to Avalon where he will one day return to his people in their hour of need. All of that stuff was added by different people, and at different times, they have been ignored and altered to suit the purposes of story tellers wanting to do their own spin on the Legend of King Arthur. And you might say that’s exactly what Guy Ritchie was doing here. He’s jettisoning elements that don’t jive with his vision, and he’s doing his own take. But the problem is that when you remove EVERYTHING recognizable as part of the King Arthur mythology, at a certain point, it stops resembling a King Arthur story in any way. I’m not saying you have to have stuff like the Lancelot Guinevere affair, or the Lady of the Lake giving Arthur a sword or that stuff, but at least keep a few of the things we recognize from the last thousand years. 
"Looks like we're in a boat load of trouble"
And lest you think I’m exaggerating, let me quickly look at some of the elements in this movie that are allegedly from the King Arthur mythology. Uther Pendragon, played by Eric Bana. Uther is supposed to be an okay king, but a kinda sleazy dude who can’t keep it in his pants, and so he goes to Merlin for help in nailing Igraine, some other dude’s wife, and their combined actions eventually lead to the birth of Arthur. But not in this movie. Mordred is supposed to be the son or nephew of Arthur that takes control of the kingdom during a political scuffle and ends up starting his own Civil War with Arthur and causing the fall of the realm. But not that in this movie. Perceval is supposed to be an overly polite kid who was raised in the middle of nowhere, and is really close to getting the Holy Grail. Not that in the movie. Tristan is supposed to be kinda a diet Lancelot. He has his own secret affair going on with Princess Isolde, and they have their own tragic ending with shades of Romeo and Juliet. But not in this movie. Vortigern, played by Jude Law, is supposed to be kinda just an incompetent mess. He can’t hold on to his political power, so he hires the Saxons to fight his war for him, and they instead decide they’ll just invade, which is exactly what he hired them to prevent. Then he nearly slits an innocent kid’s throat because that’s apparently what it takes to build a special tower in a special spot. That’s…actually pretty close to what this movie did, so props for getting at least one thing right. In most of the sources I’ve seen, Vortigern is just unrepentantly evil, but this movie does try to give him some dimension…for like, 15 seconds in the entire 2 hour movie. But I would have been completely fine with the movie trying to give him some actual character depth and motivation for doing what he does, if it had just committed to that. But for most of the movie, Jude Law is just playing mustache twirling evil person, and the only times he really has any human emotions is when he feels like he is forced to kill his wife and later his daughter, so that he can attain more power. 
Sad Vortigern
Just speaking as a King Arthur fan, my biggest problem with this movie is that you could change a few names, and you wouldn’t even know this was supposed to be a sassy gritty remake of the legends everyone is passingly familiar with. You could have called this a George and the Dragon remake, and I wouldn’t have batted an eye, because that’s how little it has to do with the legends it is supposedly revamping. That’s not to say that I dislike everything about this movie. Stepping out of my role as a King Arthur fan talking about this as a piece of the King Arthur tapestry, I did like some of the frenetic pacing in the dialogue scenes quite a bit. And I liked some of the casting choices. If Charlie Hunnam and Djimon Hounsou had more scenes together, I think they could have really torn the place up. But unfortunately, I never really get a good idea of who their characters are, beyond names attached to centuries-old stories. So maybe in another 10 years we’ll get another King Arthur movie that will try a little harder to incorporate the legends into a cohesive story. But I won’t hold my breath. 
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