This isn't as bad a movie as many critics and viewers who write critiques have made it out to be, but isn't anything like a blockbuster that hasn't been matched or bettered before. Nice summer movie to watch when the heat wave breaks and you have a long rainy day (but I preferred "The 13th Warrior" from a few years ago, with a nice Michael Crichton script, based on the Beowulf story). I have several complaints, but I'll start with the virtues:
It was well filmed, with good settings (although there is nothing like those Alpine mountains in Britain, except maybe in the Scottish Highlands during mid-winter). The battle scenes were fine, except to the extent they were toned down to get the PG rating (wait for the DVD, which might also make more sense of the script by restoring the cut bits) -- especially a really good one that takes place on the surface of a frozen lake. The depiction of Hadrian's Wall and its ancillary fortresses and villages -- with taverns and hooker joints -- was archeologically and historically accurate, even if the purported site of the Battle of Badon is imaginary (could be presumed to be modelled on Housesteads combined with Vindolanda). And yes, the Romans did have draftees in the legions from other parts of the Empire in posts like the great wall, and they were inducted for 15 to 20 years before being granted civilian status and pensions. (That Arthur's traditional knights were Sarmations, we'd call them Ukrainians now, or else ancestors of the Cossacks, has to be taken with a grain of salt, especially since their being given traditional round-table names is not credible.) In these production senses, the movie is a good approximation of the latter days of the Roman Empire in Britain, but it certainly doesn't break any new 'archeological or historical ground'. I have no imaginative problems, as some people with that kind of interest do, with the technology of the battle scenes -- the Romans had catapults and naphtha bombs (Greek fire), even if they were unlikely to have been used in the sort of battle shown here against a marauding horde of barbarians, and manned by another horde of barbarians, those so-called 'Woads' or Picts who become Arthur's allies. The Britons the 'real' Arthur defended were the Romanized ones, not the fringe Celts. The presentation of the Saxon army, however, is well done (for example, the naval tradition, and the 'shield wall', which became a hallowed tradition of English-style tactics in battle), and Cerdic is suitably villainous and well-acted as a clever and ruthless leader.
Doubtful elements: As I said, the Ukrainian Knights -- and in fact I was fooled into thinking the kid drafted from the steppes to join the Roman cavalry was supposed to be Arthur, but turns out to be Lancelot, and well, that just won't do. First of all Lancelot was French, an interpolation from the Middle Ages. Galahad was also a Norman French invention -- and why even call somebody that in the movie if not the slightest reference to the Grail story is going to be involved? Why have Merlin if you're not going to have Morgan? It is like cooking a stew and leaving out ingredients like onions and gravy. The more traditional Arthurian characters, going back to the original Welsh legends, as close as we'll ever get to historical 'reality', were Gawain and Bors -- who were certainly not Ukrainians! Tristan or Tristram has his own mythology, involving the Irish princess Iseult, as we know from Wagner's opera and other sources, so why is he killed off before he can accomplish this? (Besides, it is Gawain who supposedly had a connection with hawks, not Tristan, and is also said to have killed giants.) Better if the script had avoided all but the basic Arthurian premise and avoided bringing in other characters who have their own identity in myth -- if they are included, then don't mess around too much with their traditional roles as adulterer, seneschal, spiritual adviser, or whatever! It is likely that the historical Arthur was a Roman officer, perhaps related to the historical Ambrosius Aurelianus, who commanded a 'rapid reaction force', and in any case was definitely British -- that all fits. What the screenplay doesn't explain at all, probably because of very poor editing, is that bit about the sword in the stone and the burning of the young Arthur's house by raiders led by, presumably, the British (Welsh) Merlin, who by the way was not a PICT. Here I was, thinking he was the kid from the steppes, then all of a sudden we get this thrown in, and was that really supposed to have been his father who broke the ice on the lake to drown the Saxons, at the cost of his own life? Say, what? Where did this come from out of the blue? Cerdic and Cynric, the Saxon leaders, were definitely historical characters, but they were the founders of WESSEX in the south of England and had nothing to do with the Saxon invasion north of the wall when the Northumbrian kingdom was established. There is no mention of the British leader Vortigern, who first imported Saxons as mercenaries and is a key personage in the time frame -- and has enough contemporary documentation to be regarded as at least a historical figure if not what legend made him. Instead, we are given some ersatz replacement legend about Bishop Germanus and his mission to Arthur to evacuate the Pope's godson Alectus from a Roman villa located in the heart of Pictish territory, apparently somewhere in the environs of the Cairngorm Mountains!
Totally wrong and misleading elements: Even the historical sources mention several (12) great battles of the Britons against the Saxons, Picts, and Scots (Irish), which took place over several years, led by a great war leader. Many of them took place in Lowland Scotland and the Border country, but the famous battle of Mount Badon is generally considered to have taken place southwest of London. Hadrian's Wall had been abandoned several years before (although Gildas does mention that it was regarrisoned at one point). There was no one great decisive routing of the invaders before Badon. The so-called Pelagian heresy took place before these times and is one of those silly arguments whereby Christians killed other Christians over trivial matters -- the Victorians made Pelagius into a hero because he was British, but as far as I can figure out, his 'heresy' had nothing to do with Freedom and All Men Are Created Equal. Arthur is more likely to have been a Mithraist, like other legionaries, even if nominally Christian. Time-frame research in the script, even given the limited number of sources, was poorly done and combines historical elements that took place over some 200 years, whereas the action of this movie occurs in not much more than a couple of months.
As for the script, all I can say is that it is muddled beyond easy comprehension. That could have as much to do with the way the film was finally edited as with any original deficiency, even granted that it is not a strong script to begin with. The acting is generally very well done -- again allowing for the fact that the roles and lines were chopped up for whatever reasons. One very laughable bit concerns the lovely Guenevere (Keira Knightley), who is rescued from a dungeon where everybody else has starved or been tortured to death, lets Arthur treat her broken hands, then a day or so later is an Olympic class archer. 'I see your fingers are better now,' says Arthur after she slays a few Saxons. It is also rather absurd that she goes around in skimpy outfits in mid-winter while everybody else is covered in furs. The ending is ridiculous, the Picts declaring the hero King Arthur in a fake Stonehenge set on a cliffside over the North Sea; if Arthur was ever declared king of the Britons, it was in what was left of the Roman cities in the south of Britannia -- i.e., 'Camelot', or whatever place was the kernel of the legend.
It is not a bad movie, in the "Gladiator" and "Braveheart" vein (and also "Seven Samurai" and "The Magnificent Seven"), with which it is compared as a so-so imitation. What it is not is what it pretends to be, a 'true-life' rendition of the origins of the King Arthur legend. Whether you would prefer the Camelot version is a matter of taste. But to do the 'real' Arthur justice requires a faithful adaptation of Rosemary Sutcliffe's book "The Sword at Sunset" and similar books, not this pseudo-historical nonsense. Best of both worlds would be a movie version of Bernard Cornwell's great Arthur trilogy, which combines both historical accuracy and the legendary plot and characters.
Wyatt James (7/13/2004)
[And let's give the Anglo-Saxons a chance at glory rather than villainy: Please, somebody adapt Hope Muntz's "The Golden Warrior" for the screen, or even better, for a TV mini-series -- it tells Harold Godwinson's side of the Norman Invasion, and is one of the best historical novels ever written.]