'King Arthur' attempts a great deal with its screenplay but I'd be reluctant to say that it succeeds with any of it.
An effort to tell a dark ages, speculative "historical" King Arthur tale whilst also servicing a 'sword and sandals' historical action adventure film is beyond this script.
For the majority of film-goers confusion and complexity abound due to the convoluted choices taken in the films premise: something which a straightforwards adventure warfare central plot and thinly written characters can't mitigate.
A central plot hole is why the Roman high ranking family need rescuing....at all....the Roman's are withdrawing, we are told, but a very valuable Catholic/aristocratic family are living well beyond the frontier of the Roman Empire at a time when it's enemies are shown to be penetrating into its own territory on this very frontier.
Why are they there? Why did they go there? Stay there? Why haven't they already been destroyed by "woads" who seem capable of penetrating a guarded fortified Roman frontier and trapping Roman forces that enter their territory?
Answers? This film has none.
But it allows the script to motivate the "woads", Roman's, Arthur's knights and the Saxons all onto a convenient collision course.
Convenient is the word.
Essentially this is another stupid historical action adventure sword and sandals war film complete with desperate plot devices; but with thinly written characters, cartoon baddies, some wooden performances, under equipped production, unconvincing battlefield stunts; and all this attempting to sustain a heavy load of highly speculative and debatable pic and mix story treatments regarding the end of Roman Britain, the "dark age" transition, post and sub-Roman Britannia, Christianization, the Anglo-Saxon migration and of course the possible origins of the legends of "King Arthur" before the high medieval romance tradition.
My rating is a disappointed 4/10 because 'King Arthur' tries to be clever, interesting, unusual and different in its abstract values but then saddles itself with bilge levels of predictability and utterly usual story lines and plot mechanics and characterizations plus unconvincing production values.
Finally the number of horses running free at the end, that represents Arthur's fallen comrades seems crass and unsympathetic to Arthur...why would it just be those friends he lost during the events of this film? But not all his knights through his command. Those knights missing from his round table. Those friends and comrades he had lost which apparently meant a lot to him when he had to posture in front of a Roman Bishop? That sums up for me how unconvincing this film is with its own characters, even the filmmakers don't believe in the realness of their characters!
An effort to tell a dark ages, speculative "historical" King Arthur tale whilst also servicing a 'sword and sandals' historical action adventure film is beyond this script.
For the majority of film-goers confusion and complexity abound due to the convoluted choices taken in the films premise: something which a straightforwards adventure warfare central plot and thinly written characters can't mitigate.
A central plot hole is why the Roman high ranking family need rescuing....at all....the Roman's are withdrawing, we are told, but a very valuable Catholic/aristocratic family are living well beyond the frontier of the Roman Empire at a time when it's enemies are shown to be penetrating into its own territory on this very frontier.
Why are they there? Why did they go there? Stay there? Why haven't they already been destroyed by "woads" who seem capable of penetrating a guarded fortified Roman frontier and trapping Roman forces that enter their territory?
Answers? This film has none.
But it allows the script to motivate the "woads", Roman's, Arthur's knights and the Saxons all onto a convenient collision course.
Convenient is the word.
Essentially this is another stupid historical action adventure sword and sandals war film complete with desperate plot devices; but with thinly written characters, cartoon baddies, some wooden performances, under equipped production, unconvincing battlefield stunts; and all this attempting to sustain a heavy load of highly speculative and debatable pic and mix story treatments regarding the end of Roman Britain, the "dark age" transition, post and sub-Roman Britannia, Christianization, the Anglo-Saxon migration and of course the possible origins of the legends of "King Arthur" before the high medieval romance tradition.
My rating is a disappointed 4/10 because 'King Arthur' tries to be clever, interesting, unusual and different in its abstract values but then saddles itself with bilge levels of predictability and utterly usual story lines and plot mechanics and characterizations plus unconvincing production values.
Finally the number of horses running free at the end, that represents Arthur's fallen comrades seems crass and unsympathetic to Arthur...why would it just be those friends he lost during the events of this film? But not all his knights through his command. Those knights missing from his round table. Those friends and comrades he had lost which apparently meant a lot to him when he had to posture in front of a Roman Bishop? That sums up for me how unconvincing this film is with its own characters, even the filmmakers don't believe in the realness of their characters!