So I checked out King Arthur: Legend of the Sword this weekend and hoobaby was it a terrible, misguided, noisy, energetic, ambitious, and weird movie. It’s directed by Guy Ritchie, a man who never saw a scene he didn’t think needed cut some more so I kind of figured the movie would be a bit hyperactive… and it was. To a fault.
Based, in theory, upon Arthurian legend, the movie is basically a setup for future adventures. It covers more-or-less how the sword ended in the stone up to Arthur pulling the sword out and becoming king (which involves a war to retake Camelot from his nefarious uncle). Round tables, Merlin, Guinevere, Lancelot, holy grails, and other things are not part of this movie.
This might have been a watchable movie if it wasn’t always on fast-forward with hyper-spastic editing. It never takes a moment to actually give us characters to care about – instead it bowls you over with rapid-cut montages in place of story development and character. Some of its actually very good and well-produced rapid cut montages, to be fair. But that just means this was a movie that used style in place of substance, editing in place of character, etc. It’s barely a movie at some points.
It also likes to pummel you into submission with a wild, crazy, and, yes, sometimes very good soundtrack. It doesn’t really match the Arthurian legends but a lot of this movie doesn’t so you kind of let the wall of noise wash over you and buy it or not. To me, it was largely out of place but some of it might fit well on my iphone.
As far as the Arthurian legends go, this is one more inclusive of magic than many. Which is why its odd we don’t get a Merlin, but we do get a female sorceress who can’t act instead. We get elephants on a scale that mocks the elephants in 300 and sneers at the ones in Return of the King. There are giant bats and Rodents of Unusual Size as well. We have a largely-only-in-intro-text backstory about a war against the mages, octopus-women living in the aquifer of Camelot (what?), mages who can control animals, and an Excalibur that it so over-powered as to be comical. And a little cool in its overkill, to be fair. It doesn’t excuse much else wrong in the movie but at least they wanted to assure us that Excalibur is, indeed, a magical sword. If you are into video games, think Dynasty Warriors.
This movie is an unholy mess of imagery, editing, and musical overkill. I acknowledge its ambition and development costs… I just don’t recommend it to anyone unless you’re a die-hard Guy Ritchie fan. but that style keeps on getting in the way of what the movie IS… is it a street-level gangster movie featuring a street-wise Arthur (yes). Is it a high-fantasy with wizards, swords, and the like? yes. Do the two styles mesh well? No.
Score: 58