Thoughts on the 1981 Film Excalibur and other King Arthur Films

Steve Harrison said:
I would love to see a TV series version of The Warlord Chronicles, Bernard Cornwell's fabulous and epic Arthurian trilogy.

Which reminds me, I'm overdue to read the novels again...
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I agree. After seeing the great job they did with his Saxon Chronicles I believe it should be a no brainer.
 
BAYLOR said:
Has anyone see th e trailer for the upcoming Green Knight film? Its only teaser trailer but it looks pretty damned unsetting . And the erie music accompany it. This film looks very dark and nasty . It looks good.
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I have now.


It's unfair to judge from a trailer (even though that's exactly what the film-makers want you to do) but it smacks a little of trying too hard. It'd be difficult to beat the 1991 version starring Jason Durr, which used the natural landscape to incredible effect, and had an amazing script by David Rudkin.
 
I thought the new Green Knight looked very strange and quite interesting. The trailer reminded me of Terry Gilliam's Jabberwocky, which for all its flaws is a good-looking film. I'm interested.
 
Toby Frost said:
I thought the new Green Knight looked very strange and quite interesting. The trailer reminded me of Terry Gilliam's Jabberwocky, which for all its flaws is a good-looking film. I'm interested.
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This is definitely a film I want to see. :cool:
 
HareBrain said:
I have now.


It's unfair to judge from a trailer (even though that's exactly what the film-makers want you to do) but it smacks a little of trying too hard. It'd be difficult to beat the 1991 version starring Jason Durr, which used the natural landscape to incredible effect, and had an amazing script by David Rudkin.
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I might have to see this.

I don't think any film save Excalibur does the legends justice.
 
Anyone think the Green Knight at the end of the trailer looked a bit like a White Walker.
 
He looks French or perhaps even (just!) Welsh to me. And given how hard this film is clearly trying to be strange and mystical, it doesn't surprise me at all. It's like Yul Brenner being cast as a Texan, or Omar Sharif being a Russian, except those are meant to be literally in the real world, so they make less sense.

And now we're onto this, nobody has filmed this story for at least a decade. Hardly anyone's thought about it. And now, here is a film about it. A film exists where one didn't - perhaps a weird version, but one that one first glance feels vaguely faithful to the story. I fail to see how that is an assault on Western culture - certainly less than Guy Ritchie making a crap version with cockney gangsters.
 
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Toby Frost said:
Seriously, honestly, with absolutely no deference to "PC" or whatever people call it, I don't care. He looks French or perhaps even (just!) Welsh to me. And given how hard this film is clearly trying to be strange and mystical, it doesn't surprise me at all. It's like Yul Brenner being cast as a Texan, or Omar Sharif being a Russian, except those are meant to be literally in the real world, so they make less sense.

And now we're onto this, nobody has filmed this story for at least a decade. Hardly anyone's thought about it. And now, here is a film about it. A film exists where one didn't - perhaps a weird version, but one that one first glance feels vaguely faithful to the story. I fail to see how that is an assault on Western culture - certainly less than Guy Ritchie making a crap version with cockney gangsters.
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Then there's the upcoming Michael l Bay King Arthur film with Ben Afleck as Arthur . I think Steve Tyler might doing the movie score for it. :D
 
I have not seen that one, HB. It sounds wonderful, but it is not available in this country, and it has never been shown here so far as I know.
 
svalbard said:
Need to find where I can get it.
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It's available here.

Gawain And The Green Knight [DVD]: Amazon.co.uk: Malcolm Storry, Jason Durr, Marc Warren, Valerie Gogan, Marie Francis, John Michael Phillips, Malcolm Storry, Jason Durr: DVD & Blu-ray

Buy Gawain And The Green Knight [DVD] from Amazon's DVD & Blu-ray TV Store. Everyday low prices and free delivery on eligible orders.
www.amazon.co.uk

(The rating seems to have been reduced by someone disappointed that it wasn't the Sean Connery version.)
 
Toby Frost said:
He looks French or perhaps even (just!) Welsh to me. And given how hard this film is clearly trying to be strange and mystical, it doesn't surprise me at all. It's like Yul Brenner being cast as a Texan, or Omar Sharif being a Russian, except those are meant to be literally in the real world, so they make less sense.
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You are citing examples of Big Hollywood which has always been feverish about avoiding any kind of nationalist imprint, sometimes to ludicrous extremes (as with Brynner and Sharif). More often than not such gestures fail--i.e. Hollywood's bizarre A Christmas Carol of 1938 (a more obscure British production of 1935 is considered superior-as was the Sims version--both categorically UK versions). The Magnificent Seven is an extremly dumbed down version of the Seven Samurai (which was entirely Japanese--how much more nationalistic in artistic pulse can it get?).
Anyway I can see this production is entirely globalist so easy to dismiss. Such ventures are often confused artistically.

The 1973 version was an entirely UK production (and thus obscure since it doesn't have the Hollywood apparatus behind it).
 
There are certain words that raise a political red flag to me and "globalist" is one of them, but this isn't really the place to go into that. Purely from the trailer, it looks like it has a consistent feel and seems a lot closer to how I see Arthurian myth than most recent King Arthur films. I hope it is a spiritual successor to Excalibur, which is probably a lot to ask. That's all I have to say about that.
 
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