KING ARTHUR: LEGEND OF THE SWORD — Guy Ritchie’s Bonkers Pastiche
King Arthur: Legend of the Sword is not what might be considered a conventional King Arthur movie. But then, I’m not sure why anyone would expect that from director Guy Ritchie or from the cast he assembled. For better or worse, its narrative structure is indebted more to superhero origin formulas than anything from T. H. White or Sir Thomas Mallory. The film works best when the visual effects get out of the way and let the actors carry the scene. To that point, Charlie Hunnam is a surprisingly charismatic reluctant king, and he is surrounded by an ensemble of capable performers.
In adapting his signature style to the Arthur legend Ritchie remixes some elements from different sources and slips in more than a few anachronistic touches, but that’s par for the course when adapting King Arthur. For centuries these stories have been told and retold, and in the retelling they have been transformed and adapted to suit new social and historical contexts. As myth, Arthurian legends lend themselves to anachronism, and Legend of the Sword for the most part embraces that. I appreciate what appears to be a deliberate attempt at diversity, as opposed to the virtually all-white casts often found in quasi-medieval/fantasy fare. Personally, it’s hard for me to dislike a King Arthur movie featuring Tom Wu as a kung fu instructor called George. Ritchie mixes such elements with quasi-historical figures from Old English texts, such as the warlord Vortigern (played here by Jude Law).
Because Legend of the Sword focuses almost entirely on the path Arthur follows to become king (a plot element which in Excalibur takes up maybe 15–20 minutes of the story), we don’t get many of the familiar Arthurian tropes. A whole new mythic backstory is introduced, involving a war between Arthur’s father Uther Pendragon and a society of magic-users. Merlin is missing in action, replaced by a woman referred to in most of the advertising as simply “the Mage” (Àstrid Bergès-Frisbey). Arthur and his followers spend most of their time on the run, engaging in guerrilla tactics that are more reminiscent of Robin Hood than King Arthur.
Ultimately the third act devolves into a CGI-fest that looks more like a video game cutscene than a movie (as is often the case in post-Two Towers action/fantasy films). Even when paying off an emotional (if predictable) thread near the end of the movie, the filmmakers were either unwilling or unable to get away from their CGI excess.
King Arthur: Legend of the Sword plays, for better or worse, like a film designed to launch a franchise. It follows a very familiar storytelling formula even as Ritchie subverts expectations by not telling what might be considered the “traditional” King Arthur legend. This isn’t Once and Future King or even Le Morte d’Arthur (although I almost hope this film is successful enough that we eventually get what I can only imagine would be Ritchie’s bonkers take on that). Legend of the Sword is part Ritchie-esque crime film, part superhero origin, and part fantasy adventure; those components don’t always mesh well, but when they do they make for an entertaining (if not exactly memorable) film.
