So many of the trailers that came out of Comic Con got me excited for films next year. The only one I saw that left me dumbfounded at how amazingly bad it looked was King Arthur: Legend of the Sword. Guy Ritchie may have been able to turn Sherlock Holmes on its head successfully (the first time), but the Arthurian legend and he seem to have been on different planes passing in the night. Charlie Hunan was a great fit on Sons of Anarchy, but it’s become clear in every role since that he’s got absolutely no range. His accent is so all over the place in this trailer, I honestly was laughing by the time it was done. Ritchie’s hyperkinetic offbeat style is not working in this venue, and the special effects look like they cost a fortune. In short, I think this film is going to be one of 2017’s biggest bombs. King Arthur: Legend of the Sword is scheduled for a March 24, 2017 release. That puts it head-to-head with the Power Rangers reboot, two weeks after Kong: Skull Island and a week after Beauty & the Beast. In a crammed March, this is going to get flattened. The smartest move would be to reschedule it in a desolate corner of late summer/early fall 2017 when it might even have a chance to win its weekend.
Yikes! This isn’t just bad, this is career-ending bad. A bomb it will be.
The sad thing is, Monty Python and the Holy Grail is the most entertaining film about King Arthur that I can think of. Camelot, the Sword and the Stone, First Knight, that last movie called King Arthur, that television miniseries where Sam Neil played Merlin… they’re all fiercely mediocre. There’s probably a great one from the old days that I’m forgetting, but I guarantee you’d have to go back seventy years.
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Yep Monty Python is still the best exploration of the Arthurian myth with the benefit of subtitles about moose. It seems like something that has yet to be nailed be it The Once and Future King or Thomas Mallory and the classical telling, there is an amazing amount of amazing story in this mythology and of all the attempts. …this is the dumbest. With the popularity of Game of Thrones and its impending end, maybe an HBO treatment spanning the whole thing would take off, but crap like this disinclines people to be receptive to further adaptations.
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I’ve been fascinated by the Arthur legend ever since I was a kid, so each passing lost opportunity hurts. An HBO series would be fantastic, and if you think the American experiment is being tested right now, think of how the story of Camelot, well-told, would resonate. By all means make it realistically dark and violent, HBO, but don’t go for historical realism. That’s what killed First Knight (well, that and Richard Gere as Lancelot) and it also killed the last Arthur film, the one from 2004, which claimed to be “historically accurate” when in fact, if the Arthur legend has any basis in fact at all (and that’s a big if) it’s pretty certain that the facts would bear no relation to what went on in that film. Make the retelling otherworldly and unrealistic, HBO, sort of like Star Wars. Keep it in the realm of total myth. And just tell the story. Not the story told from the perspective of a supporting character, not a sequel to the story, not a prequel to the story. No clever spins on the story are allowed. I can dream.
Failing that, at least let Terry Gilliam make A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. I heard he’s been wanting to make that for a while.
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