King Arthur

CraftyChicaAZ · Joined: 14 Apr 2004 Posts: 686 Location: phx, az

I was SO looking forward to this movie. I love anything and everything about the Knights of the Round Table and such (plus I adore Clive Owen). But I just checked on RottenTomatoes.com and it appears to be a dud. I'll go see it any way, but according to the early reviews, the things I was most looking forward to aren't in the film...

Did you ever look forward to a movie and then be crushed with disappointment when you saw it? Last time it happened to me was with The Day After Tomorrow. I did see Spider-Man 2 this weekend, and I gotta say, I really enjoyed it. Alfred Molina makes a great villian!
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mystril · Posted: Mon Jul 05, 2004 9:44 am Post subject:

Oh, now I'm sad. I was looking forward to King Arthur too.

I was actually really disappointed when I saw Excalibur...or rather the last quarter of it because the Mordred plotline was so messed up. (I didn't see the movie until long after it was released.)

ETA: My favorite Arthur movie is still probably The Sword in The Stone, even if it is a little silly.

Snufkin · Posted: Mon Jul 05, 2004 2:20 pm Post subject:

Ha! I've been wanting to see this movie even though it looks terrible and has nothing to do with the King Arthur legend. All because of my fondness for Mr Owen. Though the funny thing is that I told a friend my dirty little secret and she admitted to sitting through the probably even worse Beyond Borders simply for him!
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xuli · Posted: Mon Jul 05, 2004 3:47 pm Post subject:

Oh, it's got to have *some* redeeming qualities! (Says the woman who went to see Troy because of her addiction to epic movies, and found solace in Brad Pitt's butt even though the film itself was pretty awful.)

kazoogrrl · Joined: 14 Apr 2004 Posts: 72

I saw a poster for this at the theatre the other day - uh, is that Gweneviere and is she wearing a leather macrame tube top?

I remember when The Fifth Element came out - I was so dissapointed! I was expecting a really kick ass sci fi movie, but I soon as I noticed the good aliens looked like duck billed platypi I new it was all over.

Snufkin · Posted: Mon Jul 05, 2004 4:42 pm Post subject:

Nab · Joined: 05 Jul 2004 Posts: 3

I will see it exclusively for the Clive factor. I am happy there are some ladies with good taste out there; no one I know has any clue who he is. Yum, yum, yum. My other tasty British crumpet is Daniel Craig.

Snufkin · Posted: Tue Jul 06, 2004 12:55 pm Post subject:

It got an 'it's okay' review from the NY Times (registration required):

What people did back in the Dark Ages was fight a lot, and in this, "King Arthur" is entirely true to the historical record — except, that is, for wheeling out crossbows and trebuchets long before they were invented. "King Arthur" has the best battle scenes, the best hand-to-hand combat, of any movie so far this summer — far better than the stagy, self-important "Troy," for example. It's not trying to be an epic or make a grand statement. It's an action film, with just a tiny hint of a brain, and a reminder, though you would never guess this from all the remakes pouring out of Hollywood these days, that movies are often better at making up new stories than at retelling the old ones. In at least one respect it's also a little like its predecessor, "Pirates of the Caribbean": it creates a painless, very watchable illusion of history without all the bother of the real thing.
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"People call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute."

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sun bear · Joined: 13 Apr 2004 Posts: 443

if you want to see it, just go see it, often what reviewers say and what you enjoy are two different things. Then again if you hate it, then you can blame me for forcing you to go :-P

jt

mystril · Posted: Tue Jul 06, 2004 11:46 pm Post subject:

I used to never listen to reviewers and said, "Well, I never agree with them anyway"...then I saw The Road to Wellville and it was so bad it made me whimper in pain.

But I find that if a movie like Arthur (Popcorn flick) gets less than 2 1/2 stars that means that unless I desperately want to see it, I should wait for it on DVD. Now, if an artsy flick gets less than 2 1/2 stars, I stay far far away.

-mystril

brdgt · Posted: Wed Jul 07, 2004 10:34 am Post subject:

See, I think it looks great - but as a historian I just want them to stop with the claims of "finally, the TRUE story of King Arthur!" If they would just stop that and you could enjoy the movie as a nice piece of fiction (because that, after all, is what the King Arthur Legend is), then it would be nice.

Snufkin · Posted: Wed Jul 07, 2004 7:59 pm Post subject:

Slate's review is cracking me up! It sounds so mindlessly entertaining that I'll have to catch a matinee this weekend:

King Arthur is profoundly stupid and inept, but it's an endless source of giggles once you realize that its historical revisionism has nothing to do with archeological discoveries and everything to do with the fact that no one at Disney would green-light an old-fashioned talky love triangle with a hero who dies and an adulterous heroine who ends up in a nunnery.
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"People call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute."

~ Rebecca West (1892-1983)

LolitaContrer · Joined: 07 Jul 2004 Posts: 46

My fav book on the topic is Mists of Avalon. God I must have read it 3 times, and I just started it again. Highly reccomend it.
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Guest · Posted: Wed Jul 07, 2004 10:33 pm Post subject:

I was a King Arthur nerd as a kid, and as when I heard about the film I thought it sounded like a good idea.

And then I saw a trailer...and cringed a lot.

eixmi · Joined: 13 Apr 2004 Posts: 54 Location: Adelaide, Australia

I was excited when I heard that Ioann Gruffudd was in it (and I'm interested in the actual Arthurian stuff, too!), but then I saw the trailer and it made me laugh. Which is a bad sign, I think. And the idea of Clive Owen and Keira Knightley as a couple is a bit icky.