Review of King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017) by Drollgorg — 16 May 2017

As summer arrives, so do blockbuster summer movies. Usually simple and straightforward, often campy, and always flashy and action-packed. However, it seems like these movies are less able to leave their mark every year– the market is practically oversaturated with action movies and TV shows, with what would have once been tentpole features now seeming to come out every weekend. Many of these vying chunks of screen-time are now written more smartly than ever, making it difficult for the crowd-pleasing mediocrity of summer action flicks to justify taking two hours of the audience’s time. “King Arthur: Legend of the Sword” is one of 2017’s first summer blockbusters, and 2017’s first summer flop. This attempt at a gritty, dark fantasy retelling of the Arthurian legend strides confidently onto the stage, attempting to wow audiences without managing to stand out favorably from its competitors in the slightest. Taking place in ancient England, “Arthur” is essentially a prequel to the classic tales of the Round Table. It follows the rise to power of an amoral Arthur (Charlie Hunnam) raised on the streets after his uncle Vortigern (Jude Law) seized power and killed the sitting royals– which only happened after they had seized victory over the rebellion of the evil mage Mordred, who betrayed the previous mage kind and forced Merlin into forging Excalibur, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. If you fail to see how that was necessary to my explanation of the plot, so did I as I was suffering through reams of exposition and flashback whose only place in the movie seems to be to remind you that the screenwriters read the source material. But to return to the story, “Arthur” moves frenetically from the title character’s life of crime, to his discovery of his magical destiny, to his joining of the rebellion against Vortigern; sprinkling in enough “refusal of the call” and “now it’s personal” tropes to grow an entire crop of B-list, testosterone-poisoned fantasy movies. Most actors are very serviceable, except for perhaps the only name-branded star on the cast– Jude Law, whose over-the-top and yet sort of bland delivery does not at all help the fact that he’s basically playing Magical Hitler with Extra Dark Souls. Come to think of it, Astrid Bergés-Frisbey I also could have done without, not because the script ever calls on her character “the Mage” to speak or emote like a normal human, but because her enunciation is like listening to a child who just broke into a veterinarian’s supply of ketamine. I’ll finish by saying that there’s nothing in the plot of the movie that’s actually that bad, except for what I would argue is the use of a poor man’s storytelling crutch- using magic to solve problems when the magic isn’t understood by the audience. What hobbles “Arthur” is the editing. Ritchie apparently couldn’t decide what style to cut the movie in, so he threw in every shot and angle used by mankind in the past three decades, usually with no actual reason for why this should be happening. There are some sequences I enjoyed- particularly when the camera moves with the tip of Excalibur. But most of the time the incessant montages, slow-motion, and everything in between makes the pacing utterly nonexistent and ruins the presentation of whatever good material there is. Narrative beats are replaced by constant motion which does nothing to justify itself, like Guy Ritchie wants to prevent the audience from being able to understand, much less appreciate, anything on screen. The cutting in this movie gave me a headache, and that isn’t an exaggeration.

You may have gathered that I did not enjoy this movie. Perhaps that is due to the fact that the writing is so consistently uninteresting. Perhaps it’s due to the fact that the movie’s insistence on flashy set-pieces and erratic presentation makes it all feel empty of any real heart or anything to say, and makes the narrative stakes so irrelevant that when something actually interesting happens it’s too late to care. The only coherent theme I could draw from this movie is that those who possess power deserve to use it as they wish. And perhaps I don’t like “Arthur” because it squanders all of the potential in the Arthurian legend in favor of a movie that distinguishes itself in no discernable way. The best demographic I can think of for this movie would be middle schoolers, because they are the most likely to be adequately distracted and engaged by its bounty of fast movement and bright lights. From me, it earns a score of 3.5 out of 10. It lost a lot of points because there are few things more painful to me than being able to see exactly where the potential for something to be good was lost. Most of that 3.5 was earned back, grudgingly, because this movie had a very high level of snake inclusion, which I have to give points for. The very large size of some of the snakes was something of a salve for my weary eyes.