The Worst Arthurian Legend

An English teacher at my high school once told me that leaving a performance at the intermission was one of the deepest insults you could give to a performance—actors, stage crew and production crew all combined. It is literally the worst possible thing. I half believed him, mainly because of his credentials. He was an excellent English teacher who was very well-versed in literature of all kinds, including scripts and screenplays. From the moment he began to speak it was always clear to me that he had a deep passion for literature and was immersed in any form that it took, be it in books, on a stage, in song, on television or on a silver screen. However, it was that one thing he said to me that always got to me: 

Leaving a performance halfway is one of the gravest insults you can give it. 

I seriously did not understand that because I am deeply interested in stories. I willingly admit to being extremely immersed in many awful things for reasons of curiosity – I always wanted to know what would happen. I sat patiently through various Final Fantasies and their random encounters and stupid (sometimes mandatory) mini-games because the characters themselves were so interesting that I wanted to see what would become of them; how their stories would unfold. How did their encounters with other characters, their conversations and their involvement in significant events (which are always few and far between in Final Fantasy) reshape them from what they are in the beginning to what they are in the end? I sat through the confused mess of alternate history, dystopian fantasy, inconsistent characterisation, plot holes, boring battle scenes and slice-of-life teen drama in the Left Hand of God series just because I’m curious as to where all of the main characters are going to end up and how. I almost gave up on the Twilight movie but saw it through to the end because I needed to know what everyone was crazy about. I never understood the concept of being so uninterested in something that you would leave halfway through and not want to know what happened to anybody in the end. 

That is, until I saw Antoine Fuqua’s 2004 film King Arthur. It is quite literally the worst thing I have ever seen. 

Now, I’m all for alternate history in fiction. Alternate history can be extremely interesting, entertaining and thought-provoking. Unless it’s crap. The alternate history presented in King Arthur is crap. It attempts to portray itself as possibly actually true but the historical inaccuracies are so palpable that it’s impossible to believe. There is no way anyone could accept this iteration of the Arthurian Legend because nothing about it is remotely believable. You would have to literally know nothing about anything to be able to suspend disbelief enough to enjoy this film. 

The angle they were going for in this movie was based on the belief of some left-of-centre historians who think that the Arthurian Legend may have some basis in actual historical fact. That basis being upon a 2^nd Century Roman officer named Artorius who supposedly commanded Sarmatian auxiliary horsemen in Britain. It’s an interesting theory and I’m sure there was a way to do it right. But King Arthur isn’t it. The creators somehow manage to confuse the 5^th Century with the Dark Ages, paganism with atheism and the Roman emperor with the pope. 

The actual action in the film was also quite boring. The first battle in the director’s cut of movie (which I was watching with my housemates) went on for ages. It was okay for about two minutes but after that I just wanted the film to move on. 

To top it off, the worst part of the film is the characterisation, which as you may have guessed earlier is one of my favourite aspects of a story. For some reason, Britons in the 5^th Century A.D. have American accents. The Romans all have Italian accents but that only applies to the shitty Romans. If you’re a good-guy Roman you can have an American accent too. The characters are all flat and annoying and harp on about freedom in a manner that is more reminiscent of America in the 2000’s than Roman Britain in the mid-400’s. Good job at suspending my disbelief there, guys. 

Honestly, I just couldn’t go on. Shortly after Keira Knightley appeared I gave up on watching it because it was terrible; not even Knightley could save this historio-fictional mess. I am no longer at a stage in my life where I am depressed enough to enjoy something so awful. The only reason I was watching it in the first place was because one of my housemates wanted to share it with us as a terrible film that we could MST but I just couldn’t handle it. For once in my life I finally understand how a film can be so uninteresting that I didn’t want to see it through to the end. 

I finally understand now. If King Arthur had been a stage show, I would have walked out at the intermission. I wish this movie was a theatre performance because would have liked to insult the hell out of anyone and everyone who was a part of it for having a hand in making something so shitty but not shitty enough to be good or funny. I’m just glad that I didn’t pay good money to see this thing because that’s the only way it could have been worse.