{"id":2688,"date":"2017-05-16T12:02:00","date_gmt":"2017-05-16T19:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/?p=2688"},"modified":"2018-02-12T16:21:43","modified_gmt":"2018-02-12T23:21:43","slug":"king-arthur-legend-of-the-sword","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/2017\/05\/16\/king-arthur-legend-of-the-sword\/","title":{"rendered":"King Arthur: Legend of the Sword"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Directed by: Guy Ritchie
\nStarring: Charlie Hunnam, Astrid Berg\u00e8s-Frisbey, Jude Law, Djimon Hounsou, Aidan Gillen, Tom Wu, Kingsley Ben-Adir, Neil Maskell, Annabelle Wallis, Eric Bana
\nRated: PG-13 for sequences of violence and action, some suggestive content and brief strong <\/p>\n

\u201cKing Arthur\u201d is pretty much everything you could want from a medieval Guy Ritchie film. More magic and castles, but still lots of action, sharp and fast dialog, and a gathering of loosely-connected plot elements into a tight finish. It’s a very loose adaptation of the story of King Arthur, but it succeeds at what it aims for: smashing Ritchie’s style together with a mostly straight-forward medieval fantasy story. Think of Richie’s \u201cSherlock Holmes\u201d movies, but Arthurian rather than Victorian.<\/p>\n

The film starts with some backstory \u2013 an attempt at world domination by a Mage, the betrayal and murder of King Uther (Eric Bana), the King’s only son left to be found and raised by commoners. We get a montage of the son, Arthur, as he grows up from a toddler (Zac and Oliver Barker) to a man (Charlie Hunnam). Anybody who knows anything about King Arthur’s legends knows what happens next: he pulls a magical sword from a stone, which tells everybody that he’s the heir to the throne. The only problem, beside the fact that King Vortigern (Jude Law) has no intention of stepping down in favor of his nephew, is that Arthur has no interest in taking over. Fate doesn’t much care about what he wants, though, and neither does the anti-Vortigern resistance. <\/p>\n

There’s a lot to like about \u201cKing Arthur: Legend of the Sword.\u201d The cast is diverse, the female characters aren’t all identical (though the film does fail the Bechdel test, in which two named female characters have a conversation that is about something other than a man), and the production values are high. <\/p>\n

Charlie Hunnam is the one who has to carry the film, though, and he does. Arthur a pretty standard Ritchie protagonist of the taciturn and reluctant type, and Hunnam makes Arthur’s struggle to accept his fate understandable. Arthur was perfectly happy running his territory, protecting his friends, and getting a cut of everybody’s profit. He has no desire to be part of the resistance, let alone head it up as the \u201cBorn King.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Mage (Astrid Berg\u00e8s-Frisbey) offers him counsel and some increasingly-cool magical support, pushing him to do the internal work necessary to wield Excalibur and become king. She’s an interesting character, especially because she has no interest in Arthur romantically \u2013 and there’s no interest in the other direction, either. She knows that Arthur has to go through a harrowing process (including a very dangerous vision quest in an alternate realm) to let go of his old life and become the Born King, and is determined to get him through it. Berg\u00e8s-Frisbey’s intense performance is both practical and otherworldly. The Mage has no romanticism in her, no softness. She’s all hard edges and enchanted wildlife, and it’s a nice change from the standard sexy-lady-in-a-corset fantasy type.<\/p>\n

If you like Ritchie’s style and also like medieval fantasy, \u201cKing Arthur: Legend of the Sword\u201d is a must-see. If you strongly dislike either, you’re probably better off skipping it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Directed by: Guy Ritchie Starring: Charlie Hunnam, Astrid Berg\u00e8s-Frisbey, Jude Law, Djimon Hounsou, Aidan Gillen, Tom Wu, Kingsley Ben-Adir, Neil Maskell, Annabelle Wallis, Eric Bana Rated: PG-13 for sequences of violence and action, some suggestive content and brief strong \u201cKing Arthur\u201d is pretty much everything you could want from a medieval Guy Ritchie film. More magic and castles, but still lots of action, sharp and fast dialog, and a gathering of loosely-connected plot elements into a tight finish. It’s a very loose adaptation of the story of King Arthur, but it succeeds at what it aims for: smashing Ritchie’s style together with a mostly straight-forward medieval fantasy story. Think of Richie’s \u201cSherlock Holmes\u201d movies, but Arthurian rather than Victorian. The film starts with some backstory \u2013 an attempt at world domination by a Mage, the betrayal and murder of King Uther (Eric Bana), the King’s only son left to be found and raised by commoners.<\/p>\n

Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2685,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[70,57],"class_list":["post-2688","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-fantasy","tag-rated-pg-13"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/KingArthurLegendoftheSword.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2oSX4-Hm","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2688","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2688"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2688\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2689,"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2688\/revisions\/2689"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}