King Arthur (2004 film)

''King Arthur'' is a 2004 historical adventure film directed by Antoine Fuqua and written by David Franzoni. It features an ensemble cast with Clive Owen as the title character, Ioan Gruffudd as Lancelot and Keira Knightley as Guinevere, along with Mads Mikkelsen, Joel Edgerton, Hugh Dancy, Ray Winstone, Ray Stevenson, Stephen Dillane, Stellan Skarsgård and Til Schweiger.

The film is unusual in reinterpreting Arthur as a Roman officer rather than the typical medieval knight. There have been several literary works that have also done so, including David Gemmell's Ghost King, Jack Whyte's Camulod Chronicles, and perhaps the strongest influence on this film, Bernard Cornwell's Warlord series. The producers of the film attempted to market it as a more historically accurate version of the Arthurian legends, supposedly inspired by new archaeological findings. The film also replaces the sword in the stone story with a more dark and tragic backstory of how Arthur claimed his sword Excalibur. The film was shot in Ireland, England, and Wales.

Plot

In the 5th century AD, the declining Roman Empire is withdrawing from Britannia, where the native Woads, led by Merlin, stage an insurgency. A group of Sarmatian knights and their half-British Roman commander Artorius Castus, known as "Arthur", have fulfilled their duties to Rome and are preparing to return home. Arthur himself plans to continue his career in Rome until Bishop Germanus orders them to complete one final mission: evacuate an important Roman family from north of Hadrian's Wall, saving them from an advancing army of invading Saxons led by the ruthless Cerdic and his son, Cynric. Alecto, the son of the family patriarch, is a viable candidate to be a future Pope. Arthur and his remaining men – Lancelot, Tristan, Galahad, Bors, Gawain, and Dagonet – reluctantly accept the mission.

Arriving at their destination, they find that the Roman patriarch Marius, who refuses to leave, has enslaved the local population, enraging Arthur. He discovers a cell complex containing a number of dead Woads and two tortured survivors — a young woman named Guinevere and her younger brother Lucan. Arthur frees them and gives Marius an ultimatum — leave with them willingly or otherwise be taken prisoner. He and his knights commandeer the homestead, and liberate its exploited people. The convoy flees into the mountains with the Saxons in pursuit. Marius leads an attempted coup but is slain by Guinevere. Arthur learns from Alecto that Germanus and his fellow bishops had Arthur's childhood mentor and father figure, Pelagius, executed for heresy. This further disillusions Arthur with the Roman way of life, a process that matures when Guinevere and Merlin remind Arthur of his connection to the island of Britain through his Celtic mother.

Arthur leads the pursuing Saxons, led by Cynric, through a pass crossing a frozen lake. As battle ensues, Dagonet sacrifices himself to crack the lake ice with his axe, disrupting the Saxon advance. The knights safely deliver Alecto and his mother to Hadrian's wall and are officially discharged. Arthur, having concluded that his destiny lies with his mother's people, decides to engage the Saxons despite Lancelot's pleas to leave with them. The night before the battle, he and Guinevere make love, and on the following day, Arthur meets Cerdic under a white flag of parley, vowing to kill him. He is soon joined by Lancelot and his fellow knights, who decide to fight. In the climactic Battle of Badon Hill, the Woads and knights whittle the Saxon army. Guinevere engages Cynric, who overwhelms her. Lancelot aids her and kills Cynric but is fatally wounded. Cerdic kills Tristan before facing off against Arthur, who kills the Saxon leader, condemning the invaders to defeat.

Arthur and Guinevere marry and Merlin proclaims Arthur as King of the Britons. United by their defeat of the Saxons and the retreat of the Romans, Arthur promises to lead the Britons against any future invaders. Three horses that had belonged to Tristan, Dagonet and Lancelot run free across the landscape, as the closing narrative from Lancelot describes how fallen knights live on in tales passed from generation to generation.

Cast

Production

The film was produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and directed by Antoine Fuqua; David Franzoni, the writer of the original draft script for ''Gladiator'', wrote the screenplay. The historical consultant for the film was John Matthews, an author known for his books on esoteric Celtic spirituality, some of which he co-wrote with his wife Caitlin Matthews. The research consultant was Linda A. Malcor, co-author of ''From Scythia to Camelot: A Radical Reinterpretation of the Legends of King Arthur, the Knights of the Round Table, and the Holy Grail'', in which possible non-Celtic sources for the Arthurian legends are explored.

The film's main set, a replica of a section of Hadrian's Wall, was the largest film set ever built in Ireland, and was located in a field in County Kildare. The replica was one kilometre long, which took a crew of 300 building workers four and a half months to build. The fort in the film was based on the Roman fort named Vindolanda, which was built around 80 AD just south of Hadrian's Wall in what is now called Chesterholm in Northern England.

Fuqua was reportedly dissatisfied with the film which he attributed to interference by Disney. Fuqua said of the experience: “Did I get to make the movie I wanted? No and no,” he says of both versions. “I started out making the movie I wanted, but that was before they (Disney) started to police me. They said, ‘Try not to show so much blood.’ If you agree to make a gritty, dark, realistic film, then everything should be like that. I mean, it’s set in the Dark Ages, when people were inconsiderate and decided to bleed everywhere.”

Relationship with Arthurian legend

Cinematic versus traditional portrayal

The film's storyline is not taken from the traditional sources, but is a work of creative fiction. The only notable exception to this is the inclusion of the Saxons as Arthur's adversaries and the Battle of Badon Hill. Most traditional elements of Arthurian legend are dropped, such as the Holy Grail and Tristan's lover Iseult. The film barely includes the love triangle between Arthur, Lancelot and Guinevere; while Guinevere and Arthur are romantically involved, only a few sequences depict a possible relationship between Lancelot and Guinevere. The film does not feature Kay and Bedivere.

The knights' characterisations in Arthurian legend are also dropped. For example, the film's portrayal of a boorish and lusty Bors, the father of many children, differs greatly from his namesake whose purity and celibacy allowed him to witness the Holy Grail according to legend. The cinematic portrayal of Bors is therefore much closer to the traditional depiction of Sir Kay than his legendary namesake. Lancelot and Galahad are portrayed as having similar ages, whereas according to traditional versions they are father and son, respectively (the film's approach is also found in modern Arthurian fiction — such as Bernard Cornwell's ''The Warlord Chronicles'', in which they are brothers).

The cinematic portrayal of Guinevere as a Celtic warrior who joins Arthur's knights in battle is a drastic alteration from the demure "damsel in distress" of courtly romance.Rowland, Robin (2004)
"Warrior queens and blind critics."
CBC News Although there is historical and mythological precedent for "sword-swinging warrior queens", such as the British Boudica of the Iceni, Gwenllian ferch Gruffydd of Wales, or the various Celtic war goddesses, the film's portrayal of Guinevere is actually closer to the Queen Medb of the Irish ''Táin Bó Cúailnge''. However, no source, early or late, describes Guinevere as either a warrior or a rustic Celt; in fact, in Geoffrey of Monmouth's ''Historia Regum Britanniae'', which contains one of the oldest accounts of the character, Guinevere has Roman blood while Arthur is an indigenous Celt.

Despite the film's alleged historical angle, Merlin was not originally part of the legends. It is generally agreed that he is based on two figures—''Myrddin Wyllt'' (Myrddin the Wild), and Aurelius Ambrosius, a highly fictionalised version of the historical war leader Ambrosius Aurelianus. The former had nothing to do with Arthur and flourished after the Arthurian period. The composite Merlin was created by Geoffrey of Monmouth.

Differences between the film and the Arthurian legend

In the film, Arthur's father is a Roman general from the Imperial Roman army and his mother is a Celtic woman. In the historical notes of the legend, Arthur's father is Uther Pendragon, a famous Romano-British commander and one of Britain's earlier kings, and his mother is Igraine, a beautiful young woman who was once the wife of Gorlois, the Duke of Cornwall and one of Uther's loyal subjects.

Arthur's knights are described differently in the film and the legend. In the film, Lancelot, Tristan, Bors and the other Knights of the Round Table are Sarmatian knights fighting for the glory of the Roman Empire. In historical notes, the Knights of the Round Table are Britons, knights of Romano-Celtic Britain fighting for the freedom of Britain against the Saxons. A round table is briefly present in the movie, where Arthur's knights regularly meet in equality, and which flummoxes the bishop Germanus when he cannot find a place at the table to distinguish his stature.

Other references to Arthurian legend

Dagonet, a self-sacrificing warrior in the film, has Arthur's court jester as his namesake. The character appears in ''Le Morte d'Arthur'' and ''Idylls of the King''. Also in the film, Lancelot fights using two swords. This may be a reference to the ill-fated Sir Balin, the "Knight with Two Swords", but this epithet refers to his cursed sword rather than his fighting style.

Tristan has a pet hawk. In Welsh legends, a figure named ''Gwalchmai'' is commonly considered identical with Gawain (both are nephews of Arthur); a popular though unlikely proposed meaning of his name is "hawk of May". Bromwich, Rachel. '' Trioedd Ynys Prydein'', pp. 367–371.

The role of traitor, typically ascribed to Mordred, is given a smaller part in the form of a young British scout, played by Alan Devine, who betrays his people to the Saxons. The character is unnamed, but called "British Scout" in the credits. Tristan kills the traitor with an arrow from the other side of Hadrian's Wall during the climactic battle.

Relationship with other works

Italian historian and novelist Valerio Massimo Manfredi claimed that the movie was almost a plagiarism of his 2002 novel ''The Last Legion'', due to several similarities between the two works. These similarities include the reuse of some tropes and happenings present in the book and, especially, the attempt to give historical reliability to the main characters with the concept of King Arthur having Roman origins. Indeed, the events of the movie suggest a theory that is largely different from the one on which Manfredi's novel is based, in which Artorius Castus isn't even mentioned, and neither is the Sarmatian auxiliary army. According to Manfredi, ''King Arthurs release and its commercial failure were among the main causes of the problems related to the movie adaptation of his novel, which was in development hell until its release in 2007.

Historical notes

Despite the film's supposedly historically grounded approach, much artistic licence is taken regarding historical figures, peoples, events, religion, wardrobe, and weaponry. The film places the story of Arthur not in its better-known medieval setting, but in the (still plausible) earlier times of antiquity, the early dawn of the Middle Ages – as did the earliest versions of the Arthur story. It would appear that the Arthur depicted in the film is based most closely upon Ambrosius Aurelianus, the Romano-Briton who fought against the Saxons in the 5th century, and was probably the leader of the Romano-British at the Battle of Mons Badonicus (Mount Badon). Nevertheless, Arthur's full name in the film is ''Artorius Castus'', referring to Lucius Artorius Castus, a historical Roman active in Britain in the 2nd or 3rd century. Riederer, Chris
King Arthur - Key historical facts.
Retrieved September 9, 2007. It is specified that Arthur was given the ancestral name of a legendary leader.

The film is loosely based on the "Sarmatian hypothesis", formulated by C. Scott Littleton and Ann C. Thomas in 1978, which holds that the Arthurian legend has a historical nucleus in the Sarmatian heavy cavalry troops stationed in Britain, referencing the similarities between the legends of king Arthur and the older legends of Nartian king Batraz. In the 2nd century, 5,500 Iazyges were transported there as auxiliaries during the Marcomannic Wars. However, the hypothesis is not accepted by scholars who say it lacks a solid base.

Roman political issues

In the film, the Roman legions withdraw from Britain in AD 467; in reality, this was completed in the year 410, nearly 60 years before. Similarly, the opening text dictates that "King Arthur and his Knights rose from a real hero who lived ..in a period often called the Dark Ages". The film, however, is set in 467. Some count the Dark Ages as beginning in Sub-Roman Britain, after the last Emperor of the Western Roman Empire, Romulus Augustus, was deposed by Odoacer in 476, nine years after the date for the setting of the film. The current Roman Emperor in the film's time would have been Anthemius.

The Roman family which Arthur rescues lives north of Hadrian's Wall (in modern Scotland). Such a mission would be unlikely. At times there were Roman expeditions and forts as far north as Cawdor, near Inverness. There were periods, during the 2nd century, when Romans occupied areas as far north as the Central Lowlands (such as modern Falkirk, where pieces of the Antonine Wall are still visible). Romanized client states such as that of the Votadini did exist north of the wall even into the Sub-Roman era. In general, however, Hadrian's Wall represented the extent of Roman rule in Britain.

Britons and Saxons

The Picts are called "Woads". This word is a reference to one plant the Picts may have used to make blue paint; however, the use of woad by the Picts is contested by scholars, and the historical Picts were never known by this name.Lambert, Kym (2004
The Problem of the Woad
Retrieved 1-27-07. In an interview Antoine Fuqua stated that they used "Wodes" (''sic'') instead of "Picts" because they thought the latter sounded "a little weird".Gilchrist, Tod

"It was a little weird in the dialogue when we did a reading, to hear people say 'picts'. It came off kind of odd, for some reason, when they spoke it. So we went with Wodes." Retrieved December 18, 2006. Nevertheless, John Matthews said in an online article that the name substitution was "meant to echo similar belittling titles given to enemies".

The 9th century ''Anglo-Saxon Chronicle'' mentions the arrival of the Saxon leaders Cerdic and Cynric in Britain (in Hampshire) in 495. According to the ''Chronicle'' Cynric succeeded Cerdic as king of Wessex in 534 (Cerdic was the founder of the kingdom). Thus the two could not have died at the battle of Mount Badon. The battle is thought to have been fought sometime between 490 and 516.

The Saxons are shown attacking Hadrian's Wall from the north. By 467 the Saxons were already occupying parts of Britain far south of the wall. Later in the film, Cerdic stops a warrior from raping a woman because it would lead to less-than-pure Saxon blood. This scene references the long-held belief that the Anglo-Saxons eradicated the Romano-Britons from the eastern part of the island. This contention, largely based on linguistic evidence, has been challenged by modern genetic analysis, which suggests extensive mixing between Anglo-Saxon and Briton populations. Some historians (and fiction writers) have even suggested that Cerdic himself was at least part Briton. His name "Cerdic" has been argued to be a Germanised form of a Celtic name such as Ceretic or Caradoc.

Military technology

Historically, Sarmatians were armoured in the manner of cataphracts (full-length coats of scale armour

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