Driver Posted January 28, 2014 Share Posted January 28, 2014 I know.. I know... MORE!? I generally dislike fantasy save for Arthurian stories. I've been saying for eons, the problem is that filmmakers always cherry pick and cram decades of story into one movie, which doesn't work. It should be approached like a franchise. So I read this and got excited... "According to Deadline, the studio hopes to produce an epic six-movie fantasy retelling of the Arthur story created Joby Harold (Awake), who wrote the first installment." Yay! Then I read this: "Guy Ritchie, who’s filming Warner Bros.’ adaptation of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. is reportedly looking to direct. He had previously been developing his own King Arthur project with his partner Lionel Wigram." fuck!!!!! Oh well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R.CAllen Posted January 28, 2014 Share Posted January 28, 2014 I... I like Guy Ritchie's films. P.S. Haven't seen Swept Away, though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cerina Posted January 28, 2014 Share Posted January 28, 2014 Plant me firmly in the YAY camp! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Posted January 28, 2014 Share Posted January 28, 2014 Actually, i was opposite. i love middle age movies and fantasy, and out of all the king arthur movies, many of them are just terrible. just terrible. so when i first read this, i just rolled my eyes, until i saw that guy ritchie is set to direct it. and i'm assuming he at least helped write it. and that excites me. i LOVE Guy Ritchie films. his best film outside of snatch is RocknRolla. just epic. if this gets the greenlight, i'll be ecstatic. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Driver Posted January 28, 2014 Author Share Posted January 28, 2014 I guess it could be way worse-- we could have gotten Brett Ratner or something. I just see Guy Ritchie as the English Michael Bay. So many of his visuals or so over done, full of unneeded slow mo and wacky camera work. I loved Snatch... when it came out a zillion years ago. Wasn't a huge fan of the Sherlock Homes movies. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Posted January 28, 2014 Share Posted January 28, 2014 i don't mind the slow motion stuff and the wacky camera angles, that's part of what i enjoy about guy ritchie, but i'll say that sherlock was way over the top with that. i enjoyed the first sherlock, thought it did a lot of things right, but the second sherlock was just terrible. it kinda felt like the hangover 2. terrible. i'd imagined that this king arthur will have wit, dark humor and ridiculous action sequences without the explosions. swordplay in a guy ritchie film has me pretty excited. i dunno. just guys style mixed with the world of king arthur is pretty exciting for me. Johnny Quid better be in it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Human Torch Posted January 28, 2014 Share Posted January 28, 2014 I'm just happy it isn't Peter Jackson, as much as I love the legend I couldn't sit thru the same King Arthur story six times. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Odine Posted January 28, 2014 Share Posted January 28, 2014 It's gonna suck. Arthurian myth needs to be grim. Cold, bleak, bloody and grim, with only a hint of a ray of hope. But this'll get all camped up, hammy and cheesey like the Sherlock Holmes movies with Downey Jnr. I bet you guy Ritchie will cast Daniel Craig as Arthur ( not a bad casting to be fair). Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see this done well, but the cynic in me won't let me hold my breath. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Human Torch Posted January 29, 2014 Share Posted January 29, 2014 Uniting a kingdom, preaching; respect, compassion and growth via spirituality and science. Good lord, you're right. Camelot is one of the grimdarkest concepts I've ever heard of. Granted no one, most likely, wants to see singing villains and yes, Arthur and his court fall to pride, lust and betrayal however saying Arthurian Lore is bleak is like saying Star Trek is dystopian. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Driver Posted January 29, 2014 Author Share Posted January 29, 2014 It should change, tone wise as the series progresses. If they're doing six movies, it sounds like they will do his whole life. If I were boss here's how I'd break it up: 1. Uther years, a prequel almost: dark, war-torn/ Romans and Saxons and Britons 2. Child Arthur years, same as above, but with rays of hope as Arthur begins to see the more magical side of the world thanks to Merlin 3. Young Arthur era, The Sword in the stone years, more magic and pagany makes for more of a fairy tale setting. Arthur was destined to rule because his family line was Briton, but his mentor, Merlin, was Pagan. Questing as the young king should see the tone become more hopeful 4. The Young King era-- the building of Camelot and assembling of the Knights of the round table should be high adventure and magic and wonder, ending on a high note with marrying Guinevere. 5. The High King years, where everything starts to fall apart, betrayed by Lancelot, the emergence of Morgana/Morgan La Fey as somebody out for revenge. Pressure from the Church to do away with honoring the Pagans, the disappearance of Merlin. 6. The Grail Quest era, everything is crap. Mordred has emerged, looking to kill Arthur, the knights have been scattered and lost, only the Grail can save them. Oppressive, dark and Churchy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Human Torch Posted January 29, 2014 Share Posted January 29, 2014 If that is what Odine meant, I withdraw my snark. :-) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R.CAllen Posted January 29, 2014 Share Posted January 29, 2014 5 & 6 (and, really, a 7) are the sweet spot of the Matter of Britain for me. If I had a billion dollars and understood a whole bunch of things I'll never know (e.g. how the movies movie, how make actors actor) that's the King Arthur movie I'd make. The Dark Knight Returns meets The Lion In Winter and Robin & Marian by way of King Lear and Coriolanus interspersed with a little Sacred Honor and a touch of the ethos of a Thomas Ligotti. Arthur, old and broken, realizing that all he's built will come to nothing more than a story and that the fate of all that's good and pure in this world is to die in shame and ignominy with only the slightest thinnest possibility of a surviving remnant for future generations. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R.CAllen Posted January 29, 2014 Share Posted January 29, 2014 Oh, and if I had two billion dollars, I'd probably just do a proper King Arthur And The Knights Of The Round Table a bit like the Errol Flynn Robin Hood movie and The Sword in the Stone. Myths can have more than one meaning and more than one interpretation of that meaning. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Human Torch Posted January 29, 2014 Share Posted January 29, 2014 If I had a millions million and also knew how to movies movie then my King Arthur would involve bright colorful linens on stark cold battlefields and singing, maybe some dancing too. And goatees. On goats. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Driver Posted January 29, 2014 Author Share Posted January 29, 2014 red or white this eve, torchie? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest El Chalupacabra Posted January 29, 2014 Share Posted January 29, 2014 I know.. I know... MORE!? I generally dislike fantasy save for Arthurian stories. I've been saying for eons, the problem is that filmmakers always cherry pick and cram decades of story into one movie, which doesn't work. It should be approached like a franchise. So I read this and got excited... "According to Deadline, the studio hopes to produce an epic six-movie fantasy retelling of the Arthur story created Joby Harold (Awake), who wrote the first installment." Yay! Then I read this: "Guy Ritchie, who’s filming Warner Bros.’ adaptation of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. is reportedly looking to direct. He had previously been developing his own King Arthur project with his partner Lionel Wigram." ****!!!!! Oh well.I so want to see a great King Arthur movie, and I have long said it should be a multiple movie endeavor. IF, IF, IF, the movie were to be based on the various myths and look to actual literature as inspiration for the films, I think it can be pulled off well. But considering the only two King Arthur movies I have any love for right now are Excalibur and Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and the fact I am positive that such a movie series won't be targeted towards someone like myself, I fear I may yet again be disappointed. I think rather than being more like Excalibur, I have a sense that these movies will end up being more like a blending of A LOT OF the typical (or stereotypical) summer blockbuster action film tropes, Merlin (the series), and the pseudo history of the movie King Arthur (2004), that really didn't draw on that much of the literature or established myths, actually distorted actual historical events and figures, and it was more a re-imagining that just used the names of Arthur, Lancelot, Merlin, etc. I have to say for me, at least, it is going to really be hard to live up to or exceed Excalibur. Though it is a bit dated, and it did reinterpret\add things to the Arthurian mythos in its own right, for me, it is an almost near perfect interpretation of Arthur, and personally I compare every incarnation of Arthur on film that I have seen to Excalibur. So I am a hard sell and really biased. Sadly, like I said, I doubt the upcoming Arthur movies will be made for people like me, but rather the people who wanted to see Sherlock Holmes re-imagined as an action hero and 19th century Batman, rather than a genius super sleuth, like he was in the books or early Basil Rathbone movies. It should change, tone wise as the series progresses. If they're doing six movies, it sounds like they will do his whole life. If I were boss here's how I'd break it up: 1. Uther years, a prequel almost: dark, war-torn/ Romans and Saxons and Britons2. Child Arthur years, same as above, but with rays of hope as Arthur begins to see the more magical side of the world thanks to Merlin3. Young Arthur era, The Sword in the stone years, more magic and pagany makes for more of a fairy tale setting. Arthur was destined to rule because his family line was Briton, but his mentor, Merlin, was Pagan. Questing as the young king should see the tone become more hopeful4. The Young King era-- the building of Camelot and assembling of the Knights of the round table should be high adventure and magic and wonder, ending on a high note with marrying Guinevere.5. The High King years, where everything starts to fall apart, betrayed by Lancelot, the emergence of Morgana/Morgan La Fey as somebody out for revenge. Pressure from the Church to do away with honoring the Pagans, the disappearance of Merlin.6. The Grail Quest era, everything is crap. Mordred has emerged, looking to kill Arthur, the knights have been scattered and lost, only the Grail can save them. Oppressive, dark and Churchy.That would be a great breakdown! Honestly, though, I think they probably could fit everything they need into three to four 3-hour movies: IE movies 1 and 2 could be combined as movie #1, 3 and 4 as Movie # 2, Movies 5 and 6 could either be combined, or stand alone. Six movies leaves a lot of room to start expanding and making up sh*t, or throwing in a bunch of unnecessary deviation of the story .... unless a movie or 2 was dedicated almost solely to adventures of various knights, and was almost like an anthology movie format for the knights: IE Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Lancelot the Knight of the Cart, stories of Sir Perceval, Sir Galahad, you get the idea. The BIGGEST challenge is that the Arthurian mythos are nearly 1500 years old now (if you count oral history), and each age it seems that Arthurian stories have been reinterpreted for each age they have been written in. So trying to capture a little bit of everything, while staying true to everyone's conception of what Arthur "ought to be" is going to be hard. Also, having done a research paper on the "historical" King Arthur (more properly, historical figures who may have influenced the legend of King Arthur..see here for what I mean: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_basis_for_King_Arthur#Ambrosius_Aurelianus ) when I was an undergrad, I have long wanted to see a semi-historical account of King Arthur. However, recently, I have come to think that would ironically be too revisionist! King Arthur now belongs to the ages, and if you start inserting too much of those influences, it changes Arthur's narrative. In fact, that is why Antoine Fuqua's King Arthur in 2004 was such a failure, in my view. He tried to insert a smattering of myth, a tad of historical fact, with a lot of his own re-imagining of the legends, and ended up with a mess. The main influences I would like to personally see in there would be Gildas,Geoffrey of Monmouth, Chretien De Troyes, and especially Mallory's Le Morte D'Arthur and the historical battles of Baden and Camlann. As for setting and visuals, I would like to see it some Roman influence in the beginning, like during Uther Pendragon's era, but transitioning to the (mythic) medieval era we think of when we think of Arthur's Camelot. One last thought. I am not interested in seeing Christianity or the Church as the "antagonist" (mainly because the Evil Bishop or Cardinal thing has been done so much in movies that it is almost cliche and EXPECTED), but one thing I thought Excalibur captured well was that Christianity was driving out the old Pagen ways, which was why magic was "dying out." In a way, Arthur was the harbinger of that (even though he himself was mentored by the Pagan Merlin, had a magic sword, and ultimately is carried off to Avalon...AKA Pagan Heaven!), and it seemed like Merlin not only knew that, but was in charge of guiding that "transition." So, I would like to see Christianity as the beginning of a new age in Britain, and almost a tale that is tinged with sadness that the Pagan magic is dying out (sort of in the same way Olivier's Zeus lamented that humans no longer needed the Greek Gods at the end of the original Clash of the Titans, if that makes sense), but I don't want to see a King Arthur movie as a vehicle to bash Christianity, or make it into a villain, and I am saying that as a non-religious guy. i don't mind the slow motion stuff and the wacky camera angles, that's part of what i enjoy about guy ritchie, but i'll say that sherlock was way over the top with that. i enjoyed the first sherlock, thought it did a lot of things right, but the second sherlock was just terrible. it kinda felt like the hangover 2. terrible. i'd imagined that this king arthur will have wit, dark humor and ridiculous action sequences without the explosions. swordplay in a guy ritchie film has me pretty excited. i dunno. just guys style mixed with the world of king arthur is pretty exciting for me. Johnny Quid better be in it.I like good cinematography and FX can be great when used properly. Heck, I wouldn't even mind if battles were presented with slowdowns and camera angles in a similar fashion to the Spartacus series. Actually, I would really dig it! I just hope the FX is used sparingly. The instant I see Lancelot walking away from an explosion without looking back, I'm out! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Driver Posted January 29, 2014 Author Share Posted January 29, 2014 Agree with everything you said! Have you read Mists of Avalon? Prob my favorite Arthurian book, does a great job doing what you suggest about the transition away from Paganism. As for why a studio is going for it despite all the failed versions out there-- Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones. Actually, a cable TV series would be great. Each season could be an era of Arthur's life. But not in a schlocky BBC or wacky way like The Merlin TV show. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest El Chalupacabra Posted January 29, 2014 Share Posted January 29, 2014 I did indeed read Mists of Avalon....far superior to the tv movie which was a mess. But it was a long time ago when I was in high school. I think I read it around the same time I read the first 3 books of the Pendragon Cycle (back then there were only 3 of them!), and Once and Future King. I should re-read them all again! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Human Torch Posted January 29, 2014 Share Posted January 29, 2014 The more I think about it the more I want: King Arthur '66 Shortly after Elizabeth 2's coronation the British Isles befall a plague, originating in the north. So rises a forgotten bloodline embodied in Arthur Pennington who unites the land, by his side is a brilliant bio-chemist named Dr. Merlin Forthwright. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Odine Posted January 31, 2014 Share Posted January 31, 2014 If that is what Odine meant, I withdraw my snark. :-)Driver PRETTY much nailed it. But I'm for less magic, more Druidism and paganism vs Christianity. And dark and grim becuase those times were ****ing dark. The reason Arthurian myth is powerful is cause he was a decent guy in a time of brutality. I mean I'm paraphrasing here and could go deeper but can't be bothered writing a thesis on it right now. I don't like the idea of the stereotype Camelot, knights in shining armour, the round table and pomp and fairytale like castles cause that simply didn't exist. You could say neither did Arthur, however there is plenty of evidence and folklore here to suggest that he did. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cerina Posted January 31, 2014 Share Posted January 31, 2014 I would be ****ing pissed if they made these movies without the magic and fairy tale and romance. PISSED. Its all a part of the mythos now. In 6 movies they have plenty of wiggle room to bring in all aspects. Whether they do it well is another question. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darth Krawlie Posted January 31, 2014 Share Posted January 31, 2014 The extent of my King Arthur knowledge comes from the Disney Sword and the Stone. Where's a good place to start? Not that I have much time to read and don't already have a list about a mile long, but still. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cerina Posted January 31, 2014 Share Posted January 31, 2014 The Once and Future King by TH White. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest El Chalupacabra Posted January 31, 2014 Share Posted January 31, 2014 The Once and Future King by TH White. Seconded. Actually, the Disney Sword in the Stone is from The Once and Future King, albeit "Disney-ized." If not that, then I would recommend The Story of King Arthur and his Knights, by Howard Pyle. This is the book I read, after seeing the movie Excalibur for the first time, a long time ago. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ShadowDog Posted January 31, 2014 Share Posted January 31, 2014 The single season series Camelot is an interesting take on the myth. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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