There are really 2 main problems with the movie; 1 it doesn't live up to the historical accuracy that it claims, and 2 it's kind of boring. Now for the first offence, I think that the historical inaccuracies in this movie are no more egregious then in most films that attempt to depict the past. The problem is that this movie blatantly makes an assertion of validity. In the trailers it says "This is the true story", and then there is that ridiculous little paragraph at the beginning of the movie. Now I majored in history in college and while this period is certainly not my area of expertise, I know that the statement "Historians agree" is an inherent contradiction. Because the movie goes out of it's way to try and tell the audience that this is the truth that is why there are so many people bashing the inaccuracies (and rightly so). Now if the movie made no such claim then I think that all of this talk about were the costumes correct and how Hadrians Wall actually looked would be kind of nitpicky. But as far as I'm concerned this movie got what it asked for. I'll leave the rest of the historical inaccuracy bashing up to my fellow IMDBers (that's what we're called now) save for this little question...How common do you think the name Lancelot was in Sarmatia?
Now the saving grace for a movie that is obviously fabricated and has little basis in actual fact is that it's entertaining. And that the sacrifices for accuracy were made to make an exciting picture. However, that's not the case here. There are roughly 3 fight scenes in the movie. The first one is the equivalent of an action scene from a TV show (which is bad), the second is pretty much people just getting shot with arrows and falling in the water (over and over), and the third is an actual battle scene which is kind of lackluster after seeing battles in movies like Braveheart or Gladiator. The rest of the movie follows a fairly uninteresting story in which Arthur has to go up north to rescue some Roman guy and bring him back. There is a love scene which is neither sexy nor makes much sense between the characters. Then there is rampant use of the word "freedom" and a lot of speeches containing that word. I guess all of those speeches were intended to remind people of the much better movie Braveheart. I could go into the inaccuracies of "knights" (which technically didn't exist) going around and expousing fairly modern ideas of equality and freedom to the peasants but that's beside the point.
The point really is that "King Arthur" has little to do with the legend other then them stealing the names of some of the characters and putting them on totally different characters and is just a bland actioner. Now this movie isn't as bad as some people say (it's not a '1') but it's not that good either (I gave it like a 4-5). If you want to see a movie about King Arthur rent Excalibur or read Mallory's rendition. It's not historically accurate at all, but the story is much more interesting and entertaining. They should have just made a newer Excalibur instead of this.
Zoopansick
Now the saving grace for a movie that is obviously fabricated and has little basis in actual fact is that it's entertaining. And that the sacrifices for accuracy were made to make an exciting picture. However, that's not the case here. There are roughly 3 fight scenes in the movie. The first one is the equivalent of an action scene from a TV show (which is bad), the second is pretty much people just getting shot with arrows and falling in the water (over and over), and the third is an actual battle scene which is kind of lackluster after seeing battles in movies like Braveheart or Gladiator. The rest of the movie follows a fairly uninteresting story in which Arthur has to go up north to rescue some Roman guy and bring him back. There is a love scene which is neither sexy nor makes much sense between the characters. Then there is rampant use of the word "freedom" and a lot of speeches containing that word. I guess all of those speeches were intended to remind people of the much better movie Braveheart. I could go into the inaccuracies of "knights" (which technically didn't exist) going around and expousing fairly modern ideas of equality and freedom to the peasants but that's beside the point.
The point really is that "King Arthur" has little to do with the legend other then them stealing the names of some of the characters and putting them on totally different characters and is just a bland actioner. Now this movie isn't as bad as some people say (it's not a '1') but it's not that good either (I gave it like a 4-5). If you want to see a movie about King Arthur rent Excalibur or read Mallory's rendition. It's not historically accurate at all, but the story is much more interesting and entertaining. They should have just made a newer Excalibur instead of this.
Zoopansick