Warning: SPOILERS ahead for King Arthur: Legend of the Sword
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It's safe to say there's never been an adaptation of Arthurian legend quite like Guy Ritchie's King Arthur: Legend of the Sword. Starring Charlie Hunnam as Arthur, who fights to claim his kingdom from the control of his usurper uncle King Vortigern (Jude Law), The Legend of the Sword all but abandons any semblance of the traditional myth of King Arthur. In this new incarnation, Arthur's quest to become King is the story of Camelot by way of a hyperkinetic Guy Ritchie heist film, with a back alley crew of thieves and sorcerers plotting a revolution to bring down the establishment and install the Born King to the crown.
For anyone familiar with Arthurian legend - whether from films like John Boorman's Excalibur, the musical Camelot and the film adaptation starring Richard Harris, the Disney classic The Sword in the Stone, or from literature like Sir Thomas Malory's "La Morte D'Arthur" or T.H. White's "The Once and Future King" - Legend of the Sword can be a bewildering divergence from the classic tropes of the legend. Among the major changes made by Ritchie and his screenwriting team Lionel Wigram and Jody Harold are a complete reinvention of Arthur's origin story, the absence of Sir Lancelot, Sir Galahad, and Sir Gawain, and the removal of the classic love triangle between Arthur, Lancelot, and Guinevere.
Instead, Ritchie's King Arthur reinvents the classic mythology in ways that would baffle your Classical Literature professor. Here's how Legend of the Sword upends tradition and delivers a King Arthur experience unlike any other:
CAMELOT BEFORE ARTHUR
King Arthur opens with an immediate shock: Camelot already exists. Instead of a golden castle founded by King Arthur, Camelot is a fortress castle located in the mountains of England. England is also in the midst of a civil war with the Mages, a race of sorcerers which counts Merlin among them. However, the Mages at war are being led by Mordred, a powerful evil Mage. Traditionally, Mordred is Arthur's offspring but in Legend of the Sword, Mordred instead is killed by Arthur's father King Uther Pendragon (Eric Bana), who wields Excalibur against him and heroically saves Camelot.
Arthur is still very young when the Mages are defeated by King Uther, but Uther's brother Prince Vortigern makes a successful play for power. Vortigern, with the magical aid of the Syrens (see below), executes a successful coup to usurp the throne. Vortigern kills King Uther and Queen Elsa, but Arthur is able to hide in a small boat and escape by river. It is later revealed Vortigern plotted with Mordred to start the war. Mordred shared some of his magical secrets with Vortigern, specifically building a magical tower in Camelot similar to the magical tower of the Mages, which becomes a nexus for their power. When Mordred failed to kill Uther, Vortigern turned to his plan B of asking for help from the Syrens to murder Uther himself.
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ARTHUR: THE BORN KING
Unlike some classical depictions of Arthur's birth, such as in Excalibur, Arthur was born to a happy union of King Uther and Queen Elsa. After they are killed and young Arthur escapes Camelot, his little boat floats all the way to the city of Londinium. Arthur is discovered and taken in by prostitutes. Instead of being hidden away by Merlin and raised by a knight named Sir Ector, Arthur is raised in a brothel, where he sweeps up the floors, performs odd jobs, and even learns a bit of thievery. As an adult, Arthur ends up running the brothel. Arthur comes of age in the back alleys of Londinium, which is already a multinational city. Arthur learns to fight from a Chinese martial arts master named George (Tom Wu) in a local dojo.
Arthur doesn't remember his royal heritage and believes that he was born in the brothel. However, he frequently has nightmares that he doesn't understand of the night he witnessed his mother and father killed by a flaming skull-faced demon. When Arthur pulls Excalibur from the stone, he is recognized as the Born King, and must be eliminated by Vortigern. However, Arthur spends most of the film rejecting his heritage. (Overwhelmed by its power, he even passes out the first couple of times he wields Excalibur.) Though he has no wish to be King, Hunnam's Arthur nevertheless exudes a confident, alpha male swagger which becomes all the more heightened when he finally embraces his crown and destiny.
Arthur's family tree in Legend of the Sword is extremely simplified: His father is Uther Pendragon, his mother is Elsa, and Vorigern is his uncle and usurper King. He has no half-sister in Morgana, and he has no children. Arthur does have a cousin, Vortigern's daughter Princess Catia (Millie Brady), whom he never met as an adult. She and Vortigern's wife, Elsa (Katie McGrath), are both deceased by the time Legend of the Sword concludes. (Strangely, both Uther and Vortigern married women named Elsa.)
THE LEGEND OF EXCALIBUR
The legendary magical sword Excalibur is the most powerful and pivotal weapon in the movie. It was forged by Merlin from his own staff in his magical tower as a weapon for Uther Pendragon to be used against Mordred in the war of Men versus Mages. After creating Excalibur, Merlin gave it to the Lady of the Lake, who in turn gave it to Uther. The sword is bound to the Pendragon lineage, but can only be used by Uther and his true born son Arthur. Even though Vortigern also has Pendragon blood, Excalibur's power is inaccessible to him.
When Uther and Arthur wield Excalibur and tap into its power (by grabbing its handle tightly with both hands), Excalibur grants the Pendragon Kings superpowers. (Arthur calls it 'razzle dazzle with the sword.') When tapping Excalibur's power, Arthur's eyes turn silver, he can fight with incredible power and speed - in a similar way to how Quicksilver moves in Bryan Singer's X-Men: Days of Future Past and Apocalypse - and Excalibur can slice through any form of armor or weapon with ease. The absence of Lancelot, traditionally the finest warrior and First Knight of Camelot, is thus explained in that he's not necessary; when Arthur unleashes Excalibur's power, he becomes the best warrior in England, able to cut down a horde of soldiers with astonishing speed. Excalibur's magic also grants Arthur visions; specifically unlocking his buried memories of the night Vortigern murdered Uther.
In an interesting twist on the legend, when Uther realized he was about to die, he hurled Excalibur into the air and when it landed, it impaled Uther in the back. Uther then died and magically transformed into stone. Thus, Uther Pendragon himself is the stone in the legend of the Sword in the Stone. Arthur, the Born King, claimed his Kingship by pulling Excalibur from his own father. Arthur also spends the bulk of the movie rejecting his responsibility to be King. At one point, he even hurls Excalibur into a lake, but the Lady of the Lake catches it and immediately returns it to Arthur, literally forcing it back into his hand and giving him an apocalyptic vision of what will happen to England if Arthur doesn't embrace his destiny.
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THE MAGICAL WORLD OF ENGLAND
It's not specified which century King Arthur takes place in. The Roman influence in the architecture is evident in Londinium having a Colosseum and aqueducts bringing water to the the castle of Camelot. Hadrian's Wall can be seen in the maps of England, Scotland, and Ireland shown. There are also Vikings that both Vortigern and Arthur have dealings with as King.
However, the England of the movie is a country where magic exists. There are a slew of magical creatures in the movie - giant war elephants the size of mountains, giant wolves, giant snakes, and giant hawks, as well as tree nymphs. There is even a magical island called the Dark Lands that Arthur must bring Excalibur to. The Dark Lands are where most of these giant creatures dwell; there are actually more enormous animals seen in the Dark Lands than there were giant kaiju in Kong: Skull Island.
When his gambit with Mordred failed, Vortigern turned to the Syrens to seize the throne of England from his brother. The Syrens live in the waters beneath the magical tower being built in Camelot. A monster comprised of three women, two beautiful, one grotesque, with a lower body of octopus tentacles, the Syrens aid Vortigern for a price: He must murder and sacrifice a loved one to the Syrens for them to lend him their dark magic. Vortigern first murders his wife Elsa in order to take the throne from Uther. For his climactic battle with Arthur, Vortigern murders his daughter Princess Catia. Both times, the Syrens transform Vortigern into a giant skull-faced demon surrounded by flames. When Arthur kills Vortigern, he uses Excalibur to bring down the magic tower, presumably eliminating the Syrens along with it.
The race of Mages in King Arthur are seen as an army, and Mordred and Merlin are also briefly shown in the movie. The primary Mage character is a woman known only as the Mage (Àstrid Bergès-Frisbey). She is sent by Merlin to aid Arthur in his quest to become King, though she's frustrated by his reluctance to seize his destiny. The Mage can magically control and become the giant animals in the movie. Some media for Legend of the Sword identifies Bergès-Frisbey's character as Guinevere, but she is never referred to by that or any proper name in the movie. If the Mage ultimately is revealed to be Guinevere, this version bucks tradition and puts her more in line with the blue-painted Pict warrior queen Guinevere Keira Knightley portrayed in the 2004 King Arthur film directed by Antoine Fuqua. Whether or not the Mage is Guinevere, there is no romance between her and Arthur in Legend of the Sword.
KNIGHTS OF THE ROUND TABLE
The men who would become Arthur's Knights by the conclusion of Legend of the Sword are anything but the traditional ideal of medieval chivalry. The only one who resembles a traditional Arthurian knight is Sir Bedivere (Djimon Hounsou), who used to be a Knight in King Uther's court but fled to work alongside the Mages when Vortigern usurped the throne. The rest are Arthur's motley crew of scalawags from the brothel and back alleys of Londinum, which includes the criminal marksman Goosefat Bill (Aiden Gillen). They fight alongside Arthur and spark a revolution against Vortigern. When Arthur finally assumes the throne, the new King raises up his mates to Knighthood, and they become Sir Percival, Sir William, and Sir George. Finally, the Round Table (only two thirds completed) is introduced at the conclusion of Legend of the Sword, accompanied by jokes where the new Knights wonder what exactly it is.
Legend of the Sword is intended to be the first of a planned six-film cycle. Should even one of the sequels go into production, there's plenty of room to introduce classic characters like Lancelot, Galahad and Morgana into this new mythology, though there's no telling in what form any of the classic tropes will take. But given what we've seen in Legend of the Sword, whatever comes next in Guy Ritche's Camelot is bound to be unexpected and fascinating.
