Directed by Guy Ritchie

Screenplay by Joby Harold, Guy Ritchie, Lionel Wigram

Starring Charlie Hunnam, Djimon, Hounsou, Jude Law, Eric Bana

Yo King Arthur was lit. I’ve never been the biggest fan of Guy Ritchie but I liked what he did here. Over the top, in your face ridiculousness, but it worked. Tight action, awesome visuals, and great fun performances. Charlie Hunnam is quickly becoming one of my favorite actors working today. He was amazing in The Lost City of Z last month and he’s good in this. Such a likeable onscreen presence.

It’s kind of amazing to me that this movie has a 28% on RT (although I completely understand why some people won’t like it) but then Covenant has managed to stick at 73%. I realize these are just aggregates of the nation’s critics, but think about it. People getting paid to determine what movies people should make an effort to see roundly gave a Thumbs Down to King Arthur and a Thumbs Up to Covenant. I will never understand how someone could sit through these two movies and decide to say, skip King Arthur, but make the trek out for Covenant. And yeah it isn’t fair to compare these totally unrelated films, but they’re both out in theaters around the same time, and one is defensible and one isn’t. No way in hell I would tell someone to make an effort to see Covenant. Watch that at your own risk if you don’t care about disappointment and weakness. At least King Arthur mostly succeeded in what it tried to do (I think so anyway). Covenant FAILS MISERABLY in almost everything it set out to do. And the worst part is they didn’t try. Ridley Scott and gang did not even try to deliver a good movie. That’s the fucked up part. At least with Prometheus they tried. They went in directions they shouldn’t have, and failed a lot along the way. But they tried. I give them credit there. No one tried on Covenant. They just did a rinse repeat with the formulas for Alien and Aliens but did it way way way way worse. It’s about the biggest waste of time I’ve seen all year.

But back to King Arthur. I do get why it had a poor reception. Guy Ritchie’s style is extremely hit or miss. Very abrupt and fast paced editing and quickly spoken dialogue over kinetic montages. Fortunately I think there’s only one montage that doesn’t really work at the beginning, but the other sequences Ritchie composes are surprisingly fun and effective. Also the cinematography rocks. Really cool shots with epic grand scale camera sweeps and nice colors and believable costumes. I got a real sense I was watching a legend, I really did believe a lot of what I was seeing. And this movie has a ton of fantastical elements like giant war elephants and magic and mages. But the actors really sell this stuff, and so their confrontations are all the more epic. Jude Law makes a surprisingly convincing villain, and a few of the Game of Thrones actors are in this as side characters.

I think this movie is a lot of fun if you know what you’re getting into. I appreciate the efforts made here to deliver an entertaining blockbuster. It’s really unfortunate that they had to spend way too much money on this production and that it tanked miserably at the box office. Which is a damn shame, this film has WAY better lighting and visuals and acting and pretty much everything else than Covenant.

It is absolutely mindblowing to me that as the final confrontation between Arthur and Vortigern took place, in a dark setting at night with Jude Law in his demon form, and magic and swords clanging, I had more visual clarity than I did when the baby xenomorphs attack the crew of the Covenant. That’s because the crew of King Arthur took the time to light the scenes effectively, so when Charlie Hunnam is swinging Excalibur and clashing into Law’s magic scythe and the camera is swinging around while bonkers visuals are flying across the screen, I know EXACTLY what is going on. I didn’t have the slightest fucking clue who was being attacked or how they were being harmed when the baby morphs attack them at night. Am I supposed to be clueless when action is taking place on screen? Michael Fassbender apparently punches one of the aliens in the head to “save another crew member” but I didn’t know that had happened when I saw it. It’s only because they literally said it out loud later on and I went “Oooooh”. Fucking Covenant lit like absolute trash to trick average movie goers into thinking they’re seeing good horror. Dammit all I hate that fucking movie.

Anyway, King Arthur is a lot of goofy fun. Well made and had the courage to try new things. I had a shockingly good time.