King Arthur: Legend of the Sword

Will Gross, Staff Writer

The tale of King Arthur is renowned as a tale of fact and fiction. Although King Arthur Pendragon was a real historical figure in the 6th century, people across the world fantasize the legend of mighty King Arthur pulling Excalibur from the stone. Guy Ritchie’s film King Arthur: Legend of the Sword seems to embrace the legend rather than reality. The film tells the story of the boy King Arthur, robbed of the crown by his power-hungry uncle and grows up in the streets as a peasant unaware of his true destiny. This film has a lot of material to work with, seeing as it can embrace all the different versions of the same tale. But, unfortunately, the film seems to bite off more than it can chew.

The film is visually impressive no doubt and audiences seem to enjoy the chaos that lies in King Arthur’s path, but the effects to be overwhelming and the plot is hard to follow. Although it is good to embrace some of the fantasy behind the fable, the film derives the whole plot into fantasy which makes the movie seem too unrealistic for my taste. It is one thing to put realistic characters into a fantasy environment, but everything about this movie seems to be fake and sloppy. However, the characters do act and feel like real characters. The acting of the movie is top-notch and I would expect nothing less from the A-list cast. So, despite the overkill fantasy,  I still enjoyed myself while watching the film.

Once the mistakes of the film are noticed and the expectations are lowered, the film can be throughly enjoyed. It was still fun for me to watch the crazy CGI and the A-list cast in this middle-age epic. Even though it wasn’t as good as I expected, King Arthur: Legend of the Sword was at least entertaining. I’ll take entertaining.

 

Three out of five stars.