Excalibur (1981)
 

This week, the the boys watch 1981’s Excalibur! This is the traditional sword and sorcery tale of King Arthur mixed in with blood, incest, and earlier movie roles from acting legends such as Helen Mirren, Liam Neeson, Patrick Stewart and Gabriel Byrne. Also, if you look hard enough you will see some inspiration for Batman v. Superman...at least that’s what Zack Snyder says.

https://youtu.be/yI3ClqvVJjc

Re: Excalibur (1981)
 

Anal nathrak, uthvas bethud, do che-ol di-enve.

Re: Excalibur (1981)
 

I loved this film when I was 9 or 10 years old!:)

Re: Excalibur (1981)
 

And I love it at 64.

One of my favorite scenes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y21WTmf0V4I

Re: Excalibur (1981)
 

Its very aged.. Someone nominated it for the Fantasy HOF..

Here is what I had to say about it.

https://www.movieforums.com/communit...48#post2108548

Re: Excalibur (1981)
 

Top-10 fantasy movies all time, I think. A very unique take on the legend.

There's a lot of fantasy films out there, but not many that are as deceptively as deep as Excalibur. I think a lot of people focus on the wrong elements of the film and miss what it is saying about humanity.

This is what I wrote about it:

Yes that was one of the things we were mulling over in our review. It does seem like with age it has fallen into our b-movie category a bit.

Re: Excalibur (1981)
 

Wrong again.

I wouldn’t make any assertions that it’s fallen into “b movie” territory. It’s actually not that bad of a film.

How can the passage of time cause a big budget A film to become a b-movie? Do you know what a b-movie is? I'm interested in your definition of it.

And that doesn’t even take into account that it was directed by John Boorman, who was pretty far from a B movie director.

Re: Excalibur (1981)
 

It's aged for sure, but it was so anachronistic when it WAS made that is almost doesn't matter. If you actually read some of the Arthurian myth, that is so crazy that the movie almost seems could be accurate. The clueless Arthur, just an ill tempered warrior, born to a father who was even worse, being managed by Merlin, who seems like a magician since he actually has rational thought, seems about right. Big castles and shiny plate armor don't belong in the 6th century, but, given the fantasy base of most of the story, that doesn't matter much either.

If there actually was an Arthur, he would have been a post-Roman warlord, with leather armor, a bronze sword and pikemen, holding on to a corner of what would later become England, a few invasions down the road. He wouldn't give a crap about the Holy Grail, because he wasn't a Christian, but some form of ancient world pagan. There are only a few lines of anything like history about him, all of it dubious.

I like that movie because it just punts on anything like history, goes straight down the road to late medieval fantasy and 80's hair but surrenders to sweaty warlords who have sex with their armor on. I also love the shiny armor and Merlin's poetic diction as well as Merlin's ironic lectures to the dumb-ass Arthur and the even dumber-ass Uther.

Re: Excalibur (1981)
 

This film is a dream to some...

A NIGHTMARE TO OTHERS!!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuTviZDhXEE

One of my favorite flicks of all time.

Ok, it's like certain elements of the movie haven't aged well, and they seem kind of lame or cheezy to watch today. B-movie doesn't always mean low budget. But the end result. Like a Battlefield Earth which is a disaster of a movie, many consider it a "b-movie" but it had a budget of $70 million. I

That's your opinion. Excalibur is a classic and one of my favorite movies. I don't understand why you even bothered to create a thread praising the movie and now you're attacking it.

Would Zardoz be considered a B-movie? We intend on watching that next.

Cause here is the thing, we review straight up b-movies. We said in our review that we reached out to a facebook group for a sword and sorcery movie. Excalibur was recommended overwhelmingly. We had never seen it so we gave it a shot. Then we realized and stated in the review that for its time it was a big-budget and epic but has elements that come across low-fi and cheezy today and may fall under the broader spectrum of b-movies. It's really just a topic of discussion.

I was anticipating Zardoz as a response. Answer is no, it wouldn’t be.
As to the second part, you’re viewing it through the lens of time and applying, unfairly mind you, the limits of special effects and it’s advancement against it

Not attacking it. We did like the movie. Not sure if you watched the video but rated it 4 out 5.
The b-movie thing is a topic of discussion that crept up because we look at b-movies. Excalibur was recommended to us. We'd never seen it before so didn't know what to expect. There are elements that are cheezy by today's standards and maybe that's why it was recommended to us? But the same could be said for Terminator and other films that are classic.

Yeah, for what it’s worth I don’t think you’re attacking it either.
This all goes back to people holding today’s effects against films from 30-40 years ago without consideration for the time period and the limitations of that time. It’s a erroneous way to critique it, as you must consider the passage of time and the era it was released.

Maybe it's a generational thing. I've always liked the acting in Excalibur, but I've heard lots of younger viewers criticize Nicol Williamson and Nigel Terry, among others, and those are two Shakespearean veterans. I admit that it's a complex film, but it's basically a sci-fi/fantasy/spectacle (sort of an Earthbound-version of Star Wars) with serious issues involving Man vs. Nature, a major John Boorman theme. Plus it's a pretty good horror flick too. It will just never be a b-movie no matter if somebody thinks it's aged.

Absolutely loved Nicol Williamson as Merlin. RIP to him he was truly great. Excalibur was made before we were born but we recognized him from Spawn.
Afterward, we discussed what roles he'd be perfect for if he was still alive today. Seems like he would have been a great Alfred in Batman.

Re: Excalibur (1981)
 

As I said, I love Excalibur and I actually touched the b-movie aspect in my review for the Fantasy HoF:

While I don't think it's a straight-up b-movie, it certainly has elements that do link it with them. If I'd have to name an Italian barbarian film (like I did for the next genre) I'd probably go with Lucio Fulci's Conquest (which, I guess, could be argued to be an artsy fantasy too).

Terminator is cheesy??? Say what:p
Oh boy, I don't think you know what a b-movie really is and was. In a nut shell a b-movie was made on a shoe string budget with no intentions of being great. Often they were part of a double feature at a drive-in and usually had a shorter run time and were aimed at teenagers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B_movie

Yep. I own a whole book That covers the subject.
I think the issue here is exactly that. The definition. It seems the term is being used here pejoratively for any film with a big budget that seemingly failed.

Best B-movie ever, Mad Max (1979), hands down!!!!

Oh that's right I remember you talking about your b movie book. Gosh that would be a good Xmas gift to get myself:)

There you go, a b-movie for sure and one that hit really big too.

heck yeah and Rocky Horror Picture Show.. they are freaking awesome!

Always played after midnight at the drive-in cinema when I was younger (in the early 1980s)

I always preferred The Road Warrior myself but yes, Mad Max is good

The strange thing about making a movie about Arthur is that there is nothing there to start with. There are a couple lines in a history that say that he won a battle and then died. Everything else is 1400 years of myth and fantasy, so Arthur has always been whatever is popular fantasy at that moment. The movie played to the "knights in shining armor" stereotype, which includes castles with tall parapets and ladies in medieval garb, doing wicked dances to 20 century fantasy music. Most of the look is mainly fantasy from the 19th century romantics. The next Arthur might as well be Arthur on Mars.

I liked the movie because it veered closer to dark age grit than they usually do, in spite of the grossly anachronistic sets and costumes. I also loved Nicol Williamson's enigmatic Merlin, who is smart and manipulative, and knows how to guide the violent, shallow warlords.

It looks a lot like the "serious" version of Monty Python and the Holy Grail to me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmInkxbvlCs

i agree

Didn't say Terminator is cheesy, said "elements that are cheezy by today's standards". If you show older movies to younger people today,yes even the Terminator they find parts of it cheezy. That may be the reason why the movie Excalibur was recommended to us.

Yes, I know the definition of b-movies, but when we go to people and say "recommend us a movie to review for our b-movie show" a lot of people will recommend movies that you wouldn't consider a b-movie by that definition. They will recommend movies like Battlefield Earth or Waterworld. To a younger generation, the term "b-movie" has expanded to stuff they think looks cheap, campy, lo-fi in any way. Stuff that is classic and was cool when it came out, but looks dated today they'll consider it a b-movie.

So since it was recommended to us, we tried to see it from that perspective and raised the question. That is all.