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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.
Excalibur (1981)
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And I love it at 64.
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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
Here is what I had to say about it.
https://www.movieforums.com/communit...48#post2108548
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:
Excalibur (1981)
Dir: John Boorman
Mankind is the bane of this world. We have the grace of the grail inside us, and yet like the Knights of the Round Table, the grail is just out of reach, leaving mankind forever seeking, but never finding Camelot. We create our own misery in this world and spread it like smoke on the wind to all the other living things.
In the legend that is the telling of the age of man, Merlin knew the truth in oneness...and despaired in it's passing.
Excalibur is sadness at a great loss, a lament of things that were. A foreshadowing of things that might come to be if mankind doesn't change it's ways...
"For it is the doom of men that they forget."
This is what I wrote about it:
Excalibur (1981)
Dir: John Boorman
That which is lost...
Mankind is the bane of this world. We have the grace of the grail inside us, and yet like the Knights of the Round Table, the grail is just out of reach, leaving mankind forever seeking, but never finding Camelot. We create our own misery in this world and spread it like smoke on the wind to all the other living things.
In the legend that is the telling of the age of man, Merlin knew the truth in oneness...and despaired in it's passing.
Excalibur is sadness at a great loss, a lament of things that were. A foreshadowing of things that might come to be if mankind doesn't change it's ways...
"For it is the doom of men that they forget."
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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
Here is what I had to say about it.
https://www.movieforums.com/communit...48#post2108548
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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.
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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.
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And that doesn’t even take into account that it was directed by John Boorman, who was pretty far from a B movie director.
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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.
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.
Last edited by skizzerflake; 09-11-20 at 03:15 PM.
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This film is a dream to some...
A NIGHTMARE TO OTHERS!!!!
One of my favorite flicks of all time.
A NIGHTMARE TO OTHERS!!!!
One of my favorite flicks of all time.
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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.
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Ok, it's like certain elements of the movie haven't aged well, and they seem kind of lame or cheezy to watch today.
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.
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And that doesn’t even take into account that it was directed by John Boorman, who was pretty far from a B movie director.
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.
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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.
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.
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
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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.
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.
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