Excalibur

The reliable maintenance of fantastic legend convivially maintained century after century, as the present consistently bores its contemporaries and they adamantly search for entertaining alternatives. 

Odd that a nation as old as Britain doesn't cash in on more of its legends, aren't King Arthur and Robin Hood and Churchill just peas in the tumultuous historical pod?

Their markets are no doubt durable and habitually enable modest artists to prosper, even if some examples lack daring or innovation or narrative depth or multivariability. 

When to release the next instalment look to the Jurassic Park franchise I would, I was crazy excited to see the first one, and lacked interest after no. 3, but so much time had passed before Jurassic World came out, that I found myself enthusiastic again.

I remember seeing the Disney Camelot cartoon when but a wee lad in the 1980s, and how excited I impressionably was to see King Arthur wield sword from stone.

The idea of divine agency still genuinely compelling and keenly motivating, so odd to see it televisually disseminated in mad political advertisements. 

The idea never loses its intriguing longevity decade after decade millennia after millennia, but it ebbs and flows through the passage of time, logic and reason having lost popular ground in recent times due to the internet.

It's disheartening to see so many nations of well-read citizens lugubriously reduced, to listening to broadcasts spread by dictators that they were able to see through when they were 7.

You see the problems with dictatorships or monarchies or oligarchies played out in Excalibur, wherein which you have Arthur's prosperous reign followed by that of woebegone tyrants.

The sad reality that many strict rulers don't seek stable food supplies and infrastructure maintained, but rather personal aggrandizement that leaves the people starving and destitute. 

Thus, democratic stewardship tends to avoid despotic excesses, but the internet is making it ironically unpopular and volatile hardships are quickly returning.

You see the pattern laid threadbare in Jonathan Fenby's France: A Modern History, as manifold wild political compositions emphatically emerge in France post-1789 (42 different governments between World Wars).

But he points out how they eventually stabilized a working efficient civil service, with democratic goals at its tender heart, which has kept things running smoothly throughout the upheavals.

Something to shoot for something to preserve as the Internet Tyrants frustrate like Khan.

So many components they can't comprehend.

Which drives them to seek absolutism all the more. 

The Green Knight

Born of lofty rank yet lacking bold chivalric industry, King Arthur's nephew lounges and carouses as the dolorous days pass by in Camelot.

Age has greeted the King with kind and pleasant noteworthy grace, his deeds admired and celebrated his rule enduring just unchallenged. 

His days of colloquially questing have fondly passed into history however, yet he still considers ornate pageantry when congenially conversing with younger generations. 

His nephew's mother grows weary of the reckless ill-composed dissolute inconsiderate debauchery, and embraces witchcraft to conjure a trial which may bring honour and widespread renown. 

The King recognizes the stately spirit of bygone days in the cynosure sorcery, and grants his nephew torrential tidings illustriously reckoned with regal resonance. 

Thus, when an agéd knight of ancient legend arrives in court on Christmas day, and courageously challenges the solemn round table to a mystic exchange of bombastic blows, Arthur tasks his unproven nephew with urgently responding to the murky mischief, and uncertain of his honourable objective, he proceeds to cut off the Green Knight's head. 

But the challenge indeed firmly stated that that very same blow would be returned the next year.

At which point Gawain must head to the countryside.

And seek the Green Knight alone.

It's classic mismatching temperaments resoundingly radiating obscure elasticity, as a profound misjudgment unwittingly leads to upright disillusion and serpentine sentiment. 

Bravely challenged in front of the council whose habitual deeds had been highly praised, Gawain thought it wise to respond in epic fashion and diabolical display.

Nervous regarding his status and intuitively seeking his uncle's regard, he reacts with far too much ferocity to awkwardly fit in with ill-suited surroundings. 

Had he wisely announced that he had no quarrel with the mischievous knight, and refused to thrash him or exchange blows his humble recognition may been rewarded, he would have risked the gawking discredit of the emboldened nobles within the room, but many others would have noted how brave it indubitably was to refuse the challenge.

That wouldn't have been much of a film nevertheless I sedately and sensationally suppose, although it would have snuggly fit his reliable personality as it had been cast.

A maladroit meander through the surreal bewildering lands of legendary England therefore awaits, the knight becoming more and more distressingly confused with each passing unassuming spirited day. 

Pay close attention and make sure to catch the extant grizzly amidst the whale bones.

Mirthful macabre mayhem. 

A comedic foil in the superhero age. 

First Knight

Back to Camelot, prosperous legendary city of age old daring and just reasonability, led by the whimsically enlightened boisterous King Arthur, who fell in love with kind Guinevere, and befriended one Sir Lancelot. 

This time round insurrection plagues the land as a rogue knight seeks absolute power, his minions bellicosely spreading discontent, as everyday peeps simply try to get by.

He believes Arthur and his knights are too tolerant since they've wisely embraced fair play, and prefer to see people peacefully cohabitating to baleful pernicious destructive autocracy.

Arthur's brotherhood freely expresses ideas round the table in open discussion, and although he has the final say, he's open to counsel and fresh perspectives. 

But his convictions are sternly tested after he earnestly rewards young Lancelot, for risking his life to save noble Guinevere, who had fallen into the rogue knight's clutches. 

Lancelot wants Guinevere to leave with him and build a new life far away together, and she can't deny her feelings, after he's boldly come to her rescue.

Arthur catches them together and sees a look upon Guinevere's face which his prowess has never inspired, the genuine gaze of devout passion, it drives him to bitter madness. 

He charges them with treason and lavishly decrees to hold their trial in the public eye, and hundreds gather to keenly watch the unexpected unprecedented spectacle.

But the trial bears the familiar stench of unsympathetic destitute absolutism, for he could have been more understanding had he embraced sublime forgiveness.

His descent into absolutism paves the way for the rogue knight's return.

And he cleverly almost takes Camelot.

Before Arthur makes the ultimate sacrifice. 

Lancelot still avenges him and might does not assert tyrannical rights, the lighthearted unassuming romantic emerging at the forefront of the ethical imbroglio. 

Thus age gives way to perspicacious youth and a new day dawns for the compassionate kingdom, but how the knights regrouped in the aftermath unfortunately remains unknown.

At least further data isn't provided within Jerry Zucker's amorous First Knight.

Perhaps love and romance in fact endured.

Not such a bad thing when they govern at play. 

King Arthur: The Legend of the Sword

In an age flourishing long before the ascension of technocratic opalescence, wherein which the supernatural and the wayward majestically manifested authenticity, the gifted and the gaunt galavanting and genuflecting, magnificence reliant upon impunity, servility wavering mistrust, an honourable King was nefariously betrayed by his kin, his only son cast adrift with neither warmth nor privilege to suckle, then discovered, and nurtured, by the independent and the forthright, inductively instructed in brawn, conviviality, mischief, loving evaluated through sanctuary, costs wholesomely hyperconnected, impulsive riled frantic mores, one chance still remaining to reclaim his unknown throne, skittishly and jealously revealed, through treacherous enfeebled woe.

Muggles and mages peacefully coexisting in cheerful luminescent palm, until the balance is thrust asunder by those who do not share power.

Fidelity to the old ways survives nonetheless, a dedicated lot sagely educated in myth and legend.

Patiently awaiting.

August sublimity subsumed.

Guy Ritchie's King Arthur: the Legend of the Sword reimagines an English epic by blending the surreal and the sacrificial with athletic cinematic prose.

Through recourse to the bewitching, he shamanistically summons convergent forces, which subterraneanly sanctify a waking vision enchantingly his own.

Snakes aren't evil.

Nature is bold and relevant.

The music and the action and the emotion made me wish I was sitting in an inn in the 5th century constructed of stone with a giant cauldron of stew simmering over a communal fire, our ales robust, our bread hearty, and as the practical and the spiritual became more rapturously entwined, I could almost taste the feast, I could almost consume the vittles.

Young Arthur (Charlie Hunnam) reincarnates the Snatch/Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels aesthetic, as do his feisty companions as they resiliently battle both themselves and the supposed King.

It isn't about armies or sieges, preferring rather to laud cults of personality.

It revolves around Arthur, but there are more than enough well-developed characters to ensure he's part of an influential collective.

He doesn't seem to care much for ruling yet wants to progress as challenges and quests present themselves.

An homage to British First Nations?

To conscientious individuals?

An eclectic international incantation regardless, if not a concentric mysticization, or a definitive indissoluble divergence.

Quite different from contemporary action/fantasy films.

Estuary.