King Arthur: making Troy look good
Ok, I just watched King Arthur and it totally stinks. For one thing, there wasn't enough ass-kicking going on, nevermind that it did not conform to Arthurian legends. What little ass-kicking there was looked really dumb. I mean, look at the Saxon ruler. In his first scene he cut down a soldier from his own army without warning and then swung around with his sword in hand, presumably ready to fight anyone else who dared challenge him. Now, the act of cutting someone down without warning is cool and badass. If this were on print, it would look good, right? However, it actually looked far worse on screen, for the simple reason that the actor was fat and clumsy. My 5-year-old cousin moves faster than that. The fatass looked as if he would stumble and fall at any time. Give me a motherfucking break. He'd lose if he had to fight a sloth. He reminded me of a slug turning as fast as it could. The fighting scenes were totally uninspired and nowhere near as beautifully choreographed as those in Troy were.

Another thing is that the acting sucked. The lead actor, Clive Owen, had all the expression of a stone statue. He could easily have been replaced with a wooden stool and it wouldn't have made the slightest bit of difference to the show, which is sad since he was the lead. He's also devoid of charisma, and I think that as a king, he would just be a walking billboard for regicide. His subjects would probably have died of boredom just looking at him during the coronation. The rest of the knights were just as boring, except for the bald guy with a lot of kids and Lancelot. The role of the Saxon ruler didn't seem to require much acting either. All you'd need to know how to do is grunt. The Saxon ruler basically grunted through the whole show, and his son just stood around looking sullen the whole time, probably because his daddy looks like a slug and sounds like a pig.

Now we come to the plot. For fuck's sake, you either follow the legends and make them all golden heroes or you forgo the legends for realism and make them dark and complex. In Troy, we at least have Achilles being a merciless killer at the start, even though he later turned into a sentimental pussy. The knights in this show were all fucking fluffy bunnies. They might as well have filmed a group of schoolboys high-fiving each other and slapping each others' backs throughout the show. And the battle at the end. Come on, the Saxons were supposed to be the badasses, right? Why was everyone running shit scared of those pussies? They were attacking a fucking fort and they didn't even fucking bring or build any ballistae? What's worse, the Woads, who, from what I gathered in the show, were supposed to be a rather primitive people, had ballistae! Exactly what the fuck was going on here? Furthermore, the Saxons were armoured, but the Woads, who were practically naked when they went into battle, actually won. I'm sorry, but shit like that just doesn't happen. Also, from what was said in the show, you'd expect some sort of strategic genius from Arthur that turned the tide of the war. That was clearly absent. The Woads simply used good old archery, a fire trench and some ballistae to beat the oh-so-scary Saxons. A bunch of pussies who couldn't even scout properly or build ballistae and whose idea of strategy was to send in a small party, and then, after said party got mysteriously annihilated, send the entire army charging in without even ascertaining how the first party was annihilated.

Ironically, the Saxon chief slug said "the Roman has a plan" just before the battle began. No shit, genius. Why the fuck did you charge in then? The show made as much sense as me chopping off my toe and mailing it to Everest. Normally, this is the point where I will say that the only saving grace of the show was Kiera Knightley, but they couldn't even get that right. Her role was entirely peripheral. Let me summarise what she did. She appeared, pouted, shot off a few arrows, fucked Arthur, pouted some more, changed to a ridiculously uncomfortable-looking sort of medieval leather bikini that seemed to be squashing her boobs, shot off a few more arrows, and married Arthur. And we didn't even get to see her boobs. Yes, it's that bad. Stay away from it, guys. I'd sooner swallow my own puke than watch a show like that again. Oh, yeah, Lancelot dies. If this were the "true story that inspired the legend", I believe he should have at least fucked Guinevere before dying, right? Jeez . . . how do I hate this movie? Let me count the ways.  ¶
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