King Arthur (2004)

While it is yet another Jerry Bruckheimer blockbuster, with the paper-thin scriptwriting and the big battles and the manliness and all, King Arthur is unique in that it's the first film to date to explore the 'historical' King Arthur - not magical-sword-wielding, half-sister-screwing King Arthur, but Dark Ages warlord King Arthur. It's a good frontier to explore, not just for King Arthur, but because the Dark Ages (a.k.a. the early medieval period and/or late antiquity) isn't really an era explored by cinema, mostly because of the lack of sources and it's not a period that really resonates with the layman or has any historical personas that are well known (just take a survey and see how many people know about King Clovis II).

The plot follows a Roman general, Artorius, who is in charge of a Sarmatian calvary that carries out suicide missions for the Roman government in Britain. Beseiged by barbarians, however, the Romans are on the verge of withdrawing completely from Britain, but a bishop sent by the Pope, Germanus, insists that Autorius and his knights carry out one last mission: rescue Aleto, godson of the Pope, and his noble Roman family. Unfortunately, an army of bloodthirsty Saxons just happen to be making their way across the British countryside...

It's not a bad movie, all in all. The battles are big and loud (but surprisingly bloodless), there's the typical anachronistic speeches about freedom and equality every big Hollywood historical production is required by law to include, and the script doesn't waste too many scenes on such wimpy things as characterization (in fact, it will probably take some effort just to catch and remember the characters' names, past Arthur and Guenivere...in fact, the villain Cerdic isn't even named!).

Although the theory for the 'historical Arthur' the film runs wtih does has a strong basis (although, in spite of how it's advertised, the movie's just based on a hodgepodge of theories, not a single theory), there's still some issues a history buff like me can take with it. For a movie that takes place in a poorly documented era, King Arthur still makes a number of mistakes that didn't have to be made.

History vs. King Arthur

"Historians agree that the classical 15th century tale of King Arthur and his Knights rose from a real hero who lived a thousand years earlier in a period often called the Dark Ages. Recently discovered archeological evidence sheds light on his true existence."

It's rather depressing for even an amateur historian like me to find three totally unnecessary errors right off the bat just in a two-paragraph prologue. But I spent two bucks to rent this movie, so I must fight on, despite what my instincts are screaming:

First off, not even a large majority of British historians agree that there really was a historical figure that inspired King Arthur and, among those who do, some think he might have been based on records about two or more real-life figures (kind of like how Bram Stoker might have based Count Dracula off legends of the Romanian ruler Vlad 'the Impaler' and the sadistic Hungarian countess Elizabeth Bathory.) And then some think Arthur was an ancient Celtic deity who became thought of as human after Christianity came to Britain or even that he was just a pure folk-hero, a sort of medieval Paul Bunyan. To be fair to the writers, it is more exciting to say "yes, Virginia, all historians believe there really was a King Arthur" than "eh, nobody knows and probably nobody ever will know," but still it's horribly misleading (especially since it would have been accurate to say "many historians").

Second, and this is probably the most embarrassing thing here if not in the entire movie, the legends of King Arthur are much, much older than what they say here. The first fully recognizable version of the King Arthur legends, with Camelot and Guinevere riding Lancelot's love train and all that, started two hundred years before the fifteenth century with Robert de Boron's "Merlin" while twelfth century poets had already been writing about the Knights of the Round Table and the Quest for the Holy Grail. "The History of the Kings of Britain," a collection of legends passed off as history by Geoffrey of Monmouth, was written in 1133 with accounts of Arthur, Merlin, Guenivere, and Morgan Le Fay. I guess here they were just referring to Sir Thomas Malory's "Le Morte d'Arthur," which was published in England in 1485 and did inspire "The Once and Future King," but most of the legends Malory used were already in heavy circulation. Besides that, the first mentioning of an "Arthur"is in a Welsh poem written sometime around 594 (yes, no matter what the English might tell you, Arthur belongs to the Welsh, dammit).

Finally, I'll be honest, I have no idea what the "recently discovered archeological evidence" here is. I'm pretty sure they have to be referring to Geoffrey Ashe's book "The Discovery of King Arthur", which was printed a year before this movie came out, but, as good as Ashe's research might have been, he didn't quite find a tablet that said, "Hello. I'm King Arthur. I'm not a myth. Thank you."

Narrator:"By 300 AD the Roman Empire extended from Arabia to Britain, but they wanted more, more peoples loyal and subservient to Rome..."

I know, I know, it seems like I'm nit-picking, but the Roman Empire shelved the whole expansion business after the reign of Emperor Trajan, who died in 117 AD. After that, most Emperors were too busy with civil war and barbarian invasions to ask for more headaches. It did, though, expand into what we would still call today Arabia, specifically modern day Iraq and Syria, but only briefly and never into the Arabian Peninsula.

Wait, who the hell were the Sarmatians?

The film doesn't go into much detail, but the Sarmatians were a people from modern day Iran who might have been related to the Scythians and who might have inspired ancient Greeks to write about Amazonian female warriors. I did really like how the writers handled this angle and it's a good theory, since one of the suspects for a 'historical Arthur,' the second century Roman general Lucius Artorius Castus, did fill his legion with Sarmatian calvary. The writers even refer to the Sarmatian custom of thrusting a sword into fallen warriors' burial mounds and associate it with Arthur pulling Excalibur from the stone (although there's a little plot hole where Arthur's father is buried in this way, even though he's supposed to be a purebred Roman). Anyway, that Arthur is connected to the Sarmatians is a real theory, and an interesting one at that.

As far as most of the theories about the historical Arthur are concerned, it's more than possible, since they suggest he lived anytime between the late fifth century and the middle of the sixth. Unfortunately, the movie is way off about the time the Roman army evacuated Britain. The Roman government abandoning Britain actually took place in 410, fifty-seven years before when the movie's plot is supposed to take place, which is a pretty awful mistake since the entire plot hinges on the Roman evacuation.

Hey, King Arthur is a Roman!

That is the basis of more than a few theories about the historical Arthur. I link to an online article that summarizes most of the current theories below, but Arthur is thought to be based off of the second-century Roman general, Lucius Arturius Castus, who probably inspired the screenwriters most of all (who didn't let the fact that he actually lived in the second century, not the fifth, stand in their way), or one of quite a few fourth and fifth century Britain-based Roman generals who tried to make themselves Emperor. The addition that Arthur's mother was a native Briton, as far as I know, was made by the writers, but it's not at all impossible.

"The native fighters of the North"...

The writers made such a mess out of what the film's characters call the woads I'm going to have to try to restrain myself from babbling on more than I already have, but basically those half-naked folks with tattoos and body paint are supposed to be reminiscent of Celts, but they also seem based off of the Picts, who lived in modern day Scotland and were never assimilated by the Romans. The movie calls them nothing but woads, a term for the Picts that comes from the fact that they used dye from a plant called woad to paint their bodies for battle, but since all the characters talk about them as "British rebels who hate Rome" and "men who want their country back" we're supposed to think they're Celts.

It's a really complicated topic, which is why I normally wouldn't want to touch even with an oven mitt and a ten-foot pole, but no one really knows if the Picts were actually a Celtic people just culturally and linguistically different than the Celts in modern day England and Wales or an even older people who survived the Celtic settlements of Britain way back in the sixth century BC. Still, it's pretty silly to think of the Picts as resistance fighters a la Luke Skywalker: the Celts, sad to say, were pretty much assimilated into Roman culture long by then and, well, the Picts always lived in northern Britain. Why would they be fighting to free land they had nothing to do with? Also I have no clue what language they're speaking in their scenes - since it sounds Celtic and there's not enough evidence of what the Pictish language was actually like to rub two sentences together, they could be speaking Welsh or Cornish, as far as I know.

As for Merlin being a Pictish/Celtic/whatever leader, the idea of a tribal chieftain whose prowess at guerilla tactics is so superb people think of him as a wizard is actually pretty cool. Incidentally, there is a 'historical Merlin' too - there were two legendary Welsh bards named 'Myrddin' (pronounced Merthin) and, in ancient Celtic culture, bards were credited with supernatural abilities, including the power to kill with satire (luckily there is no truth to that or MAD Magazine would have wiped out more than half the human race), so the leap from 'bard' to 'omnipotent sorcerer' isn't that hard to make.

It is weird that the movie never mentions the Emperor of Rome, who were still around and kicking by this movie's timeline (the last Emperor of the Wastern Roman Empire was deposed in 476), and credits all political actions impacting the movie's plot as coming from the Pope of all people. Although the Pope - or more accurately at that point 'the Bishop of Rome' - did have a lot of weight to throw around in politics by that point, he wasn't exactly calling all the shots. He definitely wouldn't have been the one to call for an evacuation of Britain, like the movie suggests. Hell, he wasn't even really called the Pope until the seventh century or so. I guess one of the scriptwriters really, really had issues with Catholicism.

Arthur: "It's a magnificent place, Rome...ordered, civilized, advanced. The greatest minds in all the lands have come together in one sacred place to help make mankind free."

Arthur has been away from Rome so long he forgot it was ruled by an autocracy, not a republic, for a really, really long time by then, although to be fair the Romans thought of themselves as living in a republic even after the Empire collapsed.

Arthur:"(Pelagius') teachings on equality and free will have had a great influence."

Pelagius was a monk who preached against the doctrine of original sin and taught that mankind can choose between good and evil without divine intervention. As far as I know, he wasn't actually blossoming with twentieth-century ideas on freedom. He was a Briton, so suggesting Arthur knew his works and admired them is not a bad idea at all. Germanus' annoyed reaction to finding out Arthur was a Pelagian isn't out of line either - he was never (despite what the film says later) officially condemned as a heretic, but St. Augustine personally had it in for the man and the Catholic Church did brush off his teachings.

What's so important about the 'Aleto' boy Arthur is sent to rescue?

I really can't tell for sure, but I think we're supposed to think that the boy is going to grow up to be a famous Pope, given Germanus' comment about how "he could even be Pope someday." I can't check this with the sources I have, but my best guess is that he's thought to be the boy who'll grow up to become Pope Gregory the Great, who was actually born from a noble Roman family, took an interest in British affairs, and was more 'liberal' (if we can use that word with medieval Popes) than some of the Popes in his time. After all, the film hints that our progressive Arthur would have a great influence on him, so why not? If I'm right, then it's a bit of a stretch: Pope Gregory was elected in 589, so, given the fact he's a young teenager in the movie, he would have had to have been about 100 when he first became Pope.

Cerdic: "We do not mix with these people...we will not have our Saxon blood watered down by mixing with these people."

Okay, now this is weird. The above quote was used when our villain King Cerdric orders a soldier to stop raping a woman in a village they just sacked (in true Hollywood villain fashion, he kills his own henchman in the process), only to have the woman killed minutes later. I don't know if it's just a device to show what a bastard Cerdric is or if it's a reference to Nazism, but, yeah, while the Saxons didn't actually completely massacre everyone they came in contact with, but they were total bastards. Anyway, Cerdic is based on an actual Germanic king who founded the kingdom of Wessex (which would eventually come to rule all of England and among Cerdic's successors and descendents would be the renowned Alfred the Great).

According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Cerdic appeared in England in 495, which wouldn't place him too far outside the film's timeline. Unfortunately, while he does lead the Saxons in the Battle of Badon, which is the film's climax, he isn't actually killed by Arthur in the fighting (in fact, he lived up to fourteen years later), and his son Cynric did live to succeed him.

Arthur first finds Guinevere in some kind of kinky torture dungeon for pagans and heretics under a Roman official's villa. Huh?

Don't ask me. All I know is that the Inquisition as we think of it didn't kick off until 1184. It's entirely possible that some bad stuff likes this went down - after all, the Church barely gained control in the Roman government before they started persecuting heretics - but I have no idea if it's based on anything.

Aleto tells Arthur that Pelagius was excommunicated and killed. "The Rome you speak of doesn't exist except in your dreams," he says. Well, I could have told Arthur that...

Besides being alive well before the movie's timeline (Pelagius lived and died in the first half of the century) despite Arthur talking about his hopes to visit him, no one knows exactly whatever happened to Pelagius, but he probably didn't lose his head.

What's this big battle at the end?

At the end the narrator currectly identifies it as the Battle of Badon, a battle that actually did happen between Romano-British and Anglo-Saxons sometime around 500. It's a big part of the Arthurian legends - no one says who led the Romano-British forces, but it's sometimes theorized it was whoever inspired the Arthurian legends. It's not even certain where it took place, but the most popular theory places it in modern day Bath, which was known as Badon (pronounced Bathon) to the Anglo-Saxons. Cerdic probably did lead the Saxons or at least took part in the battle.

Also it actually is a nice touch that they have Guenivere lead the charge. Celtic women (if these are the Celts) were reported to have participated in battle and Celtic legends are filled with women who actually led armies. Still, it's a little disheartening to see that Guinevere and other female soldiers' strategies basically consists of piling up on a guy and biting him...

The Moral: King Arthur was such a defender of democracy he became known as King Arthur.

Reading Material

An Age of Tyrants: Britain and the Britons, 400-600 A.D. Snyder, Christopher (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998)

How boned were you if you were alive in Dark Ages Britain? Between being the subject of a petty king, brutally killed in an attack by Anglo-Saxon invaders, or seeing society and the economy collapse around you, you would probably be pretty screwed. Read this book to see the myriad ways in which you'd suffer and toil.

The Arthurian Handbook Lacy, Norris and Ashe, Geoffrey (Garland Publishers, 1997)

A useful guide to the literary history of King Arthur.

My own personal 'original sources' of all things Arthur.

For a list of possible candidates of the 'historical Arthur,' go to Wikipedia.