a warrior woman's wardrobe and the kitchen sink

[sergebroom]

Considering how badly one did, I am quite surprised that, within but a few short years, someone decided to try again because failure doesn’t usually lead to the spawning of similar attempts.

What am I talking about?



Remember 2004’s King Arthur? It was a retelling of, yes, Arthur(1) as what the real character might have been, positing that he was the leader of Sarmatians working for Rome in Britain. It had an excellent cast, with Clive Owen and Arthur, Ioan Gruffudd as Lancelot, and a 19-year-old Keira Knightly(2) as a Guinevere who’s quite handy with the bow and arrows, and yet the film sank like a stone. Sure, there were probably more historical inaccuracies than you can shake a stick at, but would the public care about a historical inaccuracy unless it were biting them in a sensitive placeand they didn’t have a stick to beat it away with? They stayed away from the movie, for reasons unknown. Maybe it’s because, in spite of Gladiator, they just aren’t interested in Ancient Rome. For those who are interested in Ancient Rome, there were stupid things like having the Empire build Hadrian’s Wall to keep out the likes of Stellan Skarsgaard and yet one big-shot Roman set up his little domain smack in the very middle of that Barbarianland. Also, some of the Arthurian elements feel tacked on because, well, they had to be there, such as Lancelot’s love for Guinevere, but it’s brought up in passing and goes nowhere, without any effect on the story. More disappointing is Merlin, basically just a tribal leader of the Woads who befriends Arthur for rescuing fellow tribeswoman Guinevere.

Still, I enjoyed the movie, for the characters, and for the story that happens to them. Alas, too few members of the public felt that way.



That didn’t keep someone else from trying again in 2007 with The Last Legion. It had Colin Firth as a general whose duty is to protect the child Arthur, last legitimate emperor of Rome who lost his job to one of the Empire’s uppity mercenaries. Add Ben Kingsley as Ambrosinus-Merlin as the teacher of the child, and Aishwarya Rai(3) as a warrior from Byzantium. You can’t fail, can you? Yes, you can, even if you ignore the pesky historical goofups. The problem is that the plot meanders a lot until Our Heroes find Excalibur in the Island of Capri and they decide that Arthur will never regain his throne without the help of the last legion still faithful to the Emperor, and it happens to be garrisoned in Britain. The plot spares us most gratuitous arthurian references, but it wanders around some more, invovling some so-so bad guys, until it blunders forward to The End.

Here we have good characters, especially Kingsley as Merlin, but they are in the wrong story. That’s why I consider King Arthur more successful. I doubt there will ever be a third-time-lucky attempt that will do everything right on all levels.

Oh well.

One thing I found interesting in both movies was the attire of the warrior women. It wasn’t designed to show their feminine attributes off to male viewers, but to actually provide their characters some protection in a combat situation. True, Knightly’s body isn’t completely covered, but her character’s main weapon is the bow, and when she actually engages a man in corps-à-corps combat, she jumps him along with other women, reminding me of wolves bringing down a much larger prey. Rai’s character though has her body completely covered. Her outfit is there to protect her when she gets into swordfights with men much bigger than her, but without impeding her speed. The amusing thing though is that Rai puts on about three such outfits thru the story, and they all fit perfectly, especially the cuirasse one, which suggests that she brought them along all the way from Rome. Maybe the director’s cut has a scene of Colin Firth breathing heavily as he drags her trunk across Europe, grumbling that she once again packed in everything but the kitchen sink.

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(1) But not Dudley Moore’s.

(2) Lizzie Bennet in Pride and Prejudice.

(3) Lizzie Bennet in Bride and Prejudice.

Comments

[tania-c.livejournal.com]

No Frezetta-esque depictions of chain mail bikinis and plate mail corsetry? Wow. I might actually watch these films just for those reasons.

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

You mean, like Frazetta's version of Eowyn facing up to the Nazgul?

"Eowyn?"
"Yes, Merry?"
"If you want to disguise yourself as a man, shouldn't you draw attention away from your hips and derrière being quite curvy?"
"That's what the breastplate is for."

There's nothing like that in either movie, and they should both be given credit for it.

[miltonthales.livejournal.com]

How is anyone going to prove there are historical inaccuracies about the legend of Arthur Pendragon? I loved TH White, but I didn't take it as factual!

[pedanther]

It's not the legend, that's the thing.

The makers of the Clive Owen film set it in a specific time period, and explicitly said "This is a historical drama of historical events that might have been the actual historical inspiration for the legend". People who know something about the time period in question therefore feel justified in pointing out that the film mistakes (or invents) so many details that nothing like it could actually have happened.

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

"This is a historical drama of historical events that might have been the actual historical inspiration for the legend"

That was a stupid thing to say, yes, because they basically set themselves up for a trouncing by the people most likely to appreciate King Arthur. Then again, someone was bound to criticize it about something. One member of the Society for Creative Anachronism took it to task because of the scene where beanie Knightly shoots an arrow at the Saxons from a great distance across the ice and still it has enough punch left at the end of its trajectory to actually perforate one of the guys quite deeply, when even a strong man with a stiffer bow would have found that hard to do.

Me, I dismissed that asserion of theirs, for various reasons. One is that my wife had at that time done quite a bit of research about the Sarmatians for a fantasy novel. That didn't keep her from enjoying the movie's story, with the same reservations that I had. Also, when I'm told what the movie's makers said, I think of those Dragnet episodes that ended with the reminder that what the viewers had just seen was based on a true story, but the names had been changed to protect the innocent. My version of that is "This is a true story - only the events have been changed."