An interesting thing about the Arthurian mythos is that there is no canonical version. Indeed there’s no especially good King Arthur.
Arthur has stayed in existence more for political than literary reasons.
England and Britain have a very scrappy history. The Celts were hundreds of tribes that didn’t know they were Celts until centuries after the fact. The Romans had to be persuaded to invade and eventually gave up. Who wants a grey rainy island when you have Italy? Angles and Saxons were very dull Germanic types. Even the Normans were basically just less smelly Vikings.
Britain was essentially irrelevant to the world until the Industrial revolution and our Empire was basically just English people trying to move anywhere sunny with better food.
Sorry, India.
So. King Arthur.
Is the mythic king England needed. Entirely invented and stolen from the Welsh. And the French.
So I would argue that there is not only one good King Arthur movie. But Arthur has only ever blazed to his full mythic potential for one brief 2 hour window in the 1980s.
Starring Helen Mirren.
Oh and Patrick Stewart.
🔗👇👇👇
Damien Walter 