The latest in our series of writers making a case for a mostly loathed movie is a defence of Guy Ritchie’s laddish take on a well-told legend
The catastrophic
box office performance and scathing reviews might have given it away, but Guy Ritchie’s King Arthur: Legend of the Sword is not the greatest movie ever made. It’s not even the greatest King Arthur movie ever made: for me, nothing will ever beat John Boorman’s Excalibur, although at least Clive Owen’s 2004 version is easily the worst. In its defence, Legend of the Sword is lively, spectacular, ridiculous and splurges an enormous budget – which is never a dull thing to watch. But beyond that, I put it to you, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, that Legend of the Sword is one of the most important movies about
British identity of the past decade. In retrospect, it was a brave, ultimately futile, last stand against the sweeping tide of
Brexit nationalism.
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