In the wake of King Arthur, Ritchie is going to be a busy man: he's got the live-action Aladdin adaptation for Disney at the top of the pile and it's unlikely he'd be able to commit to that and a notoriously pressurised DCEU schedule at the same time. We saw a preview of it last week in Manhattan.
The adventures of King Arthur, his lady Guinevere, the magician Merlin, and the famous egalitarian symbol of the Round Table have been told and retold in every medium for many centuries, but there is very little evidence that shows that Arthur, powerful king and accomplished military hero, ever really existed.
The phrasing there seems to suggest he knows when it's due to film, so perhaps he's actually had this conversation with the studio already?
"Pacific Rim" star Charlie Hunnam plays Arthur in Ritchie's gritty, action-packed take on the tale. That sword also functions sort of like a bomb, or something.
Hunnam's Arthur is an orphaned street urchin, who must fight to claim his throne from his uncle Vortigen - played by Jude Law - who murdered his parents. "It's hardwired to me", he said. Guy Ritchie's take on the story, however, is bound to stand out. "This is a movie that, despite boasting the most basic of all possible plots, makes it virtually impossible to understand what's happening on a minute-to-minute basis". In both, it succeeds, for better (in Hunnam's case) and for worse (in almost every other case).
Indeed, Ritchie's "King Arthur" seems specifically created to appeal to the "Game of Thrones" crowd (though mercifully with some hope infused into the core of the story) and definitely not to anyone who has any deep reverence for the classic tale. Combined with the slo-mo turn it could be another Comic Relief sketch if we didn't know better.
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That's a quality Hunnam shares with Law, an actor with chops more than up to the task of sneering, preening, and bellowing into severed ears (though he's tops at all of the above).
U.N.C.L.E. is picturesque and sun-drenched where King Arthur is like trying to find a dive bar toilet wearing dark sunglasses, a quality exacerbated by the screen-darkening 3-D. That's not to say there aren't laughs, intentional and otherwise; Ritchie's rapid-fire pace makes the occasional punchlines land all the harder.
The problem with the approach is that much is left to modern imagination and, with due respect to Ritchie's abilities as a filmmaker, he is not much of a medieval storyteller.
"He (Ritchie) does have an exceptionally cozy trailer".
It's a shame, really. But what 2004's King Arthur taught us that if you're going to dive into this myth and try to ground it in "reality", the characters should be as believable as the setting rather than painting Keira Knightly blue, putting her in a leather bikini, and calling it a day. There are entertaining moments scattered throughout. "What was the first gay film you saw?"
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