The Stone, The Spear, and The Superman, Part 1: Excalibur
First misc. item: the 3-pager's being drawn! Looks like it'll be ready pretty soon, so I'll have my first ever comic ready to show people in the very near future compliments of David Lee Ingersol.
SDCC was a heck of a letdown; the MCU lineup felt like a bit from The Boys, DC's main item of note was not announcing anything relating to Superman, and the comics announcements were either stuff I didn't care about, or teases that there will be announcements of things I care about later. Wakanda Forever trailer was excellent though, maybe Coogler'll defy the odds again to put something special through the Disney machine.
Over halfway through The Three-Body Problem, which is as remarkable (and seems to be building to being as politically dicey) as I've been hearing for years; I'll definitely follow up with The Dark Forest and Death's End, probably alternating with the next two books of Broken Earth, along with anything I might toss in in the interim.
The origin of this 5-part column is simple: Ritesh Babu and Sean Dillon and I wanted to collaborate again after our one previous torturous tour of duty through Jupiter's Legacy. And knowing we could do it through this newsletter rather than necessarily having to pitch it to an outlet, the sky was the limit.
Of course we somehow immediately landed on Zack Snyder.
I'm as shocked as anyone, but it fit our collective interests pretty solidly. Our collective exhaustion with the contemporary superhero movie landscape - which, like it or not, this offered the closest thing to a mainstream alternative to - and various ravenous dueling branches of Superman fandom to which these movies were a flashpoint. The big sweeping 'superhero as myth' stuff, and the titanic thwarted ambitions of the assorted creatives involved who wanted to make a Lord of the Rings for the spandex set. The inherent fascination of hot messes. And that, years divorced from the weight and panic of 'we're being told this is what these characters are going to look like in the movies for at least the next 10-15 years', perhaps as the mainline of DC Comics flounders lifelessly and DC Film eats itself alive, there might be some new joy to be found in reexamining a dedicated vision and direction for these archetypes. Even if said direction is arguably off a cliff.
Our objective is simple: It's been a whole bunch of years. Can we talk about Zack Snyder's DC movies like adults now?
The goal is to get these out roughly every 2-3 weeks; we aren't delving into his entire filmography, instead simply focusing on:
Part 2: Man of Steel
Part 3: Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice (née Son of Sun and Knight of Night)
Part 4: Zack Snyder's Justice League
Part 5: The scrapped future plans.
Will we find that these were simply not meant to live the lives of blockbusters, but be beloved only in future memory? Or will they drive a spear through our hearts anew ala a murderous kid with one's sister? But before we can tackle his work directly, there's a dragon in the room. Zack Snyder's acknowledged favorite film, and the conceptual Rosetta's Stone that forms the myth arc he attempts to graft Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and the rest of the gods and monsters of the DC Universe onto: John Boorman's 1981 film Excalibur.
Sean: Let me just get this out of the way: Fuck Lancelot.
Ritesh: Thank you, Sean. I appreciate this sentiment. And to be clear, it’s not in the fun way.
David: ‘The fun way’ is what dooms everyone in this movie.
Sean: Excalibur: A Two Hour Advertisement for Abstinence!
David: Excalibur: FORGED BY A GOD. FORETOLD BY A WIZARD. FOUND BY A KING.
Sean: RUINED BY A FUCKBOI!
David: Ruined by like…three or four. A masterful tale of man’s highest ideals against the power of his need to bone down hard.
Ritesh: The tension between duty and desire.
David: The rise and fall of an age! All that good epic shit.
General Thoughts
Ritesh: So David, you’re the one who watched the film for the very first time, while Sean and I merely rewatched it. Lay it on us. What’d you think? Feel free to go off.
David: Oh it fucks. This is a sensational film, and while I can understand it winding up a cult classic - its sensibilities are definitely idiosyncratic - to me this played as the last glorious gasp for at least a good little while of Real Movies that could exist on this scale, right as the mainstream was giving way to Star Wars. It’s got sweep and charm and tragedy and capital-R classical Romance, and speaking as a neophyte to all things Arthur, it manages to bolt its components together in such a way that it makes it FEEL like this is in the broad strokes what the story was always supposed to be, even if my impression is its liberties and interpretations are controversial among those more familiar with the assorted sources. I can also very easily see
A. How this started as a Lord of the Rings adaptation.
B. That this is indeed the film Zack Snyder has spent his entire life trying to recreate.
Sean: Like many people, my main source of knowledge of the Arthurian lore comes from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. (I also read Camelot 3000, The Tale of Tristan and Isolde, and Camelot High) As such, the visual language of a muddy, pestilence infused land decaying as the one true King of England comes to make everything right as rain should, in theory, be farcical. There are a lot of bits from Excalibur that ring true with the Monty Python telling. And yet, it still holds up in spite of that. It’s a damn fine work of cinema that makes one yearn for the days when filmmakers weren’t cowards. I mean, it has Patrick Stewart and Liam Neeson in minor roles. What more could you want?
Ritesh: Also Helen Mirren!! But let’s not mess around here. The absolute clear fucking show-stealing star of the whole damn movie and the king of all performances in this stacked cast? Nicol Williamson as Merlin. Fucking hell, he’s just so committed. His delivery and screen presence here is mesmerizing, especially coupled with that operatic Wagner music from the fucking Ring Cycle that is the score for this film.
David: He’s the tonal crux the whole movie rests upon, who feels like he came from a completely different one in the best way - his performance itself elevates Mirren’s, since they have to carry in concert being something Other from this world of men and their new gods.
Sean: One wishes the whole movie was just them bantering off one another, foiling their respective schemes to murder the other and dictate who controls the Land.
David: We probably nearly did! I know the original-original version of this Boorman had in mind was a Merlin film, before that became LOTR and morphed in turn into Excalibur. And it shows.
Ritesh: Merlin is both Merlin and probably what would’ve been Boorman’s take on Gandalf all wrapped into one here. And yes, to loop back to the original point, you can absolutely see how this emerges from the husk of an LoTR film that never was. The Sword Of Power is a lot like The Ring Of Power here. In that it is very clearly a curse. It’s a haunting object whose power terrifies.
David: One that seems almost redeemed by the moral epiphany of Arthur and the gift of the Lady of the Lake…but, well, it still goes how it goes. And speaking of the horror wrought by the sword, let’s start at the beginning with Arthur’s dad, who is, in Excalibur’s interpretation, basically the worst person who has ever lived.
Act 1 (Uther Pendragon)
Sean: He is one mighty fine bastard. The kind of son of a gun who will fuck everything up in the name of getting laid. Gabriel Byrne plays him with the raw relish of someone who could’ve been something better if he wasn’t such a piece of shit. Someone painfully aware of his limitations, while also blind to them.
David: Absolutely, he has that classically heroic lust for destiny that makes it easy to see how Merlin can describe him in remotely positive terms to Arthur, even though he’s a warmongering rapist whose last act is one of spite towards his kingdom. “You don’t understand, you’re not a man!” is both a pitiful absolution, and the thesis of the entire epic.
Ritesh: He’s effectively the Isildur here. He Who Had The Chance and yet who was corrupted by temptation and gave in. And thus fell to his death. He could’ve prevented so much horror and bloodshed, but he didn’t care about anything but his own worst impulses.
Sean: And the film plays no bones about the grotesque horror of the act itself. Much like in Ridley Scott’s excellent The Last Duel, there’s no two bones about what he’s doing. Be it in the textual aspects or the filmic ones, this is a rape. This is a vile, ugly thing being presented to us. An act of cruelty that he gets away with (for want of a better phrase) because he’s king.
David: And Merlin enables him! He’s clearly on some kind of ‘destiny overrules all, Camelot shall be worth it’ kick, but Merlin too is a monster for anything else he might accomplish. He may not lust as Uther does, but he’ll cater to whatever depravities are needed to see his ends achieved. He’ll cast a withering glance at Uther’s declaration “Talk. Talk is for lovers, Merlin, I need the sword to be king!”, but he too prizes the great over the good.
Sean: And, much like Uther, Merlin will renege a deal when it doesn’t suit him. For Uther’s part, when Merlin comes to collect the result of his rape of Igrayne, he immediately tries to get the baby back, leading to his own death. The cosmic heart of the universe of Excalibur is one of cruelty, but one with rules and promises. Pacts formed must be kept, lest destruction be heaped upon you.
Ritesh: The most telling thing is how Boorman composes the moment of Arthur’s conception. You have the rape, and simultaneously we cut back and forth between the death of the duke. This is a moment of horror. Arthur’s moment of birth is a moment of death and monstrosity. It is a grotesque abuse of power, and one that Uther never hesitates for a second to make. He just asks, and Merlin is like ‘okay I’m gonna enable you.’ They’re both bastards. And along with them comes this accursed sword to further empower them and their bastard mission. The sword is spoken about as something to heal, as something to unite, but throughout the film we see that no one really meets that ideal here or uses it for such purposes. Or if they do, it’s for a brief flicker of a moment. It all goes to shit. All is poisoned. All is corroded. The power only brews peril and it all comes crashing down. Wagner’s Ring Cycle music, I found, was a rather appropriate choice in this regard.
David: Worth briefly noting Morganna witnesses the conception, which is not only horrifying, but the fact of her as a detached witness combined with her unnerving dispassion reinforces that she, like Merlin, is something outside the understood boundaries of this world, though she attempts to pervert destiny to her own design, while Merlin will ride the train to the bloody end. Before that though, he takes the child (above the cries of Igrayne, whose suffering is treated with all seriousness but whose absence for the remainder of the film is disappointing given how Morganna comes back around), Uther meets his richly-deserved end and seeks to deny Excalibur to any potential successors, and leads to…
Act 2 (Arthur, I of II)
Ritesh: Doomed Parents. Desperate Wizard. Last Hope. Kindly Couple. It’s King Arthur Pendragon everybody!
Sean: If I’m being honest, Nigel Terry as King Arthur is kinda… flat? Everyone else is doing terrific work, but Terry is a weak link.
David: Personally I disagree; he’s great as a dopey teenager in so far over his head he doesn’t seem to fully grasp the magnitude of his situation, and later as a properly archetypal figure. It doesn’t call on the same kind of nuance or boldness as his peers, but I think he goes about his job well.
Ritesh: Yeah, I adore Terry here? His job isn’t to be the showy one making striking choices. It’s to embody something and do so with very little. And he does exactly that, I feel. He’s incredibly charming and likable and sells the role for me. You buy him as this naïve kid, and then you buy him as the prideful dickhead, and then the wiser king, and then the broken man, and finally the weary old man at the end of his days. And so when he says shit like “Now once more I must ride with my knights, to defend what was, and the dream of what could be…” you absolutely 100% feel it. It’s legit. He’s doing a lot, even if it’s not showy. It’s the kind of solid, smooth lead performance I kinda fuck with. I’m all about it.
Sean: That’s absolutely fair, but Patrick Stewart is right there. Look me dead in the eye and tell me you don’t want a version of King Arthur played by Stewart. Sure, they’d probably put him in a crap wig, but if Peter Cushing can do it, so could Stewart.
David: This chunk of the film is the most by-the-numbers on the surface, as it goes through the major beats even the chumps like me know by heart: a contest for who can pull the sword from the stone, Arthur doing so almost by accident, winning loyalty (complete with a bombastic action sequence wildly and I imagine deliberately out of place with the rest of the film of him ducking and weaving through soldiers to reach a fair maiden, taking down guard towers in Indiana Jones fashion, and being knighted in a moment that can fairly be described as slapstick), and assembling the table. The hints of what will go wrong are, for the most part, subtler. The moment when chasing a robber Arthur nearly steals a sword, and the moment his brother hesitates and tries to claim Excalibur for himself. His consideration of using Merlin to ‘charm’ Guinevere, and his rage against Lancelot. Even as the Round Table is brought together, he and his comrades laugh at how the only enemies they didn’t slaughter were those left to spread the tale of Arthur’s victory. He wants to be wise and just and capable of changing for the better in ways his father was not, and by that metric at least he certainly succeeds. But we can already see why these are not the men who will lead the world into a better age for more than a moment.
Sean: I think the telling moment in this regard is when Arthur is knighted. It’s one of the rare moments of humility and severance to the way of things these bastards will enact. Arthur gives a knight Excalibur - rather than find another sword - and asks to be knighted. It’s one of the few things Merlin did not foresee as it’s out of character for the expected bastardry of the kingdom of Camelot. It’s an honest to goodness act of chivalry, and it’s rewarded in kind.
David: It’s also one of the few overtly magical moments of the film, and regarding that: we gotta talk about The Dragon.
Ritesh: I fucking love that knighting scene. It’s the rare moment wherein Merlin’s properly surprised in the film, and it’s kind of astonishing to see. And yes! The Dragon! Once again, Nicol fucking Williamson, people. He owns the delivery here. It’s so bloody good.
Sean: Not to mention he sells the hell out of the inability to show an actual dragon with the poetic and metaphorical language of Boorman and Rospo Pallenberg’s script. I love the idea that we only see the smoke, the impact of the dragon, rather than the beast itself. It haunts the scenes rather than burns them to the ground. The Trevor Jones score used in these scenes has an eerie, otherworldly feel to them.
Ritesh: The Dragon also feels like a metaphor, above all else, here, which is amazing. The Dragon feels like the symbolic construct of all of reality itself, the very spirit of the land, the kingdom and nation that Arthur will go onto rule. It is something greater than any physical manifestation. It’s a spiritual thing, absolutely. Everything is part of it, from the mists in the air to the trees of the forest, to even Excalibur itself. And it’s a smart choice given the overriding idea of ‘The Land and The King, they are one’. It lays the groundwork for that nicely. The Dragon is Britain itself, and The King is The Dragon. This is the revelation, the great answer, that Percival eventually must discover.
David: The grandeur is implicit, only visible at the right moments to the trained eye. The destruction is very, very real. It is the beauty and horror of the tale in one.
Also, we meet Lancelot in this section! He seems like a standup fella.
Act 3 (Lancelot)
Sean: It occurs to me that the scene introducing us to the main instigator of doom, the Frenchman’s perfect self insert, kin to the Star Wars Expanded Universe version of the Mandelorians (who are far better and more noble than the Jedi), is basically the exact same scene as the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Which means things would’ve been a lot better had the son of a gun had his arms and legs chopped off.
Anyways, Nicholas Clay is a delight. He sells the simultaneous heroic attitude of Lancelot while also conveying his broken, destroyed homeless man. He plays the tragedy of the character - a man who loves his best friend’s wife - to a superb degree. The dream where he realizes in anguish that he is fighting himself is a showstopper moment. You almost feel bad for the guy. Almost.
David: He is absolutely charming enough that you understand why Guinevere wanted him over KING ARTHUR, and steadfast turned tormented enough in his convictions that his succumbing to his passions feels like a proper tragedy rather than a dude being a backstabbing shit. Even though, let’s be real, that is 100% what he was with his whole speech to her on horseback. Did you think you were being subtle, my guy?
Ritesh: Part of what I do love about this film is that all our lead characters ‘makes sense’ and you understand them. Like, even Morganna, who I think is consistently done dirty by Arthuriana writers (and this film is part of that trend in my book), you totally do understand and sympathize where she’s coming from and why she fucking hates Merlin and Arthur and all they represent. Now, where that’s taken with the whole ‘let me fuck my brother and raise a kid to get my revenge’ on him? Yeah no that’s not sympathetic at all and is some Talia Morrison Batman ass shit that a lot of old ass creators were on back in the day. But still, you understand these people, even as the story bends and pushes them into extremes in operatic ways.
And that especially applies to the whole Lancelot situation. Like Guinevere liking the ONLY guy in the whole ass kingdom who’d fight for her (apart from Percival) who she already had a crush on? I buy it. Like, Arthur’s all ‘I’m King, baby, I can’t fight for you,’ and he is not exactly a terrific husband here. And so you understand completely. It makes sense. And the extremity and over-the-top bloody camp of the movie really works for me. Like, Lancelot literally fucking stabs himself, which is insane, but it works and the beat sticks TILL the end.
David: I said I understand this winding up a cult classic before, but apparently one of the common critiques of the film at the time was that the motivations of the characters were considered ‘opaque,’ which is madness. Everyone here is driven by such raw, seething passions in conflict with all they hold dear, they’re all utterly damned and utterly understandable on their roads to hell. Guinevere wants to love a man rather than a myth. Lancelot wants a single vice after a life of moral rectitude. Morganna wants one fucking guy who won’t condescend to her. The one guy who really tries to hold himself above his heart (after his duel with Lancelot nearly cost him his soul and the sword, anyway) is Arthur, and at first that idealism gets us that awe-inspiring tracking shot through the interior of Camelot, but in the end it gets us a guy who won’t stand up for the people he loves and gives the whole situation license to spin out of all control. There’s no balance to be struck here.
Sean: Looking at Roger Ebert’s review of the film, it might be a case where the myth - the idea - the legend - of Camelot is seen rather than the actuality. In particular, I’m thinking of his final paragraph wherein he notes that in Star Wars, “everyone plays by the rules, lives by the Force, and is true to himself. Boorman's ‘Excalibur’ is a record of the comings and goings of arbitrary, inconsistent, shadowy, figures who are not heroes but simply giants run amok.” In popular culture, there’s a sense that Camelot is the story of a great kingdom, one we should aspire to be like. Whereas the stories Boorman et. al. draw from all tell a tale of horror, cruelty, and bastardry.
I am reminded of a moment in an early Paul Verhoeven movie, where a sculptor is commissioned to recreate the scene of Lazarus rising from the dead. When asked why there are some rough bumps on the body, the sculptor replies “Those are the maggots.” Because the man had been dead for some time. To which the commissioner is appalled. In this regard, Boorman is showing us the maggots. The cruelty of great men, Good Kings, laid bare.
David: “Arbitrary, inconsistent”, i.e. human. Sorry Roger, you missed the mark on that one.
Ritesh: I do love that throughout, you still can feel Arthur’s love here? Like, both for Guinevere AND Lancelot. Like, when he looks at his fallen body and begs Merlin to bring him back, no matter the price, it’s laid bare. And once again in the talk after, as Arthur understands, which is why he then later goes onto the rooftop and asks Merlin ‘Are they together now?’ It’s painful for him, obviously, but also he so clearly loves the two of them. Which is why when he goes down there with his sword, he cannot harm them. He loves them too much. He can’t bring himself to break them up or shatter them. And so he chooses to shatter himself instead, and thus is Arthur broken. Thus is man split from sword. Thus falls Merlin the mage, and all of reality shakes and thunders, as the consequences of desire over duty arrive like a hurricane.
David: More specifically, the BOLT OF LIGHTNING THAT HITS ARTHUR IN THE FUCKING FACE.
Act 4 (Percival)
Sean: The least bastardly of the bunch who, fittingly enough, is sent to find THE HOLY GRAIL!
David: Percival’s definitely the least fleshed-out of our leads, but he’s a little thief boy made good, so you can’t help but root for the guy even as the odds are stacked against him in this impossible quest that may well be nothing more than a mad, dying king’s final desperate clutch at salvation.
Sean: In this regard, perhaps what’s most interesting is that he’s the only major player in this tale of England’s Golden Age who isn’t a member of nobility. He’s just some kid trying to survive in the woods while an epic is happening around him. Even Arthur, for all he was raised at a lower status, was still of noble blood and raised by somewhat well off men. The only others who come close to being outside are Morgana and Merlin, both outside the Human. And yet, they’re also within. Morgana, for obvious reasons, is the daughter of a disposed duke while Merlin is very much the central player in this game of thrones. The one who determines who reigns supreme, who is cursed to fall, and how the land shall be shaped. Percival, meanwhile, is just some guy who wants to do the right thing.
Ritesh: Percival is the one who keeps the faith and remains the uncorrupted, ultimate noble champion throughout the film. Even Gawain is a fool who falls to Morgana’s gossip and insults Guinevere in this film. But Percival? He’s the one who almost goes out to fight for her, the only one who bothers or tries to do so besides Lancelot. He’s the one last knight who doesn’t break, who doesn’t shatter, who stays true till the end. He is the fantasy and dream of them all, the last spark and ember kept alive. It is why he alone grasps the truth and brings back the reminder to save Arthur and the Land. It is why he alone survives after the fall of so many of those high knights, and doesn’t fail the way Lancelot does. Percival is the one who survives and endures even at the end of the film, when all is finished. He is the man who is entrusted with Arthur’s Sword Of Power, Excalibur, after which the film itself is named.
He is the man to cast it back to from whence it came.
David: I hadn’t picked up on Morgana being the source of the gossip, though it makes sense. And it equally makes sense that this is where Mordred becomes involved in the story, the spawn of royalty twice over and raised without love or ideals for conquest, the only chance of stopping him being the low-born thief turned squire rather than one of the other nobles of the table. And the one to understand the nature of the Grail, in that it can only save the kingdom by way of saving Arthur. There isn’t a grandiose mystical reprieve for all Camelot’s woes, only a chance for one man to do better and perhaps through him the land.
Ritesh: And all of what happens here is prophesied earlier, wherein Merlin tells the assembled knights who’ve finally ‘won’:
For it is the doom of men that they forget
Act 5 (Arthur, II of II)
Sean: It is often said throughout history that we desire a return to a Golden Age. Putting aside that no such thing has ever existed, we always romanticize things that are no longer with us. Though they may be bloody, horrific, and full of cruelty, we nevertheless want to return to them. Be it the Antebellum South of Gone With The Wind or the Romantic words of Byron, there’s a longing to go back to a time that wasn’t as cruel and horrific as this one.
What comes to mind is the ending of another work of fantasy: Jubilee. Directed by Derek Jarman, the film depicts Queen Elizabeth, alongside occultist and founder of the British Empire John Dee and the angel Ariel, traveling to the then present 1978 to find the era in ruins, its punk aesthetic unrecognizable to the Elizabethian nobles. But even when they return from this dark and cruel future where fascists reign supreme, they nevertheless yearn for the Arcadia of their youth.
So too do I feel when watching the ending. For all the horror we have seen, there’s a sense of sadness for its passing. Throughout the film, there’s an air of sadness. Note one of Merlin’s conversations with Morgana, where he talks of their kind coming to an end. The age of magic is ending. It goes out with one last disappearing act, but it’s gone nevertheless. Its kind will never come again. And all we have left are stories.
David: It has to make you believe the idea of Excalibur and Camelot returning are good things in spite of all we’ve seen. Even Morgana burning herself out in one final show of power is a tragedy; everything coming back around here, from Lancelot to Guinevere to Arthur himself, does so in its noblest and most tragic form. The only closure is the recognition that they were never going to be happy: they weren’t born to live the lives of men.
Ritesh: It’s also vital to note what the whole passing of the age that Merlin refers to really means. He talks of the old gods and spirits of the forest going away, as The One God is now the one. It is alluding to the pagan beliefs that are fading away as Christianity really takes hold. It’s why it is said at the wedding, and that’s the reason the next ‘chapter’ of things is The Holy Grail, when all things go wrong.
Afterward
Sean: Given that this is the film Snyder so desperately yearns to make, it’s fitting that this is where his vision fails him. He can see the grime, the horror, the cruelty of the world. But he can’t bring himself to make the tale a tragedy. He can’t end the story on a note of one final pointless and futile gesture. There has to be a nobility to the deaths, a point to it all. A reassurance that there will be more to come. That men are still good. He wants this, he wants this so badly. But he can’t go that one step further.
Ritesh: Part of that is, also, I think just the nature of this IP Machine? King Arthur can have an ‘ending’. It can be reinterpreted endlessly, of course, obviously, but I don’t think an ‘ending’ story for Superman is similar? It can’t function that way, I think, because Arthuriana in the end is owned by all of us collectively, while DC superheroes are exclusively owned by Warner Brothers-Discovery. They hold the copyright and trademarks. And as they say in showbiz, the show must go on. The content mill must keep chugging along. The churn cannot stop.
Sean: At the same time though, there’s Army of the Dead, which could’ve had a tragic ending with Bautista being shot in the head by his own daughter after he turned into a zombie, but instead opts for a bitter, almost comedic, nihilistic one where one of the side characters survives, only to turn out to be infected. He just can’t help it.
David: To be fair, he was going to provide a SORT of end to the DC characters as we knew them, but…well, that’s a topic for down the road.
Ritesh: The thing I’d argue Sean is that what he’s doing here is merely in-line with the film. As in, certainly tragedy is a big part of it. But by the end, Lancelot returns and does the right thing. He has a noble death. There is a nobility to Arthur’s death, and Arthur too does all that he should, in speaking to Guinevere and clearing up the heartbreak that destroyed them all. Forgiving both her and Lancelot, as he later expresses to the dying man directly. And it’s why the ending is Arthur saying ‘One day, a King will come, and the Sword will rise...again.’
And it is why the film even ends with the sword returned, but the body of Arthur gone. He’s being taken away in that boat to Avalon. The story’s not yet completely over. It’s cyclical. The king’s arrival and the sword’s return, these are promises, as is Arthur’s departure on the boat. It’s over. It is ended. And yet also, not truly. There is the promise of more. And that’s what both Army and Snyder’s DC were offering too. It’s something he tries to bring to a lot of his work. That there is ‘more’ whilst there is a finality.
Sean: In this regard, perhaps it’s fitting that Wagner’s Ring Cycle is used throughout both this film and the work of Snyder. One story becomes the next becomes the next.
David: Having heard for years about Excalibur as this titanic influence on his work, I still wasn’t prepared for the scope of how many shots, lines, character arcs, and sequences were directly yanked from this for the sake of Snyder’s imagined tetralogy, even if he’s a lot more concerned with one end of the ‘rise and fall’ narrative than the other. It’ll be fascinating to watch those again with this in mind, and judge how much the failures and successes of grafting that narrative onto these characters are from this different story resisting that interpretation (naturally or by IP restrictions), or through Snyder’s own idiosyncrasies. But that enamorment with the blurred lines between awe and horror, nobles and monsters…yeah. There’s a lot stylistically different on the surface, but it’s easy to see how this was his favorite, formative movie. It’s sure as hell one I loved.
