Arthur.

[observer]

TV premiere of the film; so sat down to soak in the atmosphere of this fictional take on the legend. A few grains of historical possibility, by placing Arturus in 5th Century Britain, at the time of the Roman evacuation, gave some supurficial historical credance. His "knights" are the remains of a unit (all six of them!) of Sarmation auxilliary armoured cavalry, stationed on Hadrian's Wall. Merlin becomes the Chief of a Pictish tribe, complete with wode tattoos, and Guinevere a Pictish princess, with amazonian fighting abilities! We then have the Saxons, landing "north" of Hadrian's Wall, when their historical encroachment was much further south. Then Arthur's "knights" (the magnificent seven), fight off thousands of Saxons with the help of Pictish archers and artillery (must have taken a crash course with the Romans!), at the battle of Badon Hill (near the Wall?), which most historians place somewhere around Somerset. Then a marriage between Arthur and Guinevere in Stonehenge surroundings by the sea! What a load of tosh.

[Jerry]

Still, I'm sure that version is closer than the MGM version with Robert Taylor and Mel Ferrer as Arthur. There should be something like the term 'poetic license' when dramatists present history, don't you think? Maybe a warning at the beginning?

[observer]

A Government "warning label" would be good, but I'm not sure the Chavs who take this trash in, would read it. Perhaps the film makers could be fined for promoting ignorance?!

[Egbert]

But was it entertaining? Surely you were not expecting it to be anything more than that!

[observer]

The sad thing about it Eg; is that, with so little knowledge of history being disseminated through our education system; young folk watch these films and believe them to be historical fact. Now, whilst the whole Arthurian legend is just that, a myth; there are viable theories, that; at the break up of Roman control of Britain; the Romano-British Kingdoms that emerged, would have retained elements of Roman military units formed by discharged soldiers. There was a unit(s) of Sarmatian Armoured Heavy Cavalry located near Hadrian's Wall, which would fit the "knights" theory; and there seems to have been a Romano-British Leader (Arthur pen Dragon), who won a great battle against the Saxons at Badon Hill, which delayed their incursion for a generation. So the film, had a grain of historical basis to develope an entertaining story from. Being the "dark age", so little is known of the period, but it was the period of the birth of England and Britain.