King Arthur

[egarrard]

Anybody going to see it? http://kingarthur.movies.go.com/main.html

[Sidebinder]

I just ain't in the mood fo crappy movies after I just saw spidey yestarday. :) You tell me if it was good if you decided to see it though. :Nice

[billman]

Bah, PG-13. A movie like that, with all the fighting, and the killing, and the big booms, NEEDS to be R :/
Hopefully it'll be great, anyway.

[JCYC5]

Saw the trailer when watching Spiderman... Seems pretty good!

Somewhat similar to LoTR...hahaha

Looks like a movie I will watch....

[And|]

I Have looked forward to this movie, for some time now, and wont be changed.

[meng-chieh]

Saw the trailer when watching Spiderman... Seems pretty good!

Somewhat similar to LoTR...hahaha

Looks like a movie I will watch....

:shocking PLEASE DON'T COMPARE THIS PIECE OF JUNK TO LOTR! :shocking

saw it, hated it, and thinking back makes me hate it even more...they completely changed the whole myth behind King Arthur (i.e. making him Roman)...sigh...

[egarrard]

they completely changed the whole myth behind King Arthur (i.e. making him Roman)...sigh...Actually, some of the stories have had him be the son of a Roman. (I can't remember if it was Mary Stewart or Morgan Llwellyn who did.) It's one of the intriguing aspects of the story. I can't remember the author right this moment, but there is a series of books called Taliesin, Merlin, and Arthur that ties it in with Atlantis. It makes for a good read.

[Sidebinder]

I heard somewhere that King Arthur was a big hoax and never happened. It was like created in the 1800's. Or at least that is what ET says.

[Tracer]

I liked it. Exept the characters were too pretty LOL

I read the Camalaud series books by Jack Whyte, which based the Authurian legend back in the 4th and 5th centuries and were of Roman decent. This movie followed suite and made more sense to me. That was the era when Rome lost its hold on the English isles and the rule of the Britons (Roman/Celtish mix) began....when the Saxons were first invading and populating the southern shores of England.

The writings of the legend of Arthur has been traced back to an 11th century monk/writer who tried to condense all the stories being proliferated in England and Wales for centuries. Its simply a Legend....not a hoax!

[Maro]

I heard somewhere that King Arthur was a big hoax and never happened. It was like created in the 1800's. Or at least that is what ET says.

I wouldn't trust ET!

meng-chieh: LOTR wasn't accurate either - it was good but PJ fumbled the laast film completely.

Arthur is a polyglot myth - made up form a combination of cultural myths and legends. THe Welsh, English and French all claim him.

Here is a post I wrote for another Forum (I am a closet Arthur afficionado!), as you can see there is a lot of disagreement:

quote:Originally posted by Nina N.
The Arthurian legends are french in origin and at that time all the noblemen (as I understand it) had family ties in France. There were certainly some hints of Roman culture, but I don't believe it to have been even nearly as pronounced as the "real history of Arthur" leads to believe.

Interesting is, that they've turned the whole Lancelot-Guinevere thing around and made it really sleazy too.

There is NO way, that can be good. There's still too many references to the book.



They most assuredly are not French in origin.

They are Welsh in origin

Yes they most certainly are french in origin. Ask any english lit scholar.

They ARE set in England, but their roots are in France. England has barely any legends of its own accord, because of it's history of being invaded over and over again. First the romans, then the saxons, then the normans. Each culture has brought it's own legends to the land and tried (even mostly succeeded) to supress the legends and folk stories of the former culture.

Arthurian legends are based on norman culture and folk tales. The normans came from France (from the cost of Normandy, go figure ) and similar tales can be found in french folk stories - including the exact replica of the Lady of the Lake - though french legends as such never became as videly known as Arthurian legends.

For instance professor Tolkien hated the Arthurian legends, just because they are french in origin.


Wales is not part of England and still retains much of it's original cultural myths. Much of what is now England was "Wales" but that was lost by the Saxon invasions.

All of the names are deived from the Welsh originals.

Breton shares similarity with Welsh as they are both Brythonic languages.

Most of the bits such as the Lady of the Lake were added by Mallory in the much later, romanticised "Morte De Arthur" which also popularised the myth of Knights in Plate Armour. The core story is centuries older



You have to remember that there are so many different versions of the Athur myths floating around that there are going to be many sources.

I am no Professor but I grew up in Wales and can speak it fluently. The whole culture still has all the names like:

Myrddin (Merlin)

Gwenhafr (Guinevere)

I actually went to school with a Myrddin - the far north west of Wales keeps the language alive.

Wales is not a part of England, it is a distinctly separate country. I t may have been pacified by Edward I but they never accepted Englishj rule- even to this day I got greif in school for being a "Saes" (literally Saxon - see the hatred of the invader. Arthur died fighting the Saxons).

I have read much on Tolkien and I disagree that he thought the Welsh had no Mythology. He was well aware of the Mabinogi and other Welsh cycles. In constructing the Middle Earth Mythos he used a lot of Welsh etymology in the construction of Quenya and Sindarin.

I am not saying you are wrong merely pointing out that it is a legend and there are huge variations between different regions. They cannot even pin Arthur down to one century.

Just one quick source as I am tired after traning:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Arthur

"Earliest traditions of Arthur
Arthur first appears in Welsh literature. In an early surviving Welsh poem, the Gododdin, (c. 594) the poet Aneirin (c. 535 - 600) writes of one of his subjects that 'he fed black ravens on the ramparts, although he was not Arthur' -- but this poem as it currently exists is full of interpolations, and it not possible to decide if this passage is an interpolation from a later period. Even earlier, the poet Taliesin refers to " Arthur the Blessed " in his poem The Chair of the Sovereign and to the valour of Arthur in his poem Preiddeu Annwn (The Treasures of Heaven). There also he said we went with Arthur in his splendid labours. The apparently earliest reference of all to Arthur is in Taliesin's poem Journey to Deganwy, the content of which implies it was composed in 547. He says: as at the battle of Badon with Arthur, chief giver of feasts, with his tall blades red from the battle which all men remember .

Another early reference to Arthur is in the Historia Britonum, attributed to the Welsh monk Nennius, who is said to have written this compilation of early Welsh history around the year AD 830. In this work Arthur is referred to as a 'leader of battles' rather than as a king. Two separate sources within this compilation list twelve battles that he fought, culminating in the battle of Mons Badonicus, which was fought in, or within a few years after, 491. According to the Annales Cambriae, Arthur was killed at the Battle of Camlann in 537. "


Originally posted by Nina N.
Well now. I stand corrected. Curious though, I read an article, not too far back either, by a british professor that said that Arthurian myths are almost certainly french. Can't remember the title or the author (well, I'm just a blond.... ). I should think that the brits would be more than keen to flaunt Arthur as theirs. Go figure. Maybe he was a renegade. A free spirit. All right, now I'm getting carried away

In any case the point still pretty much remains. There's no cause to place Arthur in Rome to be a Roman, is there?

I knew that Tolkien knew about welsh folktales (heck, even I know a few), but as I understand it, he didn't consider it a whole (sorry, can't think of a better word) mythology as such and regretted the fact that brits didn't have a mythology of their own. Can't say I blame his love for the welsh language either. But I do believe the rest of this should go to the Tolkien-forum.



Don;t feel corrected - your stuff was indeed valid. Every time I research Arthur I come across something new.

One possibility of the source of the "French/Breton" angle is that Arther and Uther (who were brothers in this version) fled Vortigern and went to Brittany where they faught the Saxons before returning to England. This part is borrowed by Bernard Cromwell in his Winter King Trilogy. (A very good read for a more Celtic inspired Arthur).

I actually used to live about 4 miles from Dinas Emrys where the legend of the red and white dragons (signifying the Welsh and Saxons) took place.

Arthur is also rumoured to be buried in a cave up on Mount Snowdon in North Wales (the cave is supposedly near Bwlch y Saethu on Snowdon's Northern ridge. That name means "Pass of Arrows" and is suppoesed to refer to one of the battles with the Saxons. He is believed to be waiting with his knights and will come when he is needed according to legend.

Snowdonia is littered with Arthurian legend. The Cairn on top of Snowdon is reputedly the burial site of "Rita Fawr" who demanded Arthur's beard so he could add it to his cloak made from the beards of men he had vanquished. Arthur Slew him and buried him there.

It was a fantastic place to live.

Pardon the essay
http://forums.swordforum.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=35312&highlight=Arthur :D :D

here is the whole thread:

[fleshcakes]

My gf really wants to see this... unfortunately, I'm not really interested.. but it is her turn to choose. :Crying

[coldstatic]

I thought it was a good movie. Right now while my comp is still broken i have been playin baulders gate2:dark aliance 2 and noticed the similarities of the knights to how charcters in a game work.overall i give it a go see it its pretty good movie score but i will say this at the end in the fight it cant even compair to the fighting in TROY.