Excalibur (1981)
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Excalibur Movie Review
Excalibur is a 1981 historical fantasy film directed by John Boorman and starring Nigel Terry and Helen Mirren among others. It’s a flawed, but overall pretty good movie.
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“The future has taken root in the present“
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I have always loved the Arthurian legend, Merlin and the titular sword in the stone. It’s a great story, a phenomenal legend that has endured all these centuries as a timeless classic. And it’s a shame that it never really got proper cinematic treatment. This is probably the best one so far, but even this movie is far from great.
First of all, I respected the gritty realism of the film. It portrays the Middle Ages as they were – filthy and bloody. The wars and battles are so well executed in terms of the action and the storytelling overall is mostly terrific. The magical elements that are there are very memorable as well.
However, the film unfortunately did not give me enough magic. That’s why it succeeds so much better as a historical and epic instead of fantasy flick. I wanted more of those elements as they were well set up, but rarely used. And I entirely agree with the critics that the film is pretentious as it’s way too serious for this story which did not really happen and it needed to be more fun.
Nigel Terry is very annoying as King Arthur and I really disliked his performance, but thankfully other British actors did a phenomenal job in their roles. Helen Mirren is particularly memorable in one of her earlier roles and I absolutely loved Nicol Williamson’s portrayal of Merlin. He was a lot of fun and sorely underused in the movie.
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Excalibur is phenomenally shot. Yes, the cinematography is fantastic, the VFX are great for its time and the film is grounded in reality in no small part thanks to its great photography and particularly memorably imagery throughout its runtime. It’s a long movie, but it’s mostly pretty well paced that it flies by as it’s quite involving. The score’s also pretty good. But again, the film needed more humor and more fun in its approach and that way it would have been great.
Excalibur succeeds much more so as an epic instead of fantasy flick as it does not have enough fantasy elements in it in my opinion. The movie’s too serious and it needed more fun in it, but the performances are mostly excellent, Nicol Williamson as Merlin is very memorable, the cinematography is terrific and it has quite a lot of memorable imagery. The battles are gritty and the film is highly realistic for better and for worse.
