Well, due to a recent class I've taken, I took to watching a bunch of interpretations of the Arthurian legend... Oh boy...

King Arthur (2004)

OK, let's start... This film is historical bogus. And I wouldn't be bothered by this if the film didn't so openly claim to be historical. This is based on the Sarmatian Cavalry theory, which has almost no basis in fact except for the fact that there is a person out there who was named Artorius Castos, but all factual mentions of Arthur place him about 300 years after that man existed (Arthur also has the name Ambrosius Aurelius).

But, besides that, this film is just dull. Very dull. The only scene I truly remember is a wordless discussion between the knights, which is quite possibly the only scene in the film that doesn't suffer the terrible pacing or dialogue problems.

1 braid-bearded Saxon out of 5

Gawain and the Green Knight (1991)

Eh, it's alright. It represents the story rather well, but the whole flashback structure throws me off.

4 green girdles out of 5

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1978)

Ugh...

This book is unfilmable. It's an absolute masterpiece, but it's highly unsuitable to the process of dramatization. This only proves that.

This has neither the intelligence nor the writing prowess, nor even the story of the original. It sucks.

0 "paragraphs" out of 5

Excalibur (1981)

....

I liked it. A lot. I'm getting some David Lynch's Dune vibes from this... Which is fortunate since I enjoy David Lynch's Dune.

It clearly represented and understood the Arthur mythos, and considering other films I've seen, that's about as much as I can ask.

The nature "new age" stuff can get kind of grating, but it's not in there that much, and it didn't detract from the true nature of the story.

4.5 glittering swords out of 5