King Arthur

Clive Owen - Arthur
Ioan Gruffudd - Lancelot
Joel Edgerton - Gawain
Mads Mikkelsen - Tristan
Hugh Dancy - Galahad
Ray Winstone - Bors
Ray Stevenson - Dagonet
Stellan Skarsgård - Cerdic
Til Schweiger - Cynric
Stephen Dillane - Merlin
Keira Knightley - Guinevere

According to the legend of Jerry Bruckheimer, the Hollywood superproducer rarely visits the sets of his movies. He's active before filming -- during development -- and afterward, during editing. But in between, he lets his hired hands work in peace. When he does visit, he's something of a star-struck fan -- snapping pictures, chatting up actors, gazing wide-eyed at the spectacle his imagination and money have wrought. So last summer, when director Antoine Fuqua heard his boss was en route to Ireland to visit the set of ''King Arthur,'' he assumed it was going to be a typical Jerry Bruckheimer visit. It wasn't. The producer had come to share some important news with his helmer. ''King Arthur'' was no longer going to be the Walt Disney Co.'s Christmas 2004 tentpole. It would now be the studio's summer 2004 tentpole.

Giving a director five fewer months to complete a movie is a swell way to turn his life into a living hell. For Fuqua, the consequences seemed even more dire. His entire vision for ''King Arthur'' -- a $90 million-plus deconstruction of the myth of Camelot, dense with history and starring Clive Owen, Keira Knightley, and a bunch of other respectable European actors with little box office pull -- was to create a dark, moody, R-rated picture laden with brutality, perfect for an adult, wintery audience. A summer release, with a more box-office-friendly PG-13? To Fuqua (''Training Day''), that was a completely different film. ''I didn't sleep for days, man,'' he says. ''To focus after getting information like that...'' He trails off.

As he recalls this fateful moment over breakfast at a Beverly Hills hotel in late June, Fuqua's 22-month-old daughter, Asia, sits in his lap and shoves her hand in his face, as if to say, ''Stop talking, Daddy.'' See, when Fuqua tried to leave the house this morning, two days after finally coming home from the U.K. for good, his daughter refused to let him go. So here she is, drawing with crayons, as her father explains how a single decision transformed his movie. He has spent months trying to understand what has happened to ''King Arthur.'' Here, at the end, is his conclusion: ''They got nervous. They just got nervous.''

The lady of the lake. the search for the holy Grail. Merlin, Guinevere, and Lancelot. The Isle of Avalon. These are the more fanciful elements of Arthurian lore, etched in our cultural consciousness over centuries by writers, poets, filmmakers, and, uh, Robert Goulet. David Franzoni thought it was all a bunch of British bollocks. ''Guys in shiny tin cans, cranking around the countryside and carrying on quests -- didn't do anything for me,'' says the writer and Oscar-winning producer of ''Gladiator.'' ''I was trained as a scientist. I was a geology major. None of it made any sense.'' In the early '80s, Franzoni became interested in research tracing the historical roots of King Arthur -- a provocative, even controversial field of study -- but didn't delve deeply into the subject until almost 20 years later. The screenwriter latched onto one theory in particular: that the mythic British monarch was actually...Roman. A duke descended from a soldier named Lucius Artorius Castus, stationed at Hadrian's Wall late in the Roman Empire's occupation of England. Like his ancestor, this fifth-century Arthur was the commander of an elite mounted unit with origins in Roman-annexed Sarmatia. And like the Knights of the Round Table, these Sarmatians had an egalitarian ethos. They also worshiped swords driven into stones. Hmmm...

Dusty textbook stuff? Not to Franzoni. ''Take away the myth,'' he says, ''and you get King Arthur as 'The Wild Bunch.''' Jerry Bruckheimer agreed. After hearing the pitch in 2000, the Armageddon producer bought it -- even though Franzoni hadn't written a word. Bruckheimer immediately began searching for directors, including one of his favorites, ''Pearl Harbor'''s Michael Bay. But after a long flirtation, Bay passed to concentrate on Bruckheimer's ''Bad Boys II.'' There also may have been philosophical differences. ''He was very interested in the myth version of King Arthur,'' says Franzoni.

Finally, in early 2003, after further script development (''The Alamo'''s John Lee Hancock pitched in with a rewrite), Bruckheimer turned to Fuqua, who was coming off a tumultuous experience working with Bruce Willis on ''Tears of the Sun.'' ''I didn't have a lot of trust after something like that,'' says Fuqua, 38, who had battled with Willis over creative and on-set control of the film. ''Never again will I let that happen. I will walk away first.'' He had every reason to believe ''Arthur'' could be different. Bruckheimer had given him one of his earliest breaks -- directing the video for Coolio's ''Gangsta's Paradise'' from the soundtrack of the producer's 1995 hit ''Dangerous Minds'' -- and the two had remained close. Fuqua clicked with Franzoni's script; he saw it as a latter-day version of ''The Magnificent Seven'' or ''Seven Samurai,'' two of his favorite films. Like Bruckheimer and Franzoni, he imagined something savage, political, and absolutely unmagical. Their realism even extended to casting. ''We didn't want American stars with British accents,'' says the director. ''Too fake. Too hard.'' Clive Owen -- perhaps best known in America for ''Croupier,'' for BMW commercials, and for being constantly rumored as the successor to Pierce Brosnan's James Bond -- was quickly tapped for Arthur. (For the record, here's Owen on Bond: ''I've never been approached, and frankly, I think it's really unfair to Pierce that journalists keep bringing this up.'') Casting Lancelot took longer, and when Bruckheimer finally found his man -- Ioan Gruffudd, star of A&E's critically lauded ''Horatio Hornblower'' series -- the actor was committed to the CBS flop-in-the-making ''Century City.'' ''Fortunately, I have a relationship with CBS,'' says a smiling Bruckheimer, who produces the CSI franchise for the network. Arrangements were made, and Gruffudd was dubbed Arthur's best knight. (And yes, says Gruffudd, ''the first thing people usually ask me is how to pronounce my name.'' The Welsh handle is pronounced Yo-ahn Griffith.)

As for Guinevere, Knightley had pursued the role ever since Bruckheimer told her about it while filming ''Pirates of the Caribbean.'' The 19-year-old starlet particularly liked Franzoni's revisionist take on Camelot's future queen; in ''King Arthur,'' she's a fierce freedom fighter not above using sex as a weapon. ''My take on it was, if she has to screw Lancelot to get her way, that's what she'll do, and if she has to screw Arthur to get her way, that's what she'll do,'' says Knightley. ''She's very political. Very calculating. She's a bitch, really.''

In other words, Guinevere isn't unlike a motley Sarmatian knight herself. Knightley certainly trained like one, joining Owen and the other actor/knights for three months of archery, horseback, and sword-fighting lessons prior. Knightley developed such rock-hard abs that Bruckheimer had her Pict fighting togs designed to showcase them. Naturally, the men weren't equally exploited. They were oppressed. ''Heavy, heavy, heavy,'' says Owen of his armor, which proved even more cumbersome while riding horses and being blasted by massive wind machines. ''Antoine was obsessed with wind machines,'' says Owen. ''He was also obsessive about never getting to a stage where two guys were at a dead stop on a horse having a chat. Visually, he's right. But when you're putting them straight into the face of huge wind machines, and talking loud enough to be heard over the machines -- well, that's not easy [for actors].''

Nor were the battle scenes. The climactic clash, pitting Arthur and his knights and the Picts against the invading Saxon hordes (based on the Battle of Mount Badon circa a.d. 480), was a one-month dance of death, filmed in and around a kilometer-long re-creation of Hadrian's Wall. Fuqua had staged some firefights in ''Tears of the Sun,'' but not on this scale, and he admits to being overwhelmed. ''I would pull up in my car, stare out at thousands of people, the fields filled with fire,'' he says. ''The assistant director would be waiting for me to walk out and tell him what to do, and I'm thinking 'Is there any way someone else can do this today?'''

According to Bruckheimer and Dick Cook, chairman of Walt Disney Studios, the company greenlit ''Arthur'' knowing the violence could earn a commercially restrictive R. Moreover, Cook says Disney was fully prepared to release the film with that rating. Fuqua trusted in the license granted by Mouse House execs, even though a part of him found it too good to be true. ''[It was] shocking to me they would make this movie in the first place,'' says Fuqua of the brand-conscious studio. Among the first scenes he shot were for the opening battle sequence, in which Arthur decapitates a few Picts and Lancelot's swordsmanship leaves him bathed in blood. ''I think I beheaded somebody, and there's blood everywhere and it's squirting in my face,'' recalls Gruffudd. ''I thought, 'Wow, this is going to be really dark.'''

Perhaps too dark. Shortly after shooting began, Disney decided to move ''Arthur'' away from Christmas. One production source says the studio became convinced the extreme carnage they were seeing in dailies was better suited for the summer than the holiday season. Not so, says Cook, who tells EW the switch was made because the studio found itself in need of a summer tentpole. He also adds that Disney didn't ask for a PG-13 as part of the date change, but does admit he hoped that one could be attained.

For his part, Bruckheimer felt that with the switch to the more competitive summer-movie season, the film should be PG-13. ''You have a responsibility to the financier, in this case Disney, to make as much money as possible,'' he says. However, both Bruckheimer and Cook say they would have released an R-rated ''Arthur'' if they felt a PG-13 hurt the picture. Fuqua was therefore instructed by Bruckheimer to shoot ''Arthur'' both ways, which left the director feeling there was still a chance his R-rated vision would make it to the big screen. But, he says, ''it started to become clear which way this was going to go'' when, just before the scheduled filming, Disney and Bruckheimer nixed a scene in which pagan Saxons immolate some British hostages in a cross-shaped bonfire. ''It was over-the-top violence,'' says Bruckheimer, adding that money was also a factor. (Fuqua admits that he did go slightly over budget and over schedule.)

After wrapping principal photography last November, the ordeal of editing began. The director continued to argue for a hard-R rating. Bruckheimer kept nudging him toward a PG-13. There was some discussion about those decapitations; the concern, says Fuqua, was that such brutality might seem inappropriate given terrorist violence in Iraq and Saudi Arabia. Indeed, when ''King Arthur'' was finally submitted to the ratings board, it was handed an R. Disney and Bruckheimer asked Fuqua to keep cutting. He agreed. In fact, says Fuqua, he had by then started feeling some pangs of conscience. ''I began to question if I was actually more tolerant of [violence] because of the things I've seen in my own life,'' says the director, who was deeply marked by experiences of gang violence throughout his life, from his youth in Pittsburgh and Harlem to his first day in L.A., when he saw a boy get shot in the ear during a drive-by. ''Maybe I had to be a little more sensitive.''

Spoiler alert: Out went the decapitations -- and a lot more. The Battle of Badon was most affected. Guinevere's body count was reduced. The brutal torture and killing of one knight was trimmed. And Arthur's vengeful dispatch of the Saxon leader -- a furious sequence that originally culminated with Arthur slamming a sword hard and deep into his enemy's chest -- was softened. Looking back, Fuqua feels that the film's pulled punches are too noticeable, and fears that they will distract audiences. ''If [PG-13] was what they wanted to do from day one,'' he says, ''I would have designed it differently.''

Turning an R-rated holiday ''Arthur'' into a PG-13 blockbuster wannabe had other ramifications as well. Late in the spring -- with Disney reeling from a string of box office flops (''The Alamo'' and ''Hildago'' among them), and with the lukewarm reception of Warner Bros.' ''Troy'' suggesting audiences were tiring of sword-and-sandal fare -- the studio conducted at least two test screenings, including one attended by Disney's embattled CEO, Michael Eisner. Several changes were subsequently made, all of which were ultimately approved by Bruckheimer and Fuqua, who say testing the film proved beneficial. For example, Guinevere's flirtatious manipulation of Lancelot was reined in to speed up pacing and to emphasize the Arthur- Guinevere romance.

Disney and Bruckheimer also decided that the film needed to lighten up. On June 16, thirteen days before ''Arthur'''s U.S. premiere, a new comic scene was shot in which Lancelot jokes with fellow knight Bors (Ray Winstone) about the latter giving his numerous children numbers for names. But the most dramatic late-game fix to ''King Arthur'' had occurred three days earlier, when Owen, Knightley, and 500 extras gathered on the cliffs of Northern England to shoot a happy ending. Originally, ''King Arthur'' ended with a funeral. In addition to wanting something more upbeat, audiences seemed confused about one crucial point: They didn't quite get how this ''historical'' Arthur had given birth to the Arthur of legend. The new conclusion includes subtle nods to certain mystical aspects of the Arthurian legend, like a rock formation similar to Stonehenge.

On the eve of ''King Arthur'''s release, Fuqua toggles between feeling burned and resigned. One minute finds him fuming over having to make concessions to commerce. ''Sometimes, you feel betrayed,'' he says. But the next minute, he's putting it all in perspective. ''In my mind, I wanted to do 'Training Day 400 A.D.' Violent, scary, and real,'' he says. ''But somewhere down the line, you realize what you're involved in. This is a big Disney summer movie. There's a lot of money involved. I get that.'' Conversely, Bruckheimer feels badly for Fuqua -- so much so that he made a deal with Disney to release Fuqua's R-rated version on DVD. ''He deserves it,'' says Bruckheimer. ''I know he's hurt. I know he lost stuff he was passionate about. Look, he's an artist. I would work with him again in a second.''

Fuqua hopes his voice will be more clearly heard with his next film, ''Tru Blu,'' a biopic of the infamous '70s drug kingpin Frank Lucas that will pair him up again with ''Training Day'' Oscar winner Denzel Washington. ''This is it. This is the one that will define me,'' says Fuqua, as he helps his daughter finish coloring a picture. He smiles. ''This will be an R. No doubt about it.''

Editorial Reviews Amazon.com

It's got a round table, some knights, and a noble warrior who rises to become King Arthur, but everything else about this revisionist legend is pure Hollywood. That's not such a bad thing if you enjoyed Rob Roy, Braveheart, Gladiator, and Troy, and there's some intriguing potential in presenting the "real" Arthur (played by Clive Owen) as a 5th-century soldier of Rome, assigned to defend Roman-imperial England against a hoard of invading Saxons (led by Stellan Skarsgård in hairy villain mode). As revamped history and "archaeological findings" would have us believe, Guinevere (Keira Knightley) is a warrior babe in face-paint and Lancelot (Ioan Gruffudd) is a nonentity who fades into the woodwork. Never mind! Best to enjoy the harsh, gloomy atmosphere of Irish locations, the ruggedness of Owen and his hearty supporting cast, and the entertaining nonsense of a Jerry Bruckheimer production that strips battle-ready Guinevere down to leather-strap S&M gear while all the men sport full-body armor. Hail to the queen, indeed! --Jeff Shannon

The Premire

What's the real deal with Arthur and Guinevere, Lancelot and Merlin, Galahad, Gawain, and the lads? Why did the Saxons exhibit such terrible table manners? King Arthur is being advertised as the one to watch for the definitive answers, the true story behind the legend of the Knights of the Round Table after we've seen all the pretty lies in Camelot and Excalibur. One myth buster: Merlin, apparently, wasn't a magician, just a crazy-eyed former enemy who joined forces with Arthur and his band of unmerry Sarmatian men.

Look, I don't know, maybe this new take directed by ''Training Day'' coach Antoine Fuqua, from a script by ''Gladiator'' scribe David Franzoni, with an American/British/Danish/Swedish/German cast assembled for efficient international distribution, really gives us the goods: The historical Arthur (Clive Owen) was a dour hunk, half Roman and half Briton, with all the heroic ambivalence of Maximus and twice the weight of Russell Crowe's colosseum wear on his shoulders. Lancelot (Ioan Gruffudd), Arthur's sulky best friend and an ace fighter, was possessed of the handsome brunet tousle of an Israeli paratrooper but little of the chutzpah. Guinevere (Keira Knightley) wasn't just Hepburn to Arthur's Tracy, but also the most singularly and creatively underdressed maiden to wield a bow and arrow. Maybe there really was a Cerdic (Stellan Skarsgård), commander of the Saxon hordes, proven to be a grunting, murderous yeti with a rabid son (Til Schweiger) as his second-in-command.

Maybe. What's surer is that, as directed by Fuqua and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer with all the joyless, synthetic commitment to big-budget showbiz bang for which his shingle is famed, this middling ''King Arthur'' doesn't waste time developing character -- or coherence -- when a big, joyless, synthetic battle will do. (There are requisite bloodfests at the film's beginning, middle, and end, in keeping with Hollywood tastes for the architecture of the obvious.) And in keeping with the prevailing, imitative post–''Lord of the Rings'' taste in scenic design, those battles are swaddled in mist, snow, fog, dark, and mud.

And ice, don't forget ice, not all of it the kind that heavy-footed armies can slip on. The movie's romantic hook, between set-piece fights with outcomes as guaranteed as the afterlife for the early Christian faithful, is Arthur's bond with Guinevere, proud pagan beauty from the exotic tribe known as Woads (and watta Woad!). Arthur is a devout man, but he's also disgusted by the corruption he sees coming out of Rome. And somehow, the combination of disenchantment and Clive Owen's default projection of Paxil-resistant melancholy has turned the future king into one cold fish. Not that the actor is chilly, mind you -- Owen is, even in dirt and chain mail, a thinking person's heartthrob, and millions of throbbing thinking persons wait, despite discouragement, for the day he might assume the less metallic mantle of James Bond. But this Arthur exhibits signs of fervor nearly indistinguishable from those of frostbite. Knightley's Guinevere tries womanfully, with various flashes of eye and tosses of coif, to arouse her rescuer. And certainly this willowy young actress advances her sylph-of-the-moment winning streak following her feisty-maiden charms in Bruckheimer's ''Pirates of the Caribbean.'' Alas, this Hamlet of an Arthur will not be moved; by contrast, Viggo Mortensen's Aragorn was a party animal.

As it turns out, the lustiest, roaringest, most sociable mate among Arthur's band of seven samurai -- er, fellow knights -- is a bawdy skinhead proud of the flock of bastard kids who call him Dad. ''Sexy Beast'''s Ray Winstone plays the faithful, bellowing knight Bors with such football-lout moxie that he makes Gruffudd's petulant Lancelot seem a curly-woolen wet blanket by comparison. Gorgeous by no means, and sometimes jolly incomprehensible, his Bors is at least nuttily alive in a production that's determinedly subdued.

Speaking of ice, ''King Arthur'''s best battle takes place on a sheet of it, a frozen-over expanse on which the good guys outwit, outplay, and outlast the bad guys through a combination of teamwork and physics. The editing isn't particularly elegant and Hans Zimmer's accompanying wall of soundtrack is even less so. But for a moment, the heroes and villains of ''King Arthur'' lose their bearings. And in a movie like this one, a little madness is its own Holy Grail.

(Posted:07/07/04 Entertainment Weekly)