Excalibur (film)



A 1981 Heroic Fantasy film directed by John Boorman, an epic, Cult Classic retelling of the Arthurian myths. Notable at least for two aspects:


 * The movie covers a rather long span of time (60 years, at the very least) and thus, as Boorman put it, focuses on the story rather than on the characters. It can thus roughly be divided into five partially overlapping parts: the first part follows Uther Pendragon, the second follows Arthur, the third follows Lancelot, the fourth follows Perceval, and the last goes back to Arthur.
 * The source material (mostly Malory's Morte Darthur) is treated in a very syncretist kind of way, merging many characters, events and elements. This arguably allows the movie to display many more Arthurian motifs than would have been possible to show in a two-hour movie by staying truer to the original story, all while cleverly avoiding the Compressed Adaptation effect.

Excalibur provides examples of:
"Arthur: I was not born to live a man's life, but to be the stuff of future memory."
 * The Ace: Lancelot
 * Adaptation Distillation: The film sometimes takes liberties with the original legend (many of these alterations became canon in popular culture, and have later been re-used in other Arthurian movies), and as already mentioned, merges together many characters and elements of the Arthurian tales, most notably:
 * The sword in the stone/Excalibur
 * King Arthur / the Fisher King
 * Morgana/Morgause/Nimue
 * Lancelot and Guinevere/Tristram and Isolde (see also the Suspiciously Apropos Music point)
 * Perceval/Bedivere
 * After the End: The last third of the movie
 * Anachronism Stew: Justified, as Boorman intentionally took an ahistorical and mythical approach with his portrayal of the time period.
 * Armor Is Useless: Averted, at least some of the time; fully armored knights in the movie often have to really pound the hell out of each other to have any effect.
 * Because Destiny Says So: Arthur defines this trope.

"Arthur: Merlin. Your wisdom has forged this ring. Hereafter, so that we remember our bonds, we shall always come together in a circle to hear and tell of deeds good and brave. I will build a round table where this fellowship shall meet."
 * Bed Trick: Used twice -- but magic is involved in both cases.
 * Bilingual Bonus: The Charm of Making is Old Irish for "serpent's breath, charm of death and life, thy omen of making".
 * Bittersweet Ending:  But
 * Breast Plate: Morgana's armor, which looks like a sheet-iron corset with nothing under it.
 * Brother-Sister Incest
 * Cherry Blossoms
 * The Chosen One: Arthur
 * Crashing Dreams: Several,.
 * Creepy Child: Young Morgana knows at once that her father is dead. Then she watches, silently, as her mother and not-father have sex.
 * Mordred, who as a boy tempts Grail knights to their seduction at Morgana's hand, or to their deaths.
 * Crossover Cosmology: Celtic Mythology and Christian beliefs, in this case.
 * Dark Age Europe: justified and played straight in the last third of the movie.
 * Defeat Means Friendship: twice.
 * The Dragon: Mordred is The Dragon in the classic sense, while The Dragon is, in the movie, a never seen but omnipresent Nature Spirit.
 * The Dulcinea Effect: Perceval, unarmed squire, wanting to champion Guinevere against a fully-armed, battle-hardened Sir Gawain.
 * Evil Sorcerer: Morgana
 * Fisher King: Arthur
 * Friend to All Living Things: Merlin, in a creepy kind of way -- crows tend to show up when he's near.
 * Hey, It's That Guy!: Patrick Stewart as Leondegrance; Liam Neeson as Gawain; Gabriel Byrne as Uther.
 * Hidden Depths: Perceval
 * Interplay of Sex and Violence: Truces and friendships are broken, wars and plagues are started because of sex.
 * Killed Off for Real: Surprisingly often.
 * King Arthur: Duh
 * Knight in Shining Armor: Averted at the beginning of the movie, where the armors are more dark and matte than shiny, then played straight after the first encounter with Lancelot, but they do get rusty later.
 * Another facet of the Fisher King aspect. The better Arthur's doing, the shinier the armor.
 * Large Ham: Apparently, dark ages Britain was peopled entirely with Large Hams in plate armor.
 * But there's no bigger ham than Merlin.
 * Loads and Loads of Characters: Now with its own Character Sheet.
 * Love Triangle
 * Manipulative Bitch: Morgana
 * Merlin and Nimue: Merlin and Morgana form this pair, complete with the eventual betrayal.
 * Mind Rape:
 * Ms. Fanservice: Some of Helen Mirren's outfits -- of course, she might qualify as Ms. Fanservice wearing a burlap sack...
 * No Immortal Inertia:
 * No Indoor Voice: Pretty much everyone in the entire movie. Justified since they spend a tiny portion of their time indoors.
 * Offscreen Teleportation: Merlin -- justified, given his nature, and also subverted in a scene where we see him walking toward the camera, from a distant background, while other characters talk in the foreground, having not noticed him. He reaches them just as one of them asks "And who is Merlin?"; he also does onscreen teleportations.
 * Ominous Latin Chanting: O Fortuna
 * One-Liner: Merlin and Arthur get a lot of those.
 * Popcultural Osmosis: Excalibur is to O Fortuna what 2001: A Space Odyssey is to Thus Spoke Zarustrutha.
 * Public Domain Artifact: Excalibur and the Holy Grail, obviously.
 * Really Seven Hundred Years Old: Merlin
 * Reconstruction: Sort of. Excalibur was a straight - if highly idiosyncratic - Arthurian epic made by a British director only five years after Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
 * Recycled Trailer Music: O Fortuna
 * Right Through His Armour: Justified, as Uther had to keep his armour on to maintain the illusion.
 * Royal Blood
 * Rule of Cool: Mordred's golden armor -- and generally, knights wearing their plate armors outside of battle whenever they can.
 * Shapeshifting Seducer
 * Shout-Out: Several, notably (and surprisingly) to Star Wars (just watch the first sequence between Arthur and Merlin in the woods, or the fight between Lancelot and his ), and (less surprisingly) to The Lord of the Rings (as Boorman's original project was indeed to adapt the later, before he switched to Arthurian myths:

""It is everywhere. It is everything. Its scales glisten in the bark of trees. Its roar is heard in the wind. And its forked tongue strikes like... *lightning strikes* like lightning... yes, that's it!""
 * Sentient Cosmic Force: The Dragon.
 * Sociopathic Hero: Uther, arguably -- subverted in that he eventually admits that he is tired of wars and battles.
 * Soundtrack Dissonance: The lyrics to O Fortuna are about how fate is capricious and thus cruel, but the song is treated as something far more uplifting.
 * Stealth Hi Bye: Both played straight and subverted with Merlin. In one scene the audience sees Merlin approaching but the characters don't, and when Arthur says, "Who is Merlin?", previously-unnoticed Merlin steps up and says, "I am Merlin." In a later scene Merlin says, "The time has come for me to go," then turns to leave. Normally one would expect Merlin to just vanish, but Arthur instead starts following him and asks where he's going.
 * Storming the Castle: Averted, subverted, then averted again!
 * The subversion happens when Arthur storms into a castle which is already being stormed, precisely in order to stop said storming.
 * Suspiciously Apropos Music: The recurring music illustrating the impossible love between Lancelot and Guinevere is Richard Wagner's Prelude to Tristan und Isolde; Perceval finds the Grail while Wagner's Parsifal Overture is playing; and Siegfried's Funeral March (by Wagner) plays while Arthur is transported to Avalon.
 * Sure, Let's Go with That: Merlin when talking to Arthur says this line:


 * Tragic Hero: Lancelot.
 * 24-Hour Armor: To an almost crazy degree; the suits of full plate mail are worn during feasts and even during sex.
 * Unstoppable Rage: Arthur when he first fights Lancelot.
 * Visible Invisibility: Merlin
 * What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic: The movie is chock-full of symbols referring to Celtic paganism and Christian mysticism.
 * What Happened to the Mouse?: A consequence of having Loads and Loads of Characters in a two-hours movie.