Zack Snyder’s Justice League is still weeks away, and the Snyder news cycle continues apace. Last week, in a video interview with Minutemen, Snyder mused about a potential future project: a “faithful retelling” of the myth of King Arthur.
You can listen to Snyder’s words on the matter just before the 35 minute mark in the video above, but he says very little:
“I’m working on something, but we’ll see. I’ve been thinking about some kind of retelling, like real sort of faithful retelling, of that Arthurian mythological concept. We’ll see. Maybe that will come at some point.”
Two questions immediately arise: Why? and also, Faithful to what, exactly? I am not an expert, but the origins of the Arthurian mythos are muddy and broad and there is no one true source that requires fidelity in all things. (Lavie Tidhar recently wrote a lively piece on the matter of the Matter of Britain, if you’d like a refresher on Geoffrey of Monmouth and a few of the other folks who have told versions of this story.)
Arthurian tales are kind of like mint run wild in a garden: uncontainable and occasionally quite refreshing. We are still waiting on the pandemic-postponed The Green Knight, which stars Dev Patel as Sir Gawain, one of Arthur’s knights. Last year, Netflix aired Cursed, an adaptation of the Frank Miller graphic novel about a girl destined to become the Lady of the Lake. Epix is reportedly developing Bernard Cornwall’s Arthur-adjacent Warlord Chronicles. Ridley Scott might be directing an adaptation of T.A. Barron’s Merlin Saga. In 2019, we had Joe Cornish’s charming The Kid Who Would Be King; two years before that, of course, Guy Ritchie offered the widely maligned King Arthur: The Legend of the Sword.
And that’s not even getting into recent Arthurian-inspired novels or all the previous adaptations.
What will Snyder bring to the table? What does he think a faithful retelling entails? Surely we will find out soon enough.
I am sure the trailer will play Hallelujah.
I’m not surprised, since Boorman’s Excalibur is one of his favourite films. The high-profile failures of the last few cinematic stabs at the King Arthur story might be an impediment, though.
I hope he explains how the two pound bird carried the five pound coconut. The Arthurian adaptation that best captured the ridiculous, glued together, Arthurian mythos was still Monty Python‘s, right down to the weird anti-climax ending.
If he wants the source material for Arthur, it is Y Gododdin, and all it says is that Arthur was a cool dude but the guys fighting in this battle weren’t up to his standard. Arthur is basically the Brythonic version of Fonzie from Happy Days, the cool side character who mysteriously takes over the whole narrative.
I agree that a faithful adaption of King Arthur is open to many interpretations. What I haven’t seen done well is a King Arthur set in Camelot at its prime-round table, shining armor, chivalry, damsels rescued from wicked knights and foul dragons. With a King Arthur who is neither youth nor aged. The King Arthur that all the real English kings wanted desperately to be linked to and actually believed once existed. Essentially King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table at its best.
Most modern depictions of Arthur have been determined to show us a “real” Arthur when no such person probably existed. I’m tired of semi-historical Roman/Dark Ages holdovers grappling with Celtic mysticism. I’m also tired of the Arthur-Lancelot- Guinevere love triangle–it gets old. Just give me a Camelot set the high middle ages that I would actually want to be part of.
Unfortunately Zack Snyder, who I like as a director, is probably way too grim dark to make the King Arthur movie I would like to see.
@@.-@ The problem is that Arthurian lore, while Romance [capital R], is at heart a tragedy. Camelot always falls is the message behind it. However, there is the Arthurian musical “Camelot” [if you ever wondered what the Camelot is a silly place gag, with the singing knights, is from in Monty Python, it is spoofing Camelot]. And there is the 1954 version of Prince Valiant, although Arthur is more the background in that, set around high Camelot. There is also the movie The Black Knight from the same year. And a black and white serial called The Adventures of Sir Lancelot from two years later. The production values are of the time though.
“Faithful retellings” has some loaded connotations. I would hope Snyder avoids them.
I wouldn’t mind a “faithful” adaptation of Camelot 3000 ! Some of the themes it tackled in the 1980s are issues we grapple with still.
If you’re looking for the definitive Arthurian text it’s Sir Thomas Malory’s The Whole Book of King Arthur and of His Noble Knights of the Round Table or Le Morte d’Arthur. It the most influential work with T.H White, Mark Twain, John Steinbeck, Thomas Berger, and Roger Lancelyn Green all drawing on it for their own material. Malory took the French Vulgate Cycle with various prose romances and created a sprawling epic that cemented the fantastical vision of King Arthur and Camelot.
We’ve had too many “re-imaginings” of Arthur, I think. There’s haven’t been any traditional takes to compares them to in the last few decades, which is why they tend to fall flat.
@8- I do wonder how a direct translation of the action in much Le Morte d’Arthur would come off. I seem to recall their being an awful lot of bizarre allegory, and quite a bit of knights dying at fords what seems to be very little purpose.
@2 Excalibur is still my favorite movie version of Arthur. It is fascinating what careers some of the supporting actors in that movie went on to have.
@10. It’s one of mine as well.
Eh. I don’t think it’ll really be authentic unless it’s got the full list of King Arthur’s Marvellous Men from “Culhwch and Olwen”. (And who will play Duach and Bratach and Nerthach, the sons of Gwawdur Cyrfach, I wonder? “From the uplands of Hell were these men sprung.”)
Yes, I’m being silly, really… but there are too many layers of storytelling around Arthur for any one version to be the “true” one; Malory is just one of a long, long line of people with their own particular take on it.
Come back Arthur of the Britons, all is forgiven!
(1970s low budget kids series staring Oliver Tobias, with BRIAN BLESSED as King Mark of Cornwall).
What an interesting and novel concept… King Arthur. Why not Robin Hood? Or is there a theme that has been beaten to death more thoroughly than even those two? Maybe go all in and try “King Arthur vs Robin Hood”?
@14- By the numbers, I’m told that Sherlock Holmes is the most-adapted character, but those lists tend to leave out mytholgoical/folkloric characters without a specific fictional origin.
Meanwhile, while it wasn’t a vs. situation, T.H. White had a young Arthur encounter Robin ‘Ood in The Sword in the Stone.
Now I’m thinking Robin Hood stands accused of the murder of King Arthur, and Sherlock Holmes steps in to clear his name. Pure Hollywood gold!
(To keep me happy, the real killers turn out to be Duach and Bratach and Nerthach, the sons of Gwawdur Cyrfach.)
One might say the Knights of the Round Table were the original Justice League!
I didn’t like Excalibur when it came out because at that point I was still a Mallory/T.H. White purist. I have read a lot of variations since and dug into the historical background and I am no longer a purist of any kind. Though Merlin diverged a good bit farther than I personally was willing to accept.
An Arthur based on the original Welsh tales from the Mabinogion and triads would be deeply surreal and fantastic! Of course the names would be murder to pronounce!