MovieChat Forums > Camelot (2011) Discussion > Points that ruined this series

Points that ruined this series

posted 13 years ago by princeariom
26 replies | jump to latest

1. This Arthur would have never carved out a new kingdom at the time. He lacks every quality a king that rises from nothing must have. And as a character he wasn't even likable. I half hoped Leontes would clean his clock...

2. The battles were done with no more than 20 guys trying to look like they were more and the props used looked so fake i'm pretty sure the producers don't have a clue on what a real shield and sword look like;

3. Lots of illogical attitudes from the characters hurting credibility;

4. Arthur, a dark age king worrying about what everybody thought about him and Guinevere. He would have gone to the Oprah Show and talked about it if it had been invented;

5. Cliché death of Leontes after he played the "nice cuckhold" and saved the life of the guy who took his wife's virginity in their wedding day, this at a time when people killed each other with swords over nothing;

6. Vital passes into Camelot being guarded by 2 guys and a kid...

7. Total confusion between adult scenes and juvenile plot. Got the sensation that producers aimed to get teens into this. Wrong bet i'll say...

8. Finally, this Arthur... Could they have chosen a weaker looking guy to handle a sword and shield? When he tried to look hardened he looked like a pompous fool. A total miscast.

There's more, but i don't want to waste more of my time.

[–] wind_of_rage 10 years ago

All (mostly) true.
What annoyed me was the lack of a celtic religious strougle with the new christianity.
Merlin was a druid. Not a mage. Morgan Le Fey was a celtic (Pagan) ruler/chieftain persona in a world where christianity forced a new worldview into the picture that ruled out female leaders. Athur was trying to balance the new and the old and managed to build a kingdom against an outside force.
There is tons of great mythology around Arthus you could combine into something exiting and new. Why Starz made up something that had little to do with much of that...I donno.
I like most actors involved. Fienes is a fine fine actor but to me he didnt look anything like Merlin and would have needed a "scruffier" look. But thats a minor complain. Eva Green is always a pleasure. So yeah with better scripts, a stronger mythology and better a less clean setting I think this could have gotten realy good. But as it was..I didnt mind seing it cancelled.

[–] pol-edra 10 years ago

The Christian vs. Celtic Pagan plotline makes for great stories sometimes but it's been done and redone to death in the 1980s (I will make an exception for the later work of Bernard Cornwell who puts a new spin on that hackneyed topos, but then again he couldn't write something bad even if he tried). I didn't miss it here, as I had no desire to rewatch Mists of Avalon, and more importantly I was expecting more history in my Arthurian legend this time around. And this is my main gripe with this portrayal of religion in Britain ca. 500AD: it does not fit at all with what we know of Subroman Britain at the time. It makes all sorts of sense from a narrative POV (it makes sense to write an Arthurian legend in the making as a conflict between the old and the new, since we know that Arthurian literature is basically a Celtic background with medieval, Christian ornaments), but it does not from a historical POV. In the parts of the British Isles that were subjected to outside influence, the druids had been thoroughly diminished in power (even sometimes famously massacred, as on the Isle of Mona) by the Romans early on, i.e at a time when Rome was not even Christian yet. Later on, in those areas that were under Roman control (mostly the S-E of modern-day England), and mostly in urban areas, Christianity made its timid debuts, as it did in the rest of Europe, only more timidly so because it was so much at the edge of the Empire; but it was never in a position to threaten or persecute anyone. Then came the Saxons, and what little Christianity and Celtic paganism there had been in Britain was gradually replaced by the faith of the invaders, i.e another Pagan religion.

If there was a religious conflict in Britain at the time of Arthur, it was between the religions of the islanders (a hybrid of Roman and Celtic gods with a few Christian features here and there) and that of the invaders (the Germanic gods). All examples and traces of Christian vs. Pagan strife are later than Arthur, at a time Britain has become England and the Celtic gods have receded in the most distant corners of the Isle.

"Occasionally I'm callous and strange."

[–] wind_of_rage 10 years ago

I just dont think you CAN ignore the Pagan VS Christian cash of the Arhurian legend. While it has been done in literature TV still shys away from it probably because Christianity still has a stronger grip on people then I would like to believe and couldnt prossibly be presented in a positive light.
That said. I think before Christian monks ruined the Arthurian legend it was likely entirely a Pagan story. So you could get away with ignoring the christian aspect. But then I would expect more of the Pagan faith in the show (wich I havent seen done anywhere yet outside of Fantasy novells)

[–] pol-edra 10 years ago

"I just dont think you CAN ignore the Pagan VS Christian cash of the Arhurian legend."

Actually you can very easily: you just need to be more familiar with the medieval legend than with its modern rewrites. Paganism is a very tiny detail in the medieval Arthurian landscape.

"I think before Christian monks ruined the Arthurian legend it was likely entirely a Pagan story."

Obviously before Christian writers had a hand in the story, it was a Pagan story. Isn't that a bit tautological? But I disagree with your assessment that they "ruined" the legend. Not only did the medieval writers (not all of which were monks) produce amazing masterpieces, but if they hadn't, then we wouldn't know anything of the Arthurian legend, Pagan or otherwise. Between no legend at all and a Christianized version, I'll take the lesser of two evils - especially when that "evil" is made up of stunning works of art. At least we get glimpses of the Pagan roots of the story instead of nothing at all.

"Occasionally I'm callous and strange."

[–] wind_of_rage 10 years ago

Well I´d argue that without christians ruining an ancient culture there would have been no need for monks to write the stories down.
I´d also disagree about Paganism being "a tiny detail".
Lady of the Lake.
Arthur removing the head of Bran from the white hill
The Druid Merlin
The ("holy") Grail
Avalon

Thats all part of Pagan spirituality or at least mythology. Ignoring that is pretty much castrating the myth.