KING ARTHUR Axed from Summer, Moves to Feb 2017

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AndyDursin
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KING ARTHUR Axed from Summer, Moves to Feb 2017

#1 Post by AndyDursin »

In the grand tradition of JUPITER ASCENDING and PAN comes Warner's next "move it out of summer so it can die more easily" bomb.

You wonder if there will not be a regime change at WB in the near future. Guy Ritchie also with another flop en route it seems.

http://variety.com/2015/film/news/charl ... 201666367/

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Monterey Jack
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Re: KING ARTHUR Axed from Summer, Moves to Feb 2017

#2 Post by Monterey Jack »

When was the last time a King Arthur or Robin Hood or Peter Pan movie made any money? You know that studios only snap this stuff up because it's public domain and thus free to acquire, but there's a reason for that. :? Pan was a disaster, that Clive Owen/Keira Knightley King Arthur flick from a decade ago bombed, and the Ridley Scott Robin Hood (which cast fortysomething Russell Crowe and Cate Blanchett despite being a movie about the characters before any of the usual derring-do adventures they're known for) was a flop. Yeah, Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves made bank 25 years ago, but that was coasting on Kevin Costner's box-office clout at the height of his fame (and, honestly, have you ever felt compelled to watch it again since it first hit VHS?).

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Paul MacLean
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Re: KING ARTHUR Axed from Summer, Moves to Feb 2017

#3 Post by Paul MacLean »

Monterey Jack wrote:Yeah, Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves made bank 25 years ago, but that was coasting on Kevin Costner's box-office clout at the height of his fame (and, honestly, have you ever felt compelled to watch it again since it first hit VHS?).
I last watched Prince of Thieves in '02, and it felt more dated and clunky than the 1938 Errol Flynn version!

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Re: KING ARTHUR Axed from Summer, Moves to Feb 2017

#4 Post by AndyDursin »

Never been a big fan of Prince of Theives. Even when it was first released the consensus was that Alan Rickman saved it from being a total disappointment. I do remember how it came alive....when Connery showed up in the last scene lol

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Monterey Jack
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Re: KING ARTHUR Axed from Summer, Moves to Feb 2017

#5 Post by Monterey Jack »

Paul MacLean wrote: I last watched Prince of Thieves in '02, and it felt more dated and clunky than the 1938 Errol Flynn version!
But at least the Errol Flynn version remains fun to watch. POT is as much fun as a funeral.

"I'm Robin of Locksley!" :lol:

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AndyDursin
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Re: KING ARTHUR Axed from Summer, Moves to Feb 2017

#6 Post by AndyDursin »

Just as good as it looks, apparently!

Early on in his career, Guy Ritchie took rough-and-tumble streetwise hoodlums and elevated them to hero status. Now, he does the opposite, taking high-class literary heroes — first Sherlock Holmes and now King Arthur — and plunging them down to gutter level. The idea, one supposes, is to make these lofty cultural icons into relatable underdogs, but the effect is akin to slander. If there ever had been a real Sherlock or Arthur, they would surely be horrified to see themselves depicted as such commonplace thugs.

In Ritchie’s over-the-top, rock-and-roll “King Arthur: Legend of the Sword,” the less you know about the legend in question, the better. The brash British director has thrown out nearly all preexisting Athurian notions and come up with a smoking new riff on the famous sword-in-the-stone tale that makes “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” look like a work of rigorous historical scholarship by comparison.

It’s epic, in the sense that it features elaborate CG backdrops swarming with thousands of virtual extras, and it’s extravagant, to the extent that Warner Bros. flushed away millions of dollars to produce this gaudy eyesore. But ultimately, “King Arthur” is just a loud, obnoxious parade of flashy set pieces, as one visually busy, belligerent action scene after another marches by, each making less sense than the last, but all intended to overwhelm. That technique has served Richie well before — a sort of slick back-alley magic by which he distracts our attention in one direction, only to pull off something wondrous and surprising in the other, much to the audience’s collective amazement. But in this case, the approach largely backfires, as attempts to dazzle with giant elephants, a scenery-chewing Jude Law, and an occasionally shirtless stud king (played by well-cast, but otherwise squandered “The Lost City of Z” star Charlie Hunnam) leaves us more confused than awestruck.
http://variety.com/2017/film/reviews/ki ... 202420937/

mkaroly
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Re: KING ARTHUR Axed from Summer, Moves to Feb 2017

#7 Post by mkaroly »

To be honest, the movie looks terrible to me...not something I would be interested in seeing.

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Re: KING ARTHUR Axed from Summer, Moves to Feb 2017

#8 Post by AndyDursin »

I'm not a Guy Ritchie fan so I can safely avoid it.

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Monterey Jack
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Re: KING ARTHUR Axed from Summer, Moves to Feb 2017

#9 Post by Monterey Jack »

I generally enjoy Ritchie's films, and I'm flush with movie cash tickets at the moment (god bless the current M&M's Guardians Of The Galaxy promo :D), so I'll be checking this out early next week.

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Re: KING ARTHUR Axed from Summer, Moves to Feb 2017

#10 Post by AndyDursin »

18% fresh and falling. I think I'd throw the Movie Cash in the trash before spending money driving to the theater. lol

It just looks so flipping awful. Who the hell wanted some loud, ridiculous King Arthur movie with teeny-bopper CGI and the SONS OF ANARCHY guy? I guess their demo numbers were hoping to recapture the Sherlock audience but what a severe miscalculation, they can't even put 2 coherent minutes together to sell it.

Either way, have they axed the Warner Bros. regime who greenlighted all of the crap they've made over the last few years? No wonder why they want to make a sequel to something as marginal as EDGE OF TOMORROW. Not that it was even that good, it's just less bad than the rest of their garbage.

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Paul MacLean
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Re: KING ARTHUR Axed from Summer, Moves to Feb 2017

#11 Post by Paul MacLean »

As much as it seems dated (and perhaps a bit stilted) today, Excalibur remains the best King Arthur movie to date -- in large part because it was the vision of one man, who held a life-long a passion for the legend.

This new version is another studio-driven cash-grab, motivated by the mindset "What's a public domain story we can adapt which has all that fantasy crap the kids wanna see?"

The Hollywood Reporter has compiled some of the critical responses this film has been getting -- my favorite is "it’s a slog with occasional good parts, strutting along like a cocksure jock who doesn’t know he has a 'kick me' sign on his back"

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-v ... ie-1001961

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AndyDursin
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Re: KING ARTHUR Axed from Summer, Moves to Feb 2017

#12 Post by AndyDursin »

This actually makes the Jerry Bruckheimer KING ARTHUR look a lot better now -- and that one was heavily derided back at the time (I thought it was pretty decent by modern standards...at least not embarrassing like this!).

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Paul MacLean
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Re: KING ARTHUR Axed from Summer, Moves to Feb 2017

#13 Post by Paul MacLean »

AndyDursin wrote:This actually makes the Jerry Bruckheimer KING ARTHUR look a lot better now -- and that one was heavily derided back at the time (I thought it was pretty decent by modern standards...at least not embarrassing like this!).
I appreciated what they were trying to do with that film, placing Arthur's rise in the waning days of the Roman occupation of Britain. I've always been interested in Roman Britain anyway, so that got some points from me -- as did some of the costuming! :mrgreen:

Image


Stylistically though, the movie was too trendy for my taste, with all the blue tinting and attempts to replicate the "Gladiator" style (including the formulaic Hans Zimmer score). I'm not a huge fan of Clive Owen either (he was another of those actors in the mid 2000s -- like Colin Farrel, and Camilla Belle -- who got lots of leading roles because they were "on the cusp of stardom").

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Monterey Jack
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Re: KING ARTHUR Axed from Summer, Moves to Feb 2017

#14 Post by Monterey Jack »

Paul MacLean wrote:I've always been interested in Roman Britain anyway, so that got some points from me -- as did some of the costuming! :mrgreen:

Image
I remember that some people were offended at the time that they digitally inflated Keira Knightley's bustline for some of the King Arthur posters. They did the same thing on one of the middle Harry Potter movies for Emma Watson, which was far ickier considering she was probably fifteen at the time. :o

Anyways, I barely remember that film, aside from it being okay-ish in a poor-man's Braveheart/Galdiator sort of way. Nothing I'd ever watch again.


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AndyDursin
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Re: KING ARTHUR Axed from Summer, Moves to Feb 2017

#15 Post by AndyDursin »

$20 mil projected opening weekend, on a $175 mil budget...this one is PAN all over again for WB. The reviews might be even worse.

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