With just over a month to go now until Guy Ritchie’s King Arthur: Legend of the Sword opens, Warner Bros. have released a new banner and extended TV spot for the bold retake on Arthurian legend. The spot gives us a quick overview of Ritchie’s energetic style, which aims to inject a bit of dynamism and life into a story that can feel a bit overly familiar. It’s also probably the only King Arthur trailer to be soundtracked to Led Zeppelin.
Meanwhile, star Charlie Hunnam is eager to get fans psyched for his interpretation of the mythological King. In an interview with ComicBook.com at CinemaCon, he explained how he approached the character, and how he intended to have his Arthur differ from what’s come before:
“We just wanted to make sure that it was fresh and felt modern and had something to say that hadn’t been said before. We’ve seen the version of Arthur that’s the noble man who goes on the journey to be the noble king. We said we wanted to do something the opposite of that; we wanted to make him a little bit of a motherfucker. So he starts off he’s tough; he’s streetwise; he a little bit selfish but at center of it he has a good heart.”
Promising stuff, and it lines up nicely with what we know about Ritchie’s idiosyncratic take on the legend. He envisages Arthur as a young noble robbed of his birthright and turned onto the mean streets. He grows up rough, fighting for survival in whatever passes for gritty East End urban misery in medieval Camelot. Not knowing anything about his royal blood, he decides he may as well try to draw the sword from the stone. To his shock, he manages it and is forced to confront his legacy as future King of England.
The promotional material indicates that King Arthur: Legend of the Sword is to be an unlikely fusion of Peter Jacksonian Tolkien epic-ness and Ritchie’s singular style. I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty hyped for its May 12th release. It’s about time, too, as the film’s been finished for a year now.
