Improving old stories

Or at least, finding a new hook.  We recently watched the 2004 movie "King Arthur," whose conceit was that it would be a more historically plausible approach to the traditional tale.  In this version, Arthur is the son of a Roman father and a Celtic mother.  He leads a band of mounted warriors commandeered from a conquered Sarmatian tribe somewhere in the Caucasus, who are promised that if they serve for 15 years they will earn their freedom.  Lancelot is one of the Sarmatians, conscripted as a teenager.  Guinevere is a young Woad woman rescued from the dungeon of a Roman aristocrat whom Arthur is sent to rescue from Injun territory north of Hadrian's wall, on the eve of Rome's abrupt withdrawal from Britain in "453 A.D."  Merlin is the mysterious leader of Guinevere's blue-painted people.  There's kind of a plot, in which Woads and Sarmatians resent their subjugation by both Romans and newly arrived Saxon invaders.  Arthur carries a grudge against the Saxons for having killed his Celtic mother in a raid some years earlier and, in any case, is disgruntled by his superiors in the Roman army and thinks Guinevere isn't too hard to look at.  There are some battles at Hadrian's wall involving cavalry attacks, zillions of flaming arrows, something in the nature of napalm, and trebuchets with flaming missiles.  The Romans leave, the Saxons lose, and the Celtic Woads take Arthur as their king while looking forward to a couple of years of security before the Saxons return and overrun their territory completely.

The timing is a bit odd, since Rome withdrew from Britain in 407 A.D., not 453 A.D.  Setting aside the minor chronological slippage, I suppose it's not hard to buy the retreating Romans, about to take the last helicopter out of Saigon, as privileged types with a somewhat nominal approach to their Christianity and an effete Italian accent; the fact remains that all the Christians are two-faced cowards.  The Sarmatians are real enough; the Romans did conscript some of them, possibly for use in pacifying Britain, among other tasks.  It doesn't seem likely, however, that they should have had such elaborate armor, or even stirrups, let alone "Greek fire," in 5th century Britain.  Someone involved in the screenplay should probably have dreamed up a plot device whereby ancient Asian knowledge came over with the Sarmatians, like Conan with his "secret of the steel."

For all this historical revision, did we at least get a creative re-imagination of the classic elements of the Arthurian legend, such as the extraordinary honor of a band of men beating back brutal chaos, or the famous love triangle?  Eh, not really.  When the story begins, Arthur has been leading his band of proudly pagan Sarmatians for 15 years and enjoys their loyalty and respect.  His callous Roman superiors force him to lead his men on a suicide mission on the eve of an honorable retirement that would have allowed their promised return to Sarmatia.  While rescuing the unappealing Roman V.I.P., Arthur frees some mistreated Woads, including Guinevere, and begins to lecture them about natural rights.  He becomes disillusioned with the decadent and faithless Romans, choosing instead to make common cause with the Woads in a forlorn-hope stand against the invading Saxons.  Guinevere joins the battle as a prenaturally effective archer and broadswordsman, all 105 bright blue pounds of her.  Lancelot and Guinevere share about two misty glances before Lancelot is killed in battle, after which Arthur defeats the Saxons with the Woads' help and marries Guinevere to unite their people.  There's barely an Excalibur and only a few lines for Merlin.

All in all, I preferred the 1981 "Excalibur."  If the story's going to be anachronistic anyway, it would have been nice to preserve the aura of fantasy and mystery along with a plot and characters that made more sense.  Although the cast included some of my favorite actors, they were mostly wasted.

It's been a while since I've seen a really satisfying historical drama with a real plot come out of Hollywood.  On the other hand, we watched a surprisingly engaging if silly Godzilla-eats-New-York flick the other night: an indie production purporting to have been filmed with a hand-held video camera operated by a small band of hip young urban dwellers.  If you grant them the Godzilla, much of the rest of the story was believable and even moving.