Skip to content
Peter M Howard (Contact Options) ::

Peter Howard is Wintermute, mythologist

The site of a film student and geek from Sydney, Australia. Most of the content on the site is arranged under ?bits, which you can navigate by post, month, or category. You may want to subscribe to the Atom feed.

wintermute :: bits

You are currently viewing an individual bits entry. You can navigate individual entries through time, or navigate the archives via the options at the bottom of the page

« The name of this class, 'abc', conflicts with the name of another class that was loaded, 'abc' :: I knew he was stupid, but really... »

Artorius Rex

16July2004 [directLink] [myth]

I’ve wanted for years now to make a film about King Arthur - when I heard about the new version I thought I’d have to postpone that, especially given it was going back to historical roots, something I also wanted to try - but after seeing it this evening I’m just in more of a hurry to make my own version.

The history is straightforward enough - Arthur is a Roman-Briton who leads his knights, defeats some Saxons… There are a couple of different locations for the myth though - the movie sets it in the North, at Hadrian’s Wall. The alternative version sets it in the south-west - Wales and Cornwall (the location of Tintagel).

Not a lot actually happened in the movie - bad enough; but what really bothered me was their approach to/myth of Christianity… First off was an obsession with pushing Pelagius - Arthur, the only decent Christian in the movie, goes on about Pelagius’ doctrines of “free will and equality”, and frees slaves to prove his worth. Unfortunately, Pelagius was a heretic who denied Original Sin and Christ’s subsequent Redemption.
(Catholic Encyclopedia - the first couple of paragraphs are the important information)

On top of the only decent Christian being the follower of a heretic, there was the usual smattering of evil/corrupt/weak ‘Christians’ - only one kid seemed vaguely decent, but that’s probably because he didn’t open his mouth a lot.

Then what appeared to be the main ‘theme’ of the movie, at least in relation to Arthur: at one stage Arthur offers his life, Christ-like, as a sacrifice for his friends… But by the end of the film God betrays Arthur, taking instead his friends - on the battlefield at the end Arthur cries out to God: “it wasn’t supposed to be like this”, and proceeds to marry Guinevere in a pagan ceremony, with no Christian symbolism whatsoever, which I couldn’t help but read as Arthur rejecting God (and Christianity) after God rejected him.

« The name of this class, 'abc', conflicts with the name of another class that was loaded, 'abc' :: I knew he was stupid, but really... »

Related [myth]

photos :: recent albums
photos :: random