#md mod

I checked this blog and saw that he was fucking dead 😭

UQ deserves all the credit. This blog was her idea and she got the ball rolling. So, we owe her a lot. Where else would we squee about the film? :) 

But thank you for the enthusiasm! Personally, I don’t have any experience with the Arthurian fandom outside this blog (I’ve always been a lurker so it’s really weird being a mod now), so all I can say is that the followers of this blog are all pretty awesome and make this blog the great place that it is. 

Chat with us about the film anytime! We look forward to it. King Arthur: Legend of the Sword is sooo under-appreciated. We must keep the love for the film alive. :) 

Hey, I only missed New Year’s by a couple of hours! 😋

But on behalf of UQ, (slightly belated) Happy New Year to you and all our great followers! We couldn’t do this without your support!

May 2018 lead to more folks giving King Arthur: Legend of the Sword a chance and discovering what an AMAZING movie it is. May artists and writers continue to be inspired by the film, so that us lucky people can enjoy the fruits of their labor. May there be lots more great discussion about Arthur and the Lads this year!

Many, many thanks to @misssara1981  providing the links to the YouTube videos. You’re right. They’re great quality. :) 

@lenafromthenordiccoven, here’s the ‘Sword from the Stone’ video that you were looking for. Hope you’re feeling better! I’ll have the rest of the videos up soon! (Or you can always follow the links on YouTube while you rest in bed. :) 

So, answering your previous Ask led me to stumbling upon THIS ask. OMG. I’m so mortified that it’s been sitting in the Ask box for sooooo long. Like, I’m apparently blind? I’m so sorry! BAD MOD. 

But what a great question! And I think I have a better answer to it than the Mage/Nimue comparison. Like you, I love the costume design of the film. Everything about the movie is so organic to me, and what I mean by that is all the disparate parts (costume design, production design, music, acting, dialogue, cinematography) come together to form a cohesive whole. And what holds the whole together is anachronism, the clashing of modern and medieval that isn’t a clash at all because it works. (It’s Guy Ritchie working his magic!) 

So, if I were to cosplay anything from the movie, I’d definitely go for gender-bending. I found the armor of Vortigern’s Blacklegs to be so distinctive. Jack’s Eye is a good example, as is the Earl of Mercia. Vortigern himself in that big crowd sequence with the full armor, white fur cloak and crown was pretty damn fantastic. No offense to Arthur, but I think Vortigern was the best dressed character in the whole film. He gives evil such PANACHE. I’d wear ALL of his outfits. Most of his outfits are some form of black and white color combination with gold accents. And the tailoring is classic and streamlined, which I favor. 

As for Arthur, I loved his ‘hero’ jacket, the white one with the ‘gold’ accents. I loved as well, how that jacket got more rugged and roughed up as the film wore on. When it first appears, it’s a pristine white (okay, that’s not very subtle when it comes to identifying Arthur as our hero, but I ain’t complaining) but not for long. And the image of him in that jacket while pulling out Excalibur together with the swell of the music is pretty damn iconic! 

Lastly, the Mage has a gorgeous almost midnight blue velvet cloak accented with light blue feathers. I think she’s wearing it when she summons the eagle to disrupt Arthur’s execution, but I could be wrong. The production still is of her crouched on the ground wearing that cloak. I want that in my wardrobe. :) 

Please, keep thinking about the film. We love your questions/analysis! :) 

I’m a huge fan of the syrens (and how magic and magical creatures are depicted in the film, in general). The syrens are particularly great because there’s lot of fodder there for writers who want to continue the story. 

In my case, I do think the syrens are just chilling under Camelot. They’re certainly NOT common knowledge, so there doesn’t seem to be any reason for them to leave. For example, Elsa had no idea where Vortigern was bringing her or what they were doing there. She just sensed that whatever it was, it wasn’t going to be good. (Poor Elsa.) Even if somebody were to find the syrens’ hideaway, there would still be the matter of summoning them. (Hmm, I think I’ll just ring this dodgy bell in this creepy underground water cavern for the hell of it, says the stranger that stumbles upon their lair.) 

Having said that, the syrens are magical creatures and it wouldn’t be unreasonable to think that other practitioners of magic, particularly the learned ones such as The Mage (or even Merlin himself when he finally makes his appearance) would know some lore about the syrens and how to summon them. 

I also think that Arthur, with his memories restored to him of the night his father died, might have some inkling of them, or at least ask the Mage about how Vortigern was able to amass so much power even if the Tower wasn’t yet complete. (Geezus, I can’t remember. Was the tower finished by the end of the film?) At any rate, Arthur would’ve recognized the same monstrous form that killed his father and realized that it wasn’t the first time his uncle had been magically super-charged. (Hmm, Arthur says to himself. I wonder how my uncle managed that?) 

More videos! All courtesy of @misssara1981. (Don’t worry about tagging the wrong person! We all owe you thanks, not the other way around. :) - MD mod 

Camelot in 93 Days (10.23) 

Your brother is awesome. I feel his pain. And your questions are awesome too. Magic and Vortigern, two of my favorite KALOTS topics. Here goes. :) 

When I first watched the film, I thought that Vortigern’s nosebleed when Mordred died was a clear sign of foreshadowing that he and Mordred were secretly allies. Perhaps they even had an actual blood pact so that they would ‘feel’ or know when the other one died. 

Since then I’ve revised my thoughts about magic and Vortigern. It’s no secret that Vortigern and Mordred really were allies. For all of Vortigern’s protests that he was sent to study with Mordred for the sake of ‘diplomacy,’ it’s damn clear now that he became Mordred’s apprentice and first encountered the ‘dark arts’ through him. The revolt against Uther was a long time coming. But perhaps Vortigern’s reaction to magic is better explained in the broader context of how magic is used in the film. 

The film doesn’t spell out all its ground rules for magic but you can make some reasonable inferences. For example, mages have clear connections with animals as seen through the Mage herself, as well as Mordred and his impressive battle elephants. Equally importantly, the syrens tell Vortigern about the inherent balance in nature/magic. I’m paraphrasing badly but they basically say, ‘As your power grows, so too will the forces that oppose you,’ in answer to Vortigern’s question as to why Excalibur has chosen this moment to reveal itself. 

It’s this idea of balance that brings me back to Vortigern as a mage detector. (Great title. You should trademark that! :) In the film, once Mordred is killed Vortigern becomes the only practitioner of dark magic (that we know of). My own hypothesis is that his physical reactions (the headaches and such) to magic is his response to good or ‘white’ magic that challenges or threatens his own power. Hence, Excalibur and Uther at the start; then the Mage later. 

Vortigern’s goal is total domination/subjugation. The tower, as well as ending the Pendragon line, are the keys to consolidating his power. I believe that if Vortigern had been able to consolidate his power then the physical reactions would go away because there would be no one left to challenge him. Of course, if you take what the syrens say about balance to be a ‘natural law’ then what I just said isn’t strictly true either. At some point, somebody else would rise up to challenge Vortigern because the balance would reassert itself. (Although, there is the assertion that Vortigern could perhaps make himself immortal. Remember how the syrens tease him for looking so ‘well’ when he summons them a second time. It’s true. It looks like Vortigern’s barely aged a day from the prologue.) 

In the end, I like how the film positions the idea of magic to be a continual struggle of wills and forces. The prologue states that the people lived in harmony with the mages until Mordred came along. That basically means that balance and harmony ruled for a long time and now Camelot is entering a period of strife. Much like history, these forces will clash and the cycle will continue. Looking ahead to the later legends of Camelot, it also makes sense that Camelot would bear the seed of its own ruin. 

I have other ideas about magic in the film, but I’m gonna stop here because this has (typically) gotten veeery long. Thanks, as always, for the thought-provoking question! 😉