Excalibur (film)

Excalibur is a 1981 epic medieval fantasy film directed, cowritten and produced by John Boorman, that retells the legend of King Arthur and the knights of the Round Table, based loosely on the 15th-century Arthurian romance Le Morte d'Arthur by Thomas Malory. It stars Nigel Terry as Arthur, Nicol Williamson as Merlin, Nicholas Clay as Lancelot, Cherie Lunghi as Guenevere, Helen Mirren as Morgana, Liam Neeson as Gawain, Gabriel Byrne as Uther and Patrick Stewart as Leondegrance. The film is named after the legendary sword of King Arthur that features prominently in Arthurian literature. The film's soundtrack features the music of Richard Wagner and Carl Orff, along with an original score by Trevor Jones.

Boorman's Excalibur began development as an unproduced adaptation of The Lord of the Rings. The film was shot entirely on location in Ireland and at Ardmore Studios, employing Irish actors and crew. It has been acknowledged for its importance to the Irish filmmaking industry and for helping launch the film and acting careers of a number of Irish and British actors, including Liam Neeson, Patrick Stewart, Gabriel Byrne and Ciarán Hinds.

Reviewers praised Excalibur visual style. It won the award for Best Artistic Contribution at the 1981 Cannes Film Festival, and received an Oscar nomination for Best Cinematography and a BAFTA nomination for Best Costume Design. It grossed $35 million in the United States and Canada on a budget of $11 million.

Plot
In the Dark Ages, the sorcerer Merlin retrieves the magical sword Excalibur from the Lady of the Lake for Uther Pendragon. Merlin also agrees to help Uther seduce Igrayne, the Duke of Cornwall's wife, in exchange for “what issues from your lust". With Merlin's magic, Uther tricks Igrayne into sleeping with him while the Duke dies in battle. Her daughter Morgana, however, sees through Uther's illusion. Uther takes Igrayne as his wife and months later, Igrayne gives birth to Arthur, and Merlin comes for the boy. Furious, Uther chases after Merlin, but is ambushed by the Duke's surviving men. Before dying, Uther thrusts Excalibur into a stone. Merlin declares that he who pulls the sword from the stone shall be king.

Merlin entrusts Ector to raise the infant Arthur, whom he treats as his own son. Ector's son, Kay, grows up with Arthur as his brother, and Arthur becomes his squire when Kay becomes a knight. Years later, Arthur pulls Excalibur from the stone, proving he is Uther's son, the rightful ruler. Leodegrance witnesses this and immediately pledges his allegiance to Arthur.

The knights who oppose Arthur's kingship due to him being a bastard (under medieval law, children born as the fruit of an adulterous union were still bastards even if Uther married Igrayne before Arthur's birth), subsequently attempt to storm the castle of Arthur's ally, Leondegrance. Arthur's bravery and prowess at combat earn him the trust of Uryens, whom he defeats in battle. Arthur makes Uryens knight him and swear fealty to him. During this time, Arthur also meets Leondegrace's daughter, Guinevere and is smitten by her. Merlin warns Arthur that Guinevere will one day fall in love with someone else but Arthur ignores this.

Later, the undefeated knight Lancelot blocks a bridge, seeking a king worthy of his sword. He defeats the king's knights and is challenged by Arthur to a fight. Lancelot almost bests Arthur, but Arthur calls upon the power of Excalibur to defeat Lancelot as they fight in a lake. This breaks Excalibur and Arthur admits that he was wrong for doing this. The Lady of the Lake fixes the sword and hands it back to Arthur. Arthur is victorious, and Lancelot swears allegiance to him. Guinevere and Lancelot become immediately infatuated with each other upon meeting. Arthur and his knights unify the land. Arthur creates the Round Table, and commissions the building of his castle Camelot. On Arthur and Guinevere's wedding day, Lancelot tells Guinevere that he loves her but his loyalty to Arthur means that he can not pursue her romantically. While attending the wedding, Arthur's half-sister Morgana reveals to Merlin that she is a sorceress and becomes apprenticed to him.

Influenced by Morgana's magic, Gawain accuses Guinevere of treachery and a duel over her innocence is set. While Arthur is judge of the trial, Lancelot fights for her honour and wins. Guinevere is moved by this and the two make love. Arthur finds out about it and spitefully thrusts Excalibur into the ground between them. Merlin's magical link to the land impales him on the sword, and Morgana seizes the opportunity to trap him and steal his secret Charm of Making. Taking the form of Guinevere, she has sex with the unknowing Arthur and is impregnated by him.

Morgana later gives birth to a son, Mordred, whose incestuous origin strikes the land with famine and sickness. Struck by a magical bolt of lightning, Arthur is reduced to a weakened state. He sends his knights on a quest for the Holy Grail, hoping to restore the land and himself. While searching, many knights die or are bewitched by Morgana into entering her service. After reaching adulthood, Mordred demands Arthur's crown, to no avail. Before rebuking Arthur's attempt to recognise him as his son, Mordred vows to return with an army and take Camelot by force.

Perceval resists Morgana's attacks and soon becomes the final remaining knight questing for the Grail. Along the way, he nearly drowns and is transported to where the Grail is kept. He proves worthy, gains the Grail and takes it back to Arthur, who drinks from it and is revitalised, along with the land. Arthur calls upon his foster brother Kay to rally his remaining forces to battle Mordred and Morgana.

Arthur finds Guinevere at a convent, and they reconcile. She gives him back Excalibur, which she had kept, and he rides off with his men. At Stonehenge, Arthur falls asleep, and his love liberates Merlin from Morgana's magical prison. After a final conversation with Arthur, Merlin appears to Morgana and tricks her into speaking the Charm of Making. This exhausts her magical powers and summons a mist that envelops her camp and the battlefield. Mordred discovers her aged, true self and murders her in disgust.

Arthur and his men wage war on Mordred's forces, using the mist in their favour. During the battle, Lancelot arrives, reconciles with Arthur and dies fighting. Arthur manages to kill Mordred, but the fight leaves him mortally wounded. While dying, he commands Perceval, the only other survivor, to throw Excalibur into a lake, knowing that one day the sword will rise again when a worthy king comes to power. Perceval complies, and the Lady of the Lake catches the sword, dragging it into the depths. Perceval returns to the battlefield in time to glimpse Arthur being carried away on a ship, sailing towards his rest on Avalon.

Cast

 * Nigel Terry as Arthur
 * Helen Mirren as Morgana Le Fay
 * Kay McLaren as the aged Morgana
 * Barbara Byrne (no relation to Gabriel) as the young Morgana
 * Nicholas Clay as Sir Lancelot
 * Cherie Lunghi as Guenevere
 * Paul Geoffrey as Perceval
 * Nicol Williamson as Merlin
 * Corin Redgrave as Duke of Cornwall
 * Patrick Stewart as King Leodegrance
 * Keith Buckley as Uryens
 * Clive Swift as Ector
 * Liam Neeson as Gawain
 * Gabriel Byrne as King Uther Pendragon
 * Robert Addie as Prince Mordred
 * Charley Boorman as young Mordred
 * Katrine Boorman as Igrayne
 * Ciarán Hinds as King Lot
 * Niall O'Brien as Sir Kay
 * Mannix Flynn as Mordred’s Lieutenant
 * Brid Brennan as Lady-in-Waiting
 * Eamon Kelly as Abbot
 * Hilary Joyalle as Lady of the Lake

Development
John Boorman had planned a film adaptation of the Merlin legend as early as 1969, but when submitting the three-hour script written with Rospo Pallenberg to United Artists, they rejected it deeming it too costly and offered him J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings instead. Boorman was allowed to shop the script elsewhere, but no studio would commit to it. Returning to his original idea of the Merlin legend, Boorman was eventually able to secure deals that would help him do Excalibur. Much of the imagery and set designs were created with his The Lord of the Rings project in mind.

Writing
Rospo Pallenberg and John Boorman wrote the screenplay, which is primarily an adaptation of Malory's Morte d'Arthur (1469–70) recasting the Arthurian legends as an allegory of the cycle of birth, life, decay, and restoration, by stripping the text of decorative or insignificant details. The resulting film is reminiscent of mythographic works such as Sir James Frazer's The Golden Bough and Jessie Weston's From Ritual to Romance; Arthur is presented as the "Wounded King" whose realm becomes a wasteland to be reborn thanks to the Grail, and may be compared to the Fisher (or Sinner) King, whose land also became a wasteland, and was also healed by Perceval. "The film has to do with mythical truth, not historical truth," Boorman remarked to a journalist during filming. The Christian symbolism revolves around the Grail, perhaps most strongly in the baptismal imagery of Perceval finally achieving the Grail quest. "That's what my story is about: the coming of Christian man and the disappearance of the old religions which are represented by Merlin. The forces of superstition and magic are swallowed up into the unconscious."

In addition to Malory, the writers incorporated elements from other Arthurian stories, sometimes altering them. For example, the sword between the sleeping lovers' bodies comes from the tales of Tristan and Iseult; the knight who returns Excalibur to the water is changed from Bedivere to Perceval; and Morgause and Morgan Le Fay are merged into one character. The sword Excalibur and the Sword in the Stone are presented as the same thing; in some versions of the legends, they are separate. In Le Morte d'Arthur, Sir Galahad, the illegitimate son of Lancelot and Elaine of Corbenic, is the Knight who is worthy of the Holy Grail. Boorman follows the earlier version of the tale as told by Chrétien de Troyes, making Perceval the grail winner. Some new elements were added, such as Uther wielding Excalibur before Arthur (repeated in Merlin), Merlin's 'Charm of Making' (written in Old Irish), and the concept of the world as "the dragon" (probably inspired by the dragon omen seen in Geoffrey of Monmouth's account of Merlin's life).

According to linguist Michael Everson, the "Charm of Making" that Merlin speaks to invoke the dragon is an invention, there being no attested source for the charm. Everson reconstructs the text as Old Irish. The phonetic transcription of the charm as spoken in the film is. Although the pronunciation in the film has little relation to how the text would actually be pronounced in Irish, the most likely interpretation of the spoken words, as Old Irish text is:
 * The Charm of Making


 * Anál nathrach,
 * orth’ bháis's bethad,
 * do chél dénmha

In modern English, this can be translated as:


 * Serpent's breath,
 * the charm of death and life,
 * thy omen of making.

Casting
Boorman cast Nicol Williamson and Helen Mirren opposite each other as Merlin and Morgana, knowing that the two were on less than friendly terms due to personal issues that arose during a production of Macbeth seven years earlier. Boorman verified this on the Excalibur DVD commentary, saying he felt that the tension on the set would come through in the actors' performances.

Even though he was 35 years old, Nigel Terry plays King Arthur from his teenage years to his ending as an aged monarch.

Several members of the Boorman family appear in the cast: his daughter Katrine played Igraine, Arthur's mother, and his son Charley portrayed Mordred as a boy. Because of the number of Boormans involved with the film, it is sometimes called "The Boorman Family Project".

Filming


Excalibur was filmed in 1980 on-location in County Wicklow, County Tipperary, and County Kerry, with the interiors shot at Ardmore Studios. The costumes were designed by Bob Ringwood. The armor was designed by Terry English.

An early critical battle scene at a castle, in which Arthur is made a knight by Uryens while kneeling in a moat, was filmed in Cahir Castle, in Cahir County Tipperary, the Republic of Ireland, a well-preserved Irish castle. The castle's moat is the River Suir which flows around it. The fight with Lancelot was filmed at Powerscourt Estate's waterfall. Other locations included Wicklow Head as the backdrop to the battle over Tintagel, the Kerry coast as the place from which Arthur sails to Avalon, and a place called Childers Wood near Roundwood, County Wicklow, where Arthur comes on Excalibur in the stone. At the time, John Boorman was living just a few miles down the road, at Annamoe. According to Boorman, the love scene between Lancelot and Guenevere in the forest was filmed on a very cold night, but Nicholas Clay and Cherie Lunghi performed the scene nude anyway.

According to Boorman, the film was originally three hours long; among the scenes that were deleted from the finished film, but featured in one of the promotional trailers, was a sequence where Lancelot rescued Guenevere from a forest bandit.

Release
The film opened in the United States on 10 April 1981 and in London on 2 July 1981, before opening nationwide in the United Kingdom on 5 July 1981. The film was initially released in the United States with an R rating. Distributors later announced a 119 minute PG-rated version, with less graphic sex and violence, but it was not widely released. When first released in the United Kingdom, the film was classified as an "AA" by the BBFC, restricting it to those aged 14 and over. In 1982, the BBFC replaced the "AA" certificate with the higher age-specific "15", which was applied to Excalibur when released on home video. When Excalibur first premiered on HBO in 1982, the R-rated version was shown in the evening and the PG-rated version was shown during the daytime, following the then-current rule of HBO only showing R-rated films during the evening hours.

Reception
Excalibur was the number one film in the United States during its opening weekend, eventually grossing $34,967,437 in the United States and Canada, ranking as the 18th highest-grossing film of the year. On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, it holds a 72% score based on 93 reviews, with an average rating of 7.0/10. On Metacritic, it has a weighted average score of 56 out of 100 based on reviews from 10 critics.

Roger Ebert called it both a "wondrous vision" and "a mess". Elaborating further, Ebert wrote that the film was "a record of the comings and goings of arbitrary, inconsistent, shadowy figures who are not heroes but simply giants run amok. Still, it's wonderful to look at". Vincent Canby wrote that while Boorman took Arthurian myths seriously, "he has used them with a pretentiousness that obscures his vision." In her review in The New Yorker, Pauline Kael wrote that the film had its own "crazy integrity", adding that the imagery was "impassioned" with a "hypnotic quality". According to her, the dialogue was "near-atrocious". She concluded by writing that "Excalibur is all images flashing by... We miss the dramatic intensity that we expect the stories to have, but there's always something to look at".

Others have praised the entire film, with Variety calling it "a near-perfect blend of action, romance, fantasy and philosophy". Sean Axmaker of Parallax View wrote "John Boorman's magnificent and magical Excalibur is, to my mind, the greatest and the richest of screen incarnation of the oft-told tale." In a later review upon the film's DVD release, Salon's David Lazarus noted the film's contribution to the fantasy genre, stating that it was "a lush retelling of the King Arthur legend that sets a high-water mark among sword-and-sorcery movies". A study by Jean-Marc Elsholz demonstrates how closely the film Excalibur was inspired by the Arthurian romance tradition and its intersections with medieval theories of light, most particularly in the aesthetic/visual narrative of Boorman's film rather than in its plot alone.

Christopher John reviewed Excalibur in Ares Magazine #9 and commented that "Excalibur is a shockingly large film and an incredibly intricate and fascinating piece of cinema. It is a fine prologue for the spate of fantasy films waiting in the wings for release this year." The film featured many actors early in their careers who later became very well-known, including Helen Mirren, Patrick Stewart, Liam Neeson, Gabriel Byrne, and Ciarán Hinds. For his performance as Merlin, Nicol Williamson received widespread acclaim. The Times in 1981 wrote: "The actors are led by Williamson's witty and perceptive Merlin, missed every time he's offscreen".

Legacy
The comedic 1989 teaser trailer for Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III directly parodies the lady of the lake scene from Excalibur.

In 2009, filmmaker Zack Snyder said Excalibur was his favorite film, calling it "the perfect meeting of movies and mythology". In his film Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016), Bruce Wayne and his parents, Thomas and Martha, are walking home from seeing Excalibur when the latter two are killed by Joe Chill. The event later leads to Bruce becoming Batman. Moreover, the film parallels much of the film's major plot points, most notably Superman killing Doomsday with a Kryptonite Spear at the expense of his own life intended as a homage to Arthur killing Mordred with Excalibur at the cost of his.

The 2018 adaption of Ready Player One features the charm of making as an activation/deactivation code.

During the shooting of the 2023 film Irati, inspired by Basque mythology and several medieval films including Excalibur, the crew nicknamed it Euskalibur, after euskal, ("Basque-language").

Documentaries
Neil Jordan directed a 1981 documentary on the making of Excalibur, entitled The Making of Excalibur: Myth Into Movie. In 2013 another documentary entitled Behind the Sword in the Stone was released featuring interviews with director Boorman and many of the cast, such as Terry, Mirren, Stewart, Neeson, Byrne, Lunghi, and Charley Boorman. Distribution rights were later acquired by PBS International, and the title was changed to Excalibur: Behind the Movie. As of June 2020, this documentary was made available in the United States through various online streaming services.