Legend tells of a director who, it has been prophesied, will one day make the true, definitive film adaptation of the legend of King Arthur, freeing a grateful populace from having to see it remade every few years. Guy Ritchie wants to be that director, but don’t expect him to tone down any of his Guy Ritchiness to do so. A new trailer for Ritchie’s proposed Arthurian epic, King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, promises plenty of high-octane action—with an anachronistic soundtrack to go with it—to accompany his story of the mythical British king, played in this version by a rough-and-tumble Charlie Hunnam.
“Why does the sword reveal itself now?” asks Jude Law, playing sneering warlord Vortigern. Why now, indeed. Maybe studio executives saw Excalibur, or First Knight, or the spectacularly lackluster King Arthur, and thought, You know what we really need? Another one of these. Maybe Guy Ritchie fell asleep while watching A Knight’s Tale, and then the idea of adding Zeppelin to this particular medieval myth came to him in a dream. Maybe strange women lying in ponds and distributing swords are now also writing spec scripts.
We may not know for sure until the sword finally does reveal itself on May 12.
