Blockbusters and the Ancient World by Chris Davies;

Author:Chris Davies;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury UK

Figure 6.2 Guinevere (Keira Knightley) is held prisoner in a dungeon in King Arthur.

Source: King Arthur, directed by Antoine Fuqua © Touchstone Pictures 2004. All rights reserved.

Roger Ebert described King Arthur as ‘a story with uncanny parallels to current events in Iraq’, with Guinevere’s torture occurring with ‘Geneva and its Convention safely in the future’.41 Such contemporary resonance does not appear to have been the filmmakers’ intention, or at least not all parties as the key figures in the film’s production have offered conflicting accounts. Fuqua did not appear to promote his work or push a particular reading as prominently as Stone, Petersen or Snyder with their respective epics, although this may be due to his annoyance over the changes enforced by Jerry Bruckheimer, the Hollywood producer behind some of the most financially successful films of the 1980s and 1990s. Bruckheimer came to King Arthur following Black Hawk Down (2001) and Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003), and Joseph Sullivan has suggested that critics who regard King Arthur as ‘pro-American, pro-Bush, or even pro-military’ are seeing Bruckheimer’s influence.42 He quotes the producer as stating that Arthur and his knights ‘are like [US] Special Forces, wherever they are now, fighting for another country. It’s heroism, camaraderie, brotherhood. They are fighting for what they believe in, for the moral high ground, all the kinds of themes I love.’43 However, Sullivan argues that Fuqua and Franzoni actually had greater influence in the overall creation of meaning in the film.44 For Franzoni, the film was inspired not by America’s role in the War on Terror but by Vietnam, and was intended to be ‘distinctly anti-war and anti-expansionist and was anchored in the pre-9/11 world’.45 Franzoni states in an interview : ‘Between the Americans and the Romans there is no difference. With the best intentions they come to a country to free it from the barbarians. But soon the problems start. They don’t understand the other culture. And they need violence to establish their leadership. They torture and humiliate their prisoners of war.’46 His script reportedly pre-dates 9/11 and was presented to Bruckheimer in the summer of 2000, following the release of Gladiator, with the intention that it would be an allegory for the Vietnam War. As public discourse came to compare the Iraq War to Vietnam, so too did Franzoni’s allegory for Vietnam become startlingly relevant.

Fuqua reinforces King Arthur’s debt to Vietnam, describing conversations he had with the film’s military advisor, Harry Humphries (who had also worked on Black Hawk Down and Tears of the Sun), in which they discussed envisioning Roman Britain and the battle scenes in a manner that would evoke the Vietnam War.47 Fuqua regards Arthur’s knights as being like the French and American armies in Indo-China, while the Woads utilisation of their environment to wage a guerrilla war and expel a foreign enemy parallels the Vietcong.48 King Arthur also depicts a small platoon of soldiers going on a mission behind enemy lines and their dialogue

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