Guy Ritchie’s ‘King Arthur’ Flopped Because its Hero Lacked Virtue

Hollywood has a mixed record when it comes to transposing classic works of literature into film. You can count such movies as The Lord of the Rings and the recent The Jungle Book remake among its successes. Unfortunately for lovers of the Arthurian canon such as myself, director Guy Ritchie’s new King Arthur: Legend of the Sword will not be joining them.

King Arthur was reportedly intended to kick off a six-part franchise that would embrace the whole sweep of Arthurian legend, but with the film’s dismal 26% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and paltry $15 million opening weekend (on a $175 million budget), there will likely be some serious soul-searching at the studio about going forward with that ambitious venture.

What went wrong? Guy Ritchie (Snatch, Sherlock Holmes) brought his signature dazzling visual style to the project, but in an otherwise favorable critique, National Review’s Armond White dismissed it as borrowing too heavily from the likes of 300 and The Lord of the Rings; and the fusion of Ritchie’s British crime underworld sensibility with the sword-and-fantasy genre resulted in what less charitable critics are calling an incoherent mess.

SPOILERS AHEAD

But the core problem with King Arthur is, well, King Arthur. I’m willing to forgive a lot in an action-adventure film if it features a protagonist who inspires me to come along on his hero’s journey; on that score, King Arthur: Legend of the Sword surprisingly falls short, and that could be the reason it’s not connecting with audiences.

Why The Rock Shouldn’t Run for President

Dwayne Johnson is riding about as high as one could get these days. The Artist Formerly Known as The Rock is the highest-paid actor in Hollywood, People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive, and the NAACP’s Entertainer of the Year. His current film, The Fate of the Furious, set the record for the highest-grossing opening of all time, and two more films, Baywatch and Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, are slated to open this year. The third season of his HBO series Ballers premieres this summer as well. His multimillion-dollar smile gleams from covers of magazines ranging from GQ to National Review. It’s enough to go to an ordinary mortal’s head.

And perhaps it has, because Dwayne Johnson is now openly speculating about taking a run at the White House.

The Washington Post ran an op-ed last year suggesting that the now 45-year-old star would make an intriguing candidate with a serious shot at winning a future presidency. It’s not like there aren’t precedents for Hollywood stars conquering politics. Ronald Reagan, to name the most successful example, went from B-movie actor to conservative presidential icon. Arnold Schwarzenegger became governor of California. And of course, Donald Trump, while not a Hollywood star per se, used his success in the world of reality TV as a springboard into the Oval Office.

Since that WaPo article, Johnson seems to have been mulling over his own ascendance to the White House, because he told GQ in a recent interview, “I think that it’s a real possibility”:

“A year ago it started coming up more and more. There was a real sense of earnestness, which made me go home and think, ‘Let me really rethink my answer and make sure I am giving an answer that is truthful and also respectful.’ I didn't want to be flippant—‘We'll have three days off for a weekend! No taxes!’”

“If [becoming president] is something he focused on,” says Ron Meyer, the NBC Universal vice chairman, “he probably would accomplish it. I think there's nothing that he couldn't do.” I agree. The question is not whether Dwayne Johnson could become President, but whether he should.

Timelessness, Not Political Timeliness, Makes the Best Stories

Timely. Relevant. Resonant.

These are the promotional watchwords for must-see TV and movies in our politics-saturated pop culture today. The New York Times recently published a piece about the “timeliness” of the new Amazon series American Gods, because of the show’s pro-immigration theme. The Times also advertised Hulu’s adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale as “newly resonant,” because of the widespread, unhinged fretting that President Trump is going to usher in a misogynistic theocracy in which women are stripped of their rights and reduced to being childbearing livestock.

There is more. Director Ron Howard revealed that a Nazi character in his Nat Geo series Genius was modeled after President Trump, and that an episode with an immigration theme had “vital resonance” with current events. The alt-history Amazon series The Man in the High Castle is seen as relevant because of the absurd fear-mongering over imaginary, “deeply disturbing parallels” between the Trump administration and the show’s depiction of a fascist America. Not even kids’ movies can escape this hysteria: analogies are actually being drawn between Trump and the titular character from the animated film The Boss Baby.

The list of examples could go on and on, but while the trend seems ubiquitous, it did not begin with the rise of Trump. Hyping the topical nature of a book, movie, or TV series is a common, longstanding promotional strategy, particularly if the story being advertised also promotes a particular political agenda. Every story that can be politically weaponized is marketed breathlessly as “timely.”

The Nightmare Reality of the Communist Dream

With a Republican in the White House threatening to – horrors! – make America great again, nostalgia for the Communist-utopia-that-could-have-been is running high among dejected leftists. Last Monday on May Day, otherwise known among Reds as International Workers’ Day, the New York Times actually published an encomium to those thrilling days of yesteryear “when Communism inspired Americans.” But it’s not just American communists keeping the dream alive; in the run up to May Day the week before, writing for the digital news publication Quartz, Australia’s Helen Razer explained “Why I’m a Communist—and Why You Should Be, Too.”

According to the website description, the chief focus of Razer’s work “has been what she sees as the crisis of liberalism.” The real crisis is that true liberalism has been shoved aside by a radical left that embraces violent totalitarianism, but that’s not Razer’s take. In her mind, the crisis is that pure communism hasn’t been given enough of a chance to succeed. “Communism is a system of social organization that has never been truly tried and, these days, never truly explained. Yet it inspires fear in some, derision in others, and an almost universal unconcern for what it is actually intended to convey.”

This is the excuse communists repeatedly trot out in the face of a tsunami of evidence that their ideology has indeed been tried all over the world and has proven to be arguably the most devastating, inhumane belief system ever imposed on mankind. Every country where communism has been “tried” has gone to hell because of it. That’s not a coincidence nor is it just a failed effort to get it right; that is the inevitable consequence of communism.