Poll of the Day > trailer for "The Boy Who Would Be King" modern day King Arthur story

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1OeUck8LQ8" data-time="

or Kid Who would be King. whatever

I keep seeing it on YouTube. Like a lot...
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Why do they keep using this story? They need to self it for a decade until everyone forgets how many times it was fucked up.

I saw this trailer before Spider-Man and thought it would be a Kid in King Arthur's Court remake.
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I could only watch the trailer long enough for it to remind me of The Seeker. At which point I shuddered like some dark atrocity had been committed and reflexively turned the trailer off before I started projectile vomiting.

It might not actually be like what I assume it is now, but I'm never going to know or care.


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needs more explosions.
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Wow! This looks awful!
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They are still using "from the studio" like that's an indicator of quality.
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i know its a kids movie, but that trailer made me want to die
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I know it's a kids movie probably based on a kids book that's somehow even cringier, but.... I kinda want to see this.

ASlaveObeys posted...

Why do they keep using this story? They need to self it for a decade until everyone forgets how many times it was fucked up.

Because it's well-known and in the public domain, same reason we keep getting shit involving Dracula.
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ASlaveObeys posted...

Why do they keep using this story? They need to self it for a decade until everyone forgets how many times it was fucked up.

Probably because it's one of the most well known stories in history, and it has some great symbolism, which is probably why it's so well known
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plus its not exactly kept using. this isn't just a king arthur story, it's a reincarnated king arthur story, which is more rare. I actually like that concept. so I am interested in this movie. most king arthur stories are set in the past about the original king arthur. it's rare to have a story about his return, which is actually part of the legend btw.

Zikten posted...

plus its not exactly kept using. this isn't just a king arthur story, it's a reincarnated king arthur story, which is more rare. I actually like that concept. so I am interested in this movie. most king arthur stories are set in the past about the original king arthur. it's rare to have a story about his return, which is actually part of the legend btw.

So King Arthur is Jesus?
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Revelation34 posted...

Zikten posted...

plus its not exactly kept using. this isn't just a king arthur story, it's a reincarnated king arthur story, which is more rare. I actually like that concept. so I am interested in this movie. most king arthur stories are set in the past about the original king arthur. it's rare to have a story about his return, which is actually part of the legend btw.

So King Arthur is Jesus?

Maybe in ancient prechristian versions of the story he could almost be

The legend says he will return when Britain needs him

Zikten posted...

Maybe in ancient prechristian versions of the story he could almost be

I'm pretty sure the legend existed after Christianity though.
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Revelation34 posted...

Zikten posted...

Maybe in ancient prechristian versions of the story he could almost be

I'm pretty sure the legend existed after Christianity though.

It did but it also existed before. Arthur legends predate Christianity. But the version that made it intact to modern day is the post Christian versions. But we know there were pagan prototypes for the legends

Revelation34 posted...

Zikten posted...

Maybe in ancient prechristian versions of the story he could almost be

I'm pretty sure the legend existed after Christianity though.

The concept of the "sleeping god" or "the king under the mountain" existed before Christianity, though, at least in archetype. Part of why some people assume that the premise of Jesus as a god who dies but later returns to redeem was just stolen from earlier folklore or mythology. Something like 90% of early Christianity is basically just a Greek mystery cult crudely bolted on to existing Jewish history and cosmology.

So it's distinctly possible that Arthur wasn't strictly a echo of Jesus, as much as both were borrowing from the same (or similar) original sources.



Zikten posted...

Arthur legends predate Christianity.

That would be somewhat difficult, since Arthur was almost certainly born hundreds of years after Jesus, assuming both men were real at all.

The first documented reference to Arthur anywhere in existing knowledge wasn't until 900 AD or so. And nearly every scholar who assumes he was real at all tend to place him somewhere around 400-450 AD in Roman England. Where he would literally have been raised as a Christian himself.

The alternative view would be that he actually descends from unrelated Welsh mythology, but that would likely place him even later in the timeline.

There's pretty much no sane or rational scholar who would ever make the claim that any story specifically about Arthur predates 1 AD. At best, you could argue that Arthur represents specific folkloric archetypes that existed before then, but that's not really the same thing.


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Wish they would just make an Alfred Kropp movie..
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Zikten posted...

plus its not exactly kept using. this isn't just a king arthur story, it's a reincarnated king arthur story, which is more rare. I actually like that concept. so I am interested in this movie. most king arthur stories are set in the past about the original king arthur. it's rare to have a story about his return, which is actually part of the legend btw.

yes, but he returns as an adult still, not as a child or a reincarnation
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Krazy_Kirby posted...

Zikten posted...

plus its not exactly kept using. this isn't just a king arthur story, it's a reincarnated king arthur story, which is more rare. I actually like that concept. so I am interested in this movie. most king arthur stories are set in the past about the original king arthur. it's rare to have a story about his return, which is actually part of the legend btw.

yes, but he returns as an adult still, not as a child or a reincarnation

And to be fair, having him reincarnate isn't even a new theme either, as it's been done multiple times before as well.


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ParanoidObsessive posted...

Zikten posted...

Arthur legends predate Christianity.

That would be somewhat difficult, since Arthur was almost certainly born hundreds of years after Jesus, assuming both men were real at all.

The first documented reference to Arthur anywhere in existing knowledge wasn't until 900 AD or so. And nearly every scholar who assumes he was real at all tend to place him somewhere around 400-450 AD in Roman England. Where he would literally have been raised as a Christian himself.

The alternative view would be that he actually descends from unrelated Welsh mythology, but that would likely place him even later in the timeline.

There's pretty much no sane or rational scholar who would ever make the claim that any story specifically about Arthur predates 1 AD. At best, you could argue that Arthur represents specific folkloric archetypes that existed before then, but that's not really the same thing.

Not to mention that Arthurian legends have rather explicitly referenced Christianity at times, which would be a hard thing to do if it preceded it.
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my theory is they were an oral tradition and never written down, in a pagan culture. and then Christianity came and the stories were so loved they got edited to be christian and then finally written down

I read once about how there might be a pagan origin to the quest of the holy grail, except it was a quest for a magic cauldron or something.

Zikten posted...

It did but it also existed before. Arthur legends predate Christianity. But the version that made it intact to modern day is the post Christian versions. But we know there were pagan prototypes for the legends

I don't know those then. I only know Jesus' resurrection was stolen from ancient Egyptian mythology.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

So it's distinctly possible that Arthur wasn't strictly a echo of Jesus, as much as both were borrowing from the same (or similar) original sources.

They would have been too far away to take away from Greek or Egyptian mythology. It was independently developed
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Directed by Joe Cornish? Kind of sad this is the crap he has gone on to now.
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Zeus posted...

Not to mention that Arthurian legends have rather explicitly referenced Christianity at times, which would be a hard thing to do if it preceded it.

Not really. Arthur stories explicitly picked up tons of elements along the way (like Lancelot coming into the story hundreds of years later via French retellings of the story, or the concept of medieval "chivalry" being grafted on centuries later making the stories anachronistic as fuck).

The Christian elements of Arthur's story are mostly later additions, in the same way that most Christian references in Beowulf (like Grendel being descended from Cain) were blatantly added later but were completely absent from the original story.



Revelation34 posted...

They would have been too far away to take away from Greek or Egyptian mythology. It was independently developed

British Celts and Greeks were fully aware of each other long before either Jesus or Arthur would have existed. Bronze Age civilization was a lot more connected than most people today realize, and there were established trade links that were tied to the tin mines in Britain.

The term "Celt" (or "Keltoi") itself is a Greek word, that predates the earliest references to Jesus by about 600 years, and the earliest references to Arthur by about 1400 years.

So yes, they could easily be influenced by similar sources.


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Zikten posted...

my theory is they were an oral tradition and never written down, in a pagan culture. and then Christianity came and the stories were so loved they got edited to be christian and then finally written down

My theory is that I'm actually the child of an ancient divine space being and destined to rule the world as your benevolent god-king, but strangely, no one else seems to believe it because there's absolutely no evidence to support it whatsoever, and a fair amount of evidence that would seem to suggest otherwise.

The problem is that if you're going to make assertions you can't just go with them because you think it's a neat idea or that it's aesthetically pleasing, it has to be supported by SOME form of evidence to suggest it might be true. And no, "there's no evidence that says it CAN'T be true!" is not evidence.

And nearly everything we know about Arthur is that that simply isn't the case. At BEST, we can say that some stories about Arthur started out as stories about someone ELSE (like Fergus mac Roy having the sword Caladbolg, which is often assumed to have evolved over time into Excalibur), and Arthur sort of got grafted into them. And that the main corpus of what we think of as "Arthurian myth" has a lot of elements of other stories that sort of got pulled in over time (like stories about Gawain or the Welsh Owain likely pre-dating Arthur entirely). But Arthur himself as a distinct concept really doesn't exist until post 500 AD or so.

I went through a huge Arthur kick as a teenager - I did a TON of research into this kind of shit.



Zikten posted...

I read once about how there might be a pagan origin to the quest of the holy grail, except it was a quest for a magic cauldron or something.

What you're thinking of is probably this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Branwen#Her_story

Though it might also be one of the cauldrons from these:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Treasures_of_the_Tuatha_D%C3%A9_Danann
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirteen_Treasures_of_the_Island_of_Britain

There were a number of cauldrons in Irish and Welsh mythology, and a lot of people like to assume that those influenced later Arthurian stories about the Grail. But the key thing to remember is that the Grail aspects of Arthurian myth came in VERY late - they were more influenced by stories from France than they were native to the British Isles, and they were deliberately incorporated into the narrative hundreds of years after it had originally been documented. So it's something of a spurious connection at best.

If you're actually interested in pre-Arthurian folklore of Britain that likely inspired some of the earlier Arthurian stories (ie, a lot of the ones involving errant knights fighting against monsters or evil knights and rescuing maidens), you should probably start with the Mabinogion.


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ParanoidObsessive posted...

The Christian elements of Arthur's story are mostly later additions, in the same way that most Christian references in Beowulf (like Grendel being descended from Cain) were blatantly added later but were completely absent from the original story.

I have never read Beowulf that claimed he was descended from Cain.
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Revelation34 posted...

I have never read Beowulf that claimed he was descended from Cain.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grendel

Fourth sentence on the page. It's also discussed about a dozen times in other places on the page. It's not a huge plot point in the story, but it's definitely mentioned. Also, here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beowulf#Biblical_influences

Basically, Beowulf as we know it was put to paper by Anglo-Saxon monks, who wrote it in Old English and adapted it from Germano-Nordic. While doing so, they allowed their own biases to influence what they were writing, and occasionally made references to things that reflected their Christian world-view.

Most modern scholars accept that those elements almost certainly weren't part of the original story, but that's sort of the point.


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ParanoidObsessive posted...

Revelation34 posted...

I have never read Beowulf that claimed he was descended from Cain.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grendel

Fourth sentence on the page. It's also discussed about a dozen times in other places on the page. It's not a huge plot point in the story, but it's definitely mentioned. Also, here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beowulf#Biblical_influences

Basically, Beowulf as we know it was put to paper by Anglo-Saxon monks, who wrote it in Old English and adapted it from Germano-Nordic. While doing so, they allowed their own biases to influence what they were writing, and occasionally made references to things that reflected their Christian world-view.

Most modern scholars accept that those elements almost certainly weren't part of the original story, but that's sort of the point.

Then the original story would have been completely different. It isn't a Christian work just because they stole it.
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Revelation34 posted...

Then the original story would have been completely different. It isn't a Christian work just because they stole it.

You're sort of missing the entire point by a mile.


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When people add elements of an old story to a new story it becomes a different story.

I'll admit that Eragon shamelessly ripped off Star Wars but that doesn't mean Eragon is Star Wars.
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Blighboy posted...

I'll admit that Eragon shamelessly ripped off Star Wars but that doesn't mean Eragon is Star Wars.

No, because Star Wars was actually good.



Also, Eragon is only partly Star Wars. It's also Lord of the Rings flavored.


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I always love watching supposed adults getting really bent over kid's movies.

DeathMagnetic80 posted...

I always love watching supposed adults getting really bent over kid's movies.

We've spent the last 30 or so years generally infantilizing ourselves as a culture, so pretty much everyone under the age of 70 is a glorified child at this point anyway. Nothing about this is really news.


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ParanoidObsessive posted...

We've spent the last 30 or so years generally infantilizing ourselves as a culture, so pretty much everyone under the age of 70 is a glorified child at this point anyway. Nothing about this is really news.

I bet everybody blames video games.
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Revelation34 posted...

I bet everybody blames video games.

They're likely a symptom more than a cause, but technologization in general is probably at the root of the problem.

The concept of "teenager" didn't really exist until the Industrial Revolution, when the greater need for training and education sort of pushed "adulthood" back (and concomitantly increased overall lifespan). The Technological Revolution basically did the same thing again, making higher education more of a necessity and increasing lifespan even more, and likely played a role in the last generation or so tending to be "childish" much later into life.

There are probably other factors - like most social issues, it's a lot more complicated than a single root cause being responsible for everything.


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Blighboy posted...

When people add elements of an old story to a new story it becomes a different story.

I'll admit that Eragon shamelessly ripped off Star Wars but that doesn't mean Eragon is Star Wars.

also lord of the rings. shapeshifter race called beorn in the hobbit.... shapshifter called beorn in eragon. both from the beorn mountains, both liked to use the form of a giant bear to fight.

he only got published so easily because his parents opened their own company to publish his book
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Looks like he's coming out with a new book.
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I kept thinking this was really familiar, and then I realized:

- Duh, it's the story of King Arthur

- I just earlier this year read a similar comic called The Once and Future Queen that this shares a lot of beats with.
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