‘MobLand’ goes medieval in Guy Ritchie’s ‘King Arthur,’ now on Netflix
Has any filmmaker experienced a 2020s reset as clear as Guy Ritchie? For much of the 2010s, the English writer-director seemed to be chasing franchise glory; he never made a superhero movie, per se, but he seemed to be perpetually on the hunt for something like one to make his signature big-money series.
Sherlock Holmes looked like it, but only managed two entries before Robert Downey Jr. seemingly became too embroiled in the Marvel world to handle another simultaneous action-adventure series. A long-gestating Man from U.N.C.L.E. adaptation won a cult following but made little at the box office. A remake of Aladdin, meanwhile, made a mint and inspired some sequel talk, but seemed to scare Ritchie straight. Ever since his only billion-dollar movie, he’s gone back to smaller-scale, mostly-British crime, caper, and war pictures, at a steady, sometimes alarming clip. (His most recent movie came out back in May; he’s got another one scheduled for release this February, another collaboration with Jason Statham already shot, and a subsequent Statham movie shooting soon.) He’s also dipped into TV, with a successful streaming version of his film The Gentlemen and the popular Paramount+ drama MobLand.
But another, less beloved Ritchie project has just joined MobLand on the streaming charts: King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, which may be the nadir not just of Ritchie’s 2010s search for a franchise but Hollywood’s, too, has popped onto Netflix. This reboot of the no-cost IP of King Arthur (no copyright on legends from the 12th century, baby!) was planned as the kickoff to a six-movie series that would follow various figures from Arthurian mythology, presumably teaming them all up (or re-teaming, considering that many of them appear in Legend of the Sword) in a medieval-style Avengers equivalent. Warner Bros. spent $175 million on this one movie, plus plenty more on marketing. When it flopped in the U.S. and didn’t do especially well in other territories, the movie lost somewhere in the neighborhood of $150 million for the company. This makes it one of the costlier box office bombs ever.
And yet: King Arthur: Legend of the Sword is well worth checking out on Netflix, especially for anyone who has been enjoying Ritchie’s post-franchise renaissance.
Admittedly, this movie doesn’t have much in common with the more grounded likes of MobLand, or even Ritchie’s more out-there recent features such as Fountain of Youth. What it does resemble, though, is the crime capers that made him famous (and that he periodically returns to, a la The Gentlemen). The movie’s opening, especially, taking young Arthur from orphaned young prince to capable roustabout thief (played as an adult by Charlie Hunnam), is basically Lock, Stock, and Ye Olde Barrels, temporarily rechristening future knights with monikers like Goosefat Bill and Wet Stick. It should play like gangbusters for anyone who wished Ritchie’s Aladdin remake had been more like the hilarious Twitter thread imagining Jason Statham in the role.
Of course, there is a remainder of the movie that involves more supernatural, fantastical, and overblown elements. It’s this substantial chunk of King Arthur that more closely aligns with other attempts at making a post-Lord of the Rings fantasy series with a touch of 300, like Mortal Engines or Gods of Egypt. This may admittedly be a harder sell to the typical MobLand viewer. But if you can vibe with gnarly (if still PG-13, sadly) gritty-fantasy material, this version of it retains Ritchie’s sensibility and adds some fun wrinkles – creatures, wizards, magical swords.
The real problem with King Arthur: Legend of the Sword is that it presumes an ongoing interest in these characters that will carry over to the teased future movies. (Obviously the film doesn’t come out and say to expect five more, but it unmistakenly sets up sequels.) This was a particularly bad year for Warner Bros. betting big on future adventures of do-gooders; later in 2017, they released Justice League, a premature and heavily compromised superhero team-up between their DC characters, which had the distinction of making much less money than individual movies based on Wonder Woman, Superman, or even Aquaman. It was an early sign that not every big team-up can be hyped up to Avengers levels, something that became increasingly clear following the pandemic. Marvel can still hit it out of the park at the box office sometimes, but the 2020s box office story has been the sheer number of unexpected hits ranging from Obsession to Barbie to Oppenheimer. In this environment, no one would dare recruit Ritchie (or pretty much anyone else) for a planned six-movie series of big-budget epics.
Yet Ritchie does actually have a knack for creating characters with long-term durability. Fans of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. long yearned for a sequel, and these days Ritchie has his whole side line as a TV impresario, with MobLand as his greatest success if that area. King Arthur probably won’t have you longing for hours more with Goosefat Bill, necessarily; some of the fun of watching it almost a decade after its release is knowing that it’s just a one-off, not a bellwether for more and more misguided pre-sold attempts to cobble together a Cinematic Universe. At the same time, the ensemble-driven style that makes Ritchie a good fit for TV adaptations is part of what makes King Arthur a lot more fun than its reputation. The whole movie isn’t resting on Charlie Hunnam’s shoulders; he’s charismatic, but it’s no coincidence he’s had his greatest breakthroughs on TV. The main guy here is Ritchie himself, wielding what is likely the biggest budget he’ll ever get, making a strange approximation of a Guy Ritchie Movie at a time when there was no end in sight to mega-franchising, regardless of how unbidden the franchises themselves often were.
Now that we can see what demand for an actual Guy Ritchie TV series looks like, the blockbuster aspirations of King Arthur have become an unexpected novelty.
Jesse Hassenger (@rockmarooned) is a writer living in Brooklyn. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Week, among others. He podcasts at www.sportsalcohol.com, too.
