Spider-man 2 and King Arthur

[Captain Sensible]

Am in San Francisco at present with work and had a day off today. Pissing foggy day and the multi imax plex is just around the corner.
So I went for Spiderman firstly. It was great! More laughs than the first one, the Peter Parker character is very well written and really developes in this sequal. There is a little too much of the "will he/won't he" tell Mary Jane about his double life and he spends a little too much time with the suit on and no mask but thats being very picky. The effects are better than the first with Doc Ock being a brilliant villan with more menace than the Goblin. The film still has an excellent storyline and with it being a link film between 1 and 3 its a bit of an Empire Strikes Back kind of cliffhanger ending. I would highly recommend it. 5 stars***** out of 5!

Next i sneaked into King Arthur, (after a quick visit to the lav) God I am so glad I didn't have to pay to see this film! It is terrible. Historically all over the place, but i suppose a mythical character can't be that close to real events, but at least make it mythical then. The script is awful the actors struggle to find any sort of direction with it, the background music is always on gothic humms, the storyline...er storyline?? Can't comment on that as there wasn't one. This is such a good example of why Hollywood should stick to American themes with American actors. The fact that tallented actors such as Clive Owen and Ray Winstone have been made to look like fools should put them off starring in another Bruckheimer blockbuster. It has an amaterish feel with buckets of money thown at it and hopelessly overacted, cliched and corny scenes. Still good job they were over acted or I'd have fallen asleep. The fight scenes aren't even any good. It all looks like they are just playing around in a muddy field. Oh yes, and the villan in all this is a Saxon from Scotland that looks like a Viking and has a Mississippi accent!! There was hardly a Merlin, he was bizzarely an enemy of the King. The King wasn't a King at all but a Roman soldier. The Saxons were the enemy too and after being defeted, Britain was apparently united? Who was there to be united? The Saxons were the Britons! At least they were after the Romans left and before 1066 an all that (or so thats what i was taught). Oh and there was no Chamelot. The film was greeted with laughs of pisstaking by a usually easily pleased American audience, even they knew the film was embarrasingly shit. No star for this. Your kids won't even like it!

 

[dannyboy]

thanks barry


mmmmmm and why not

 

[Platypuss]

Do you think that all the indigenous Celts were removed and replaced by Italians when the Roman army invaded?

Who do you think was left in the country when the Roman legions departed to defend Rome from the Germanic invaders?

The remaining romanised Britons (Celts) were the ones who were attacked by the saxons.

These real Britons became the Welsh and Cornish when hte Saxons over-run the remainder of the country.

It all sounds pretty well based on the theory that Arthur was the Roman Briton Ambrosius Artorius; the Dux Bellicorum and leader of the Romano-British armies in the North of England.

 

[Highfields Seagull]

Indeed, I can't comment on the quality of the film, but I did read an article suggesting that it had tried to be true to some of the "facts" that historians had uncovered while trying to did beneath the legends and myths.

Much of what they've found put Arthur in the North of England, near Hadrians wall, and not in a magical kingdom in Corwall.

 

[Captain Sensible]

Firstly the Film (King Arthur) is shit! Secondly Platypuss, There were no such things as Celts(as in Scottish Irish Welsh) back then. Only tribes, some were from the home countries and Europe, others originated in Britain. There were the real Britons(the people that lived there before the romans came). Thay were made up of druids, pagans and many tribes, also the Pict tribes in the north. Pict meaning "the Painted ones". The Saxons were from Germany mainly, from the Angeln and Saxony region. Angles will eventually give their name to England (Angleland).Romans withdrew in 399. After the romans had gone, they settled in Britain in Large numbers and were the main occupiers between 410ad and 1066! There were no great wars between the Picts, paguans and Saxons. Pagans and Saxons based themselves mainly in what is now England the Picts and other tribes from Ireland in what is now Scotland. If you are gonna blitz me with facts then get em right!

Fact is that in the film the mythical King Arthur defeated the Saxons and united Britain. Again I ask with who?

Highfields seagull, King Arthur is a Myth and there has never been any proof of him living. The only thing historians could come up with is that he may have been Arturious, a top Roman legionaire commander based in the north to protect Hadrians wall. So in that respect they have followed that in the film, but they then should have got everthing else true to that period aswell.

The Film is still complete crap.

 

[US Seagull]

Firstly the Film (King Arthur) is shit! Secondly Platypuss, There were no such things as Celts(as in Scottish Irish Welsh) back then. Only tribes. There were the real Britons(the people that lived there before the romans came), that were made up of druid tribes and pagans, also the Pict tribes in the north. Pict meaning "the Painted ones". The Saxons were from Germany mainly, from the Angeln and Saxony region. Angles will eventually give their name to England (Angleland).Romans withdrew in 399. After the romans had gone, they settled in Britain in Large numbers and were the main occupiers between 410ad and 1066! There were no great wars between the Picts, paguans and Saxons. Pagans and Saxons based themselves mainly in what is now England the Picts and other tribes from Ireland in what is now Scotland. If you are gonna blitz me with facts then get em right!

Fact is that in the film the mythical King Arthur defeated the Saxons and united Britain. Again I ask with who?

Highfields seagull, King Arthur is a Myth and there has never been any proof of him living. The only thing historians could come up with is that he may have been Arturious, a top Roman legionaire commander based in the north to protect Hadrians wall. So in that respect they have followed that in the film, but they then should have got everthing else true to that period aswell.

The Film is still complete crap.

Oh dear, the film maybe crap (I'm inclided to take your word for it and give it a miss) but you are horribly ignorant of ancient British history.
The saxons invaded Britain after the Roman empire collapsed they displaced the native Britains who were forced west to Wales and Cornwall (Wales ironicaly is from a Saxon word meaning foreigner and was a bit of propaganda on the part of the Saxons) and over to northern france (Brittany - gettit?). Many historians believe the origins of the legend of King Arthur come from this time when there was widespread violence and unrest resulting from the sudden power vacuum caused by the disappearance of the Romans.
In 1066 when the Normans invaded Britain they brought the "Britians" from Brittany with them and spun the invasion as something of a liberation of the Britains. It is mostly the French who are responsible for bringing back the myth of king Arthur and spinning it into the tale we know today (it also explains why Lancelot - the greatest knight in the world - is French).

 

[US Seagull]

Here's a link for you about King Arthur. The History Channel did a very nice show on it about a month ago.

Emphasis mine:

The battle of Mt. Badon-in which, according to the Annales Cambriae (c.1150), Arthur carried the Cross of Jesus on his shoulders-but not Arthur's name, is mentioned (c.540) by Gildas. The earliest apparent mention of Arthur in any known literature is a brief reference to a mighty warrior in the Welsh poem Gododdin (c.600). Arthur next appears in Nennius (c.800) as a Celtic warrior who fought (c.600) 12 victorious battles against the Saxon invaders.

 

[Captain Sensible]

Anglo Saxons


Anglo Roman History

I see no evidence of the Anglo-Saxons driving any of the other tribes to Scotland or Wales.

Us seagull, where the name Britain came from was not even in question(geddit?).

There were always wars and mini wars over tribes and land, but King arthur uniting Britain is a mythical story so they should have kept it mythical.

 

[US Seagull]

I see no evidence of the Anglo-Saxons driving any of the other tribes to Scotland or Wales.

There are contemporary accounts of it:

Gildas, Saint, d. 570, British historian, possibly a Welsh monk. Shortly before 547 he wrote the De excidio et conquestu Britanniae, a Latin history of Britain dealing with the Roman invasion and the Anglo-Saxon conquest of England, the earliest authority for the period. Gildas is said to have gone to Brittany and to have founded the monastery named after him near Vannes. He explained the Germanic invasions as God's punishment for the sins of the Romano-British Christians.

Just because your sources skipped it...
Do you really think that Saxon's were welcomed with open arms by native Britains of the time? Where do you think the Britains went?

 

[Captain Sensible]

Er no but
430AD – GERMANIC WARRIORS HIRED FOR PROTECTION
(England)
Britain’s Roman towns have fallen into disrepair and disorder. Native Britons are beginning to employ Germanic warriors called Saxons and Angles (Anglians) to defend them against the Picts in return for land.

There was no great sweeping out of the natives. Infact Britain was largely unpopulated before the arrival of the Romans, apart from tribes. Romans drove some of the natives north and out but others stayed and benefitted from the civilised Romans.

The point has been missed somewhere and that is that in the film, the Saxons are defeted by Arthur and the Native pagans and tribes and united. This is ofcourse stupid. Its like saying Germany won WWII and united Europe. Historically totally wrong and still they tried to bring some truth to the Arthur character in a very bad film. Should have been like Gladiator where they invented a mythical character but put him in historically correct events.

 

[Captain Sensible]

Should have this debate over a few in the pub. Perfect!

 

[US Seagull]

Er no but
430AD – GERMANIC WARRIORS HIRED FOR PROTECTION
(England)
Britain’s Roman towns have fallen into disrepair and disorder. Native Britons are beginning to employ Germanic warriors called Saxons and Angles (Anglians) to defend them against the Picts in return for land.

Britain was being invaded left, right and center after the Romans left but one British king (Vortigern - called a "proud tyrant" by Gildas) decided to hire Germans in order to keep some of the other invaders (e.g. Scots and Picts) out. This was wildly unpopular amongst the native Britains and when Vortigern found he couldn't keep paying the Saxons they rebeled and ravaged the countryside. Under the leadership of Ambrosius Aurelianus (one of the candidates for the historical arthur) the British attacked the king, burnt down his palace (well, hut really) and killed him. They fought the Saxon's to a stalemate at Mons Badonicus (Mt. Badon) and what followed was a generation of relative peace (possibily the origin of the legend of Camelot).

Edited to add this link

 

[US Seagull]

Should have this debate over a few in the pub. Perfect!

 

[Kinky Gerbil]

Dont care bout plot.

Did knightly get naked