ing Arthur is but the latest in a long line of big-screen adaptations of the Arthurian legend, following in the footsteps of such varied films as Excalibur, Camelot, First Knight and Knights of the Round Table. Where this new version differs from its predecessors, however, is that its details are steeped not exclusively in the mythology of the characters, but in historical context that may possibly reveal the actual origins of Arthur, Lancelot, Guinevere and the worlds they inhabited.
Director by Antoine Fuqua (Training Day), King Arthur stars Clive Owen (Croupier) as the title character and Keira Knightley (Pirates of the Carribbean) as Guinevere. Fuqua, Owen and Knightley spoke to Science Fiction Weekly recently about making the film, and about bringing mythological characters to vibrant life.
Antoine Fuqua, do you consider this to be a typical summer action movie, an historical epic, or some hybrid of the two?
Fuqua: Well, it's a little bit of everything. You can't get away from it being an action movie, 'cause there's action. And they're marketing it as an action movie. But it's drama. There's a lot of acting. That's why I cast all unknown actors who can act. It's a period piece, too, so it has "historical" written all over it as well. You can call it all three, I suppose, historical, action, drama.
Was it a priority for you to cast all British actors in the lead roles?
Fuqua: Yeah, it was. I couldn't imagine doing it any other way.
What made Keira Knightley, who is still relatively untested as an actress, the right person to play Guinevere?
Fuqua: Well, she's really talented and very disciplined, outside of her beauty and all that. I think that Keira really is a beautiful young lady, but I think that when I put the camera on her, something else happens. She becomes sort of a throwback to Greta Garbo; she has this sensual quality, this almost "noir" quality about her. And I loved working with her; she never missed a beat. She never missed a line, she did all of her fighting herself, and she trained for three months and she never complained. Ever. About anything. I couldn't ask for a better star.
How determined were you to make Keira's character as strong as those of her male counterparts?
Fuqua: The truth is, the Picts, her people [in the movie], were warriors. Back in those days—and a lot of people haven't made movies about female warriors yet, and I don't know why—there were a lot of female warriors. A lot of Scandinavian women would cut their left breasts off so that they could fire the bow and arrow. They were pretty hardcore; the females were quite tough. And the Picts actually used to fight naked, and they used to paint themselves with blue paint because it was a spiritual thing. They had pictures of bears [painted on themselves] with wode, a plant they used to use to paint their bodies blue, and they fought naked to scare their enemies, to show them they had no fear.
If they were historically called Picts, why are they named "wodes" in the film?
Fuqua: [Screenwriter David] Franzoni wrote it in the script as Wodes, because they used the plant. It was a little weird in the dialogue when we did a reading, to hear people say "picts." It came off kind of odd, for some reason, when they spoke it. So we went with Wodes. Some people called them different names, based on the blue paint. "Picts" actually came from because they had pictures, they had tattoos. The name Wodes came from the plant, but no, we didn't make it up.
Were there arguments with the historical advisors about the changes you made for the film?
Fuqua: No. We did our homework before I got there. I talked to them before I got there, about what was and what wasn't, or what could be.
Did battles really take place on frozen lakes like you depict in the film?
Fuqua: It's a cool idea.
Did that sequence require the most CGI work of any in the film?
Fuqua: Yeah, it had the most. Everything else was pretty much real, except for a little bit here and there, but I was reluctant to do much. I made it hard on myself, but I was reluctant to deal with [CGI]. I don't like it. I'm not good at it, frankly. I think there are people better at it than I am. I'd have to really wrap my head around that idea, of sitting in a room with some guy, making a movie. It's just bizarre. I need to shoot as much as I can. That way, I know it's done, it's in the can, and I can sleep at night.
Does it impact the overall aesthetic of a film like this to choose not to employ CGI?
Fuqua: You know how it is when you look at something, and all of the sudden it takes you right out of the movie? You sit there and it's like 5 billion people out there fighting, and they all look like these weird little stick figures, like ants. It's just bizarre when you see it, because it's just not possible. It's not even possible to capture that many people in a frame. When I see it, I'm just going, "What lens is that they're using? How do you get that many people in a frame?" The perspective is all wrong, anyway, the physical perspective, so, I just prefer not to use it if I don't have to.
Regardless, that seems to be the direction the industry is heading.
Fuqua: CGI is a definite curse and a blessing. The curse is that studios know what you can do and what you can't do, and it sort of hurts you as a director, because as soon as you shoot a rated-R movie and you've got blood and heads coming off and everything, [they say,] "Well, you can fix that in CGI." So as soon as you say to them, "It's gotta be an 'R' movie. I've got a sword going through a guy's eye, I've got blood flying everywhere, you know?" they go, "Oh, no it doesn't. You can get rid of the blood. You can take the sword out the guy's back."
Clive Owen, how different was the role of King Arthur from the ones you've played in earlier films?
Owen: It wasn't that different. My approach remained the same. I took it on like I take anything on; it's just a character I play in a movie. Now, of course, you know it's a huge movie when you arrive in Ireland and see a mile-long, 35-foot-high Hadrian's Wall and 600 extras getting ready, dressed as Saxons, and you go, "Wow, this is huge." But at the same time you realize at a certain point you are demanded to deliver something in front of the camera. It's the same thing; it's the same deal in terms of the responsibility of this film making money, and there are lots of people, employees who sweat about that. I can only do what I do and do it as well as I can.
You are typically an "internal" actor, in terms of your characters' introspective rather than extroverted natures. How did you turn that around for a big summer blockbuster?
Owen: You can't play "heroic." You can't play status. It's like the old bit about actors saying, "You can only play status if the actor you're working with gives it to you." In the same way you take something like this on, you have to hope the writing supports you, and that the structure and the way the film is made is going to support you, and you don't go in playing big, iconic, heroic; you can't do that. You're just sort of made that, so you just go into the film hoping that the support is there.
How does the elaborate costume and set design help you prepare for the role?
Owen: Well, when you're on a huge white horse in this sort of fantastic armor, you feel good [laughs]. You feel tough.
What initially attracted you to this role?
Owen: It was the whole thing. It's not often you get a film like that coming to the U.K. It was exciting to have a film of that scale. The big difference with a film of that size is that the world you inhabit is so supported. Seeing Hadrian's Wall, a mile long, 35 feet high, the first time driving to that location in Ireland, it was like, "Oh my God. Look at the scale." And sometimes when I look at the movie, it looks like CGI or something, but I'm telling you you could walk along the whole thing. It was really solid. It was just an exciting opportunity to be a part of something that's created on such a scale.
Is there a certain amount of pride in the fact this is a major Hollywood film about British legend whose cast is predominantly English?
Owen: It was very exciting. There were rumors going around the U.K. for a while that they were going to come and do this movie and shoot it up in Britain somewhere, so people were aware of it. And then, I think it's a huge credit to [producer] Jerry [Bruckheimer] that you would think the first thing to do would be to secure an A-list star to a movie of this size and stature, but he didn't. He didn't put any constraints on Antoine about who to cast; he said to cast out of Britain and Europe. There's no pressure to have anybody, so it's not often that we get a film in the U.K. of this stature, so it was a thrill to do it. And also, I think they scoured Europe for all the leading actors of their countries, like Stellan [Skarsgard], all big names in their native countries, and I think they put together a pretty wonderful cast.
Do you perceive this film as exclusively an action movie, or something a bit more complex?
Owen: I don't know how I see it, really, but there's a lot of action in it. There's a huge amount of big battles in it, but again, from an acting point of view, you just play characters, whatever it is. You know, I'm a great believer that when you see these films, that when you're going into situations like those big battles, you aren't invested in them. You can see the most spectacular things put together, the CGI, but unless you've got an investment, unless you care about the people involved in it, you soon get bored, but if you're rooting for somebody, you care about somebody in the context, then it has a bigger impact.
What was the most arduous part of the shoot for King Arthur?
Owen: The horse riding. There's a huge amount of it, and it became a very enjoyable thing in the end, but all of us put a lot of time into it, and this was way before we got to Ireland. A half an hour outside of London, the guy who was driving all of the horses had a stable and we would all go out, and thank God we did. I mean, the first day of the film, every one of us had never been on a horse before, and they were shooting and they said, "Guys, just go as fast as you can; whatever you feel safe with." As an actor, when you're told that, you want to deliver, and we did some pretty lively horse stuff on the movie, considering we're not stunt guys.
Did Keira Knightley really become "one of the guys," as she was characterized in the film's press materials?
Owen: Oh yeah. One moment at lunchtime, by where we ate chow, they trained everybody, so whenever we were bored or we had time we could go and work out with a trainer, and we could box as well. And walking past and seeing Keira boxing, she was fearsome. She was fierce. That girl took getting fit for this really seriously.
How much fealty to historical accuracy do you have to demonstrate, and how much do you just have to commit to making an entertaining movie?
Owen: Well you have huge advantage that it's a myth, [but] what Franzoni will argue and what the Arthur historians will argue is that it's probably more valid than any version because it has an historical context, so there are certain things that they have researched and that they do know about this time. Ultimately, the story of King Arthur and the knights is a very elusive myth, and it's not like we're rewriting history, because it's not history. It's something else. And I think whenever you're doing anything like that, whenever you're doing something historical, at the end of the day you have to let go and shoot what's there on the page. You can't do anything else. In the end it's a movie, and people are going to see it to be entertained.
How do you feel people in Britain will regard this film?
Owen: It will be the same with anybody when you play in something that's very established. You'll get people who are upset, but I have to say those are the people who think it's all fact anyway [laughs].
Keira, we hear you trained pretty hard for the role of Guinevere.
Knightley: Yeah, you scared? I just really enjoyed it. It's not every day you get the opportunity to learn all those ridiculous skills like sword fighting and axe fighting and that kind of thing, so I just made the most of it and had a great time.
After the success of Pirates of the Carribbean, did you feel added pressure for this film to succeed?
Knightley: No, not at all. Pirates of the Caribbean didn't come out until we were well into filming this, and it was very much a protective bubble. When it came out, I was halfway up a mountain just outside Dublin, so I wasn't really aware of it.
How did the training for King Arthur compare to the work you did on Bend It Like Beckham?
Knightley: For Bend It Like Beckham, we did about 20 weeks of soccer training for that. I was still at school when I did it, so I was always playing sport anyway. For this, we really had to start from scratch, because I had never trained with my upper body at all, and suddenly, when I accepted the role, they said, "You really have to bulk up," because otherwise you simply wouldn't believe that I could fight on equal standing with a man and come out all right. So, they got me a personal trainer straight off, and I did weight training and boxing with him. The weight training was pretty much three to four times a week about two hours a session. And then, on top of that I did archery and then knife fighting, axe fighting and everything. Nearer the time shooting it, we were doing about seven hours a day of just training. And then on set, we had personal trainers and gyms and all the rest of it, so when we weren't filming, we were in the gym, so it was very physical.
Was there a feeling of satisfaction getting to beat up all of those guys?
Knightley: Yeah, probably. I loved it. It was like being 11 and rolling around in the mud at the playground. It was fantastic; I did really enjoy it.
What was the toughest part of the shoot?
Knightley: It was just training. Training was really difficult, and it was exhausting. You're working with amazing stunt guys, and they were very patient with me, which was very nice, but it did take a long time to get it all down and to make sure everyone felt comfortable and that it was done in a way that's possible. So I think that was the most difficult thing about the film. We put a hell of a lot of work into those fights, because we did all train so hard. But equally, it was the most rewarding, because you could see those results pretty instantly on set, and we knew that Antoine was pretty happy with all of it.
How did you develop the love triangle relationship between Guinevere, Arthur and Lancelot?
Knightley: What we were trying to do was find the reality behind everything. So we're grounding the story in a reality, and that goes for the characters as well. For Arthur, we're saying, all right, he's a Roman general, so the whole Roman culture goes into his character. For Guinevere, we're saying she's a Pict or a Kelt. They were both matriarchal societies, so she would have fought on equal standing with a man, if not been leading the men into battle. She's living in an occupied nation, so she is, to all intents and purposes, a guerilla fighter.
Between me and Antoine, we decided that probably she was somebody of pretty high standing within the community and, therefore, a leader in her own right. So, when she gets put into the middle of this situation, she's chucked into a group of people who, from probably the beginning of her life, she has been taught to hate and to try to kill. So I think, as a leader, she was trying to manipulate the situation to the best advantage for her. If that meant killing them all from the inside, then that's what she was going to do. If that meant using her feminine wiles to manipulate the boys, then that's what she's going to do too. I think what she decides to do is go for Arthur and try and get him. I kind of thought that she absolutely knows that Arthur is the one to go for if she wants to gain as much as she can, so she's making a beeline for Arthur. As far as Lancelot goes, they're very, very similar. They're both very hot-headed.
It's almost like the traditional triangle, with Guinevere in the middle and Lancelot and Arthur on the outside, but it's slightly mixed up, and it's Arthur in the middle and Guinevere and Lancelot trying to pull him in two different directions. So I think naturally there is a sexual attraction between Guinevere and Lancelot, but this is not a lady that will allow herself to go in that direction, because the other one is better for her.
Were you concerned about leaping into the midst of huge fight scenes with much less protection than your on-screen adversaries?
Knightley: All the knights, the Saxons and all the rest of it, were in armor, but anyone playing a Wode wasn't, and, actually, historically, Picts and Kelts would have been naked when they fought, just painted with blue wodes, but there was no way I was going to do that. I was pretty covered, but some of the guys who were wodes were totally naked, top half and really just a loincloth. I thought I came out all right, because we shot it in the heart of summer and I was fine, and always good and perspiring and everything, but, you know, I could still move. And all the boys were dying of heat exhaustion because they were in all this leather.
Did you ever have concerns about safety in those sequences?
Knightley: No. Maybe that was stupid of me. You only do what you feel comfortable with, and I felt pretty comfortable. We'd worked with all the stunt guys for about three months, and I got on with all of them and I kind of figured that they'd feel really bad if anything happened to me so they'd make sure that it didn't and that was fine. We all got scratches and bruises, a couple of torn muscles, but nothing serious.
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The cast and crew of Stargate Atlantis and Stargate SG-1
