After eleven years, 20 movies, and much brouhaha, with Captain Marvel, Marvel finally let one of their female characters lead an installment of their expansive cinematic universe, as well as hire a female (co-)director. The film has traits that make it unique and stand out, but at the same time, it often becomes a paint-by-numbers MCU origin story. Full of ups and downs, it’s still an engaging, entertaining addition, one that will have a lingering on-screen impact moving forward and also carries surplus revelatory weight simply by existing.
Do you lament the lack of sword and sorcery movies coming
out of Hollywood? Well, fans of the likes of Krull,
Beastmaster, Hawk the Slayer, and the
slew of awesomely cheesy dudes-with swords-fighting-evil-magicians-movies that
proliferated the early 1980s, are in luck with Guy Ritchie’s King
Arthur: Legend of the Sword. I won’t necessarily say it’s good, but
it’s a decent modern approximation of those movies, for both good and ill. It’s
crazy, but not quite crazy enough. And though there are delirious highs, there
are crushing, cringe-inducing lows. So, you know, par for the course.
