45 Years Ago, A Major Career Comeback Became The Best Arthurian Film Ever

By 1981, John Boorman was in dire need of creative rebirth. The British director had made a name for himself first with the stylish revenge thriller Point Blank, and then especially with Deliverance, a thriller set in the dangerous Georgian wilderness that was a major box office success and picked up three Academy Award nominations. The rest of the 1970s wasn’t so hot — after a failed attempt to adapt Lord of the Rings, Boorman made the Sean Connery-starring post-apocalyptic fantasy Zardoz, which was not warmly received and barely made back its budget. But the worst was yet to come — few career hiccups have matched the enormous failure of Exorcist II: The Heretic, a troubled production that snowballed into one of the most reviled sequels in Hollywood history.

There was a lot riding on Boorman’s follow-up, Excalibur, the epic, big-budget fantasy film that told the cradle-to-grave story of King Arthur. Inspired by one of the most renowned works of Arthurian literature, Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d'Arthur, Excalibur needed to render the classic beats of the legend — the sword in the stone, the round table, Lancelot’s betrayal, the quest for the Holy Grail, the battle with Mordred — into spectacular and impactful blockbuster fare to compete with the recent mass-appeal Star Wars, and also take King Arthur seriously again in the wake of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Excalibur delivered—the film earned three times its budget at the North American box office, and its sumptuous, shimmering, and mature retelling of its mythic source material made it an apt vessel for Boorman’s creative renewal.

The Arthurian mythos — which were popular as stories in the 12th and 13th centuries before they were turned into English-language prose in the 15th century — have been beloved by children for eons, serving as a touchstone for fantasy writers from the Victorian era through to today. The tales of chivalric honor, united kingdoms, and hunts for the Holy Grail serve as an alternative origin story for Britain itself — in a hotbed of dark arts, ambition and despair, Arthur ascends the throne to lead the country into a peaceful Christian era. This is made explicit in Excalibur, as during the wedding of King Arthur (Nigel Terry) and Cherie Lunghi (Guenevere), the eccentric sorcerer Merlin (Nicol Williamson) tells Morgana (Helen Mirren), “The days of our kind are numbered. The one God comes to drive out the many gods.”

But Boorman’s Excalibur does not depict a benevolent world that gladly embraces change. Although the exteriors — the mountains and forests of Wicklow, Ireland — are lush and resplendent, often enhanced by Boorman’s use of rich green color gels, no corner of this world is untouched by doubt and deception. Arthur is only conceived because his father, Uther Pendragon (Gabriel Byrne), is transformed by Merlin into a double of an enemy king so he can sleep with his wife. Arthur’s conception is an act of sexual assault, mirrored later in the film when his half-sister Morgana disguises herself as Guinevere to sleep with Arthur and conceive Mordred (Charley Boorman), who attempts to destroy Arthur’s kingdom forever. The fact that Boorman cast his daughter as Arthur’s mother and his son as Arthur’s son in his comeback film shows he understands the significance of offspring and heirs in the fantasy genre — they can either be redemptive or destructive.

Even after the crushing blow of Exorcist II (you can discover the soul-destroying behind-the-scenes story in the upcoming documentary Boorman and the Devil), Boorman was diligent and enthusiastic when making Excalibur — according to a set visit by American Film, the director threw a chicken in front of the camera during a scene that needed to be more hectic. Boorman instructed his actors to live their legendary characters in the moment, saying, “I tell the actors that they are not reenacting a legend. They are creating it, and so they themselves don't know what's going to happen—it's unfolding.” Putting King Arthur in the present tense helps the fantasy material live up to its raw, spectacular potential.

This is clear with the character of Lancelot (Nicholas Clay), a dashing, principled knight who is consumed with guilt when the drunken Gawain (Liam Neeson) accuses him of being in love with the queen. Excalibur’s maximalist style gives the White Knight’s plight a psychological edge; Lancelot isolates himself outside of Camelot, tormented by his subversive and disloyal desire, and hallucinates his suit of armor coming to life to fight him naked—a blunt but exhilarating metaphor for Lancelot’s heart conflicting with his duty. Clay plays Lancelot as a man unaware that he’s the future poster boy of courtly love—the allure of adultery over brothership is an agonizing ordeal he tries in vain to resist.

But it’s the Grail Quest that elevates Excalibur into a vehicle for spiritual and artistic rejuvenation. As a cursed, sickly, and disillusioned Arthur withers in Camelot, the lowly Perceval (Paul Geoffrey) is the last knight standing in Mordred’s purge of the round table. After a desperate, surreal escape from Morgana’s clutches, Perceval receives a divine visitation that explains that Arthur has a symbiotic relationship with the vitality of his land—the king and the land are one. The revitalizing of Arthur’s spirit, courage, and vision suddenly becomes a necessary duty to heal the world—a fitting analogy for a director returning from artistic disillusionment and rekindling his passion for creating stylish, strange, and personal cinematic worlds. Excalibur is both a cathartic career comeback and a dazzling saga of mythic decay and rebirth—suggesting that the filmmaker and their films are one.