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Quotes
Guinevere: This is heaven for me.
Lancelot: I don't believe in Heaven, I've been living in this Hell. But if you represent what Heaven is, then take me there.
Trivia
According to negative test screening reports, the filmmakers were forced to make post-production changes to it, such as reshooting battles and adding a wedding scene to give an uplifting ending. The expensive post-production changes were done within three to four weeks before the film's North American release on July 7th. See more...
King Arthur (2004) - 40 mistakes
Directed by Antoine Fuqua, starring Clive Owen, Ioan Gruffudd, Keira Knightley, Ray Winstone, Stellan Skarsgard, Stephen Dillane (add more)
Deliberate "mistake": From outside, the dungeon where Arthur finds Guinevere has no windows. When the knights force themselves in, it is pitch dark. But in some scenes a window is to be seen in the background, although the jails are one floor down. Even better the cages, in which among others Lucan sits: they are lighted from below.
Factual error: At the very beginning of the movie, the voice-over tells us it's around 300 AD. We see Roman soldiers, carrying shields and standards with the Chi Rho symbols. Those weren't introduced around 300 AD, but much later. Legend has it that emperor Constantine ordered his men to paint the symbols on their shields before a battle in 312, but Constantine's Arch in Rome, which depicts his victorious soldiers, doesn't show any of these symbols and the symbols in the movie are made of iron, not paint.
Other: The movie starts with scenes from a battle between Romans and Sarmatians. For a few seconds, we see a (very dark) shot of a warrior holding a severed head in his hand. That very same shot is used later in the battle between the Woads and the Sarmatian knights protecting the Bishop. Director's cut only.
Factual error: Two things are wrong about the trebuchets. While Romans did have siege engines, like the catapult and the ballista, the trenches apparently is a Chinese invention. In any case, it wasn't introduced in Europe until the Middle Ages. Also a trebuchet is a complicated device, much more difficult to operate then it looks. Firing it is easy, but hitting a target certainly isn't. (With modern reconstructions, even when using ballistic calculations, it still takes days of practice to get to a point of some accuracy.) When the Roman army left, the trebuchets were completely useless. In the final battle the Woads nevertheless use them to great effect - impossible.
Factual error: The artillery in this movie are counterweight trebuchets, a type powered by a falling weight. The Romans had many spring and torsion powered artillery, such as scorpions, ballistas and catapults, but did not have trebuchets. By the 3rd century BC the Chinese had the "torsion trebuchet", similar to a trebuchet but powered by men hauling on ropes instead of a falling weight; it didn't reach Europe until the late sixth century. The pure counterweight trebuchet as shown in the movie sometime in the fifth century AD probably didn't exist before the late 12th century and the first one in Britain was built in 1216 AD.
Continuity: In the shot of Bors (during Venora's singing), Galahad is shown in the back with Gawain being the closest knight to him, a stream directly behind, and a wall far behind. Cut to Lancelot, then to Tristan who is near a wall, then to Galahad with Tristan right behind him and the wall closer.
Continuity: When the knights & the Bishop are around the round table, the Bishop's assistant is heard saying to Jols (after introducing Bishop Germanius), "A round table? What sort of evil is this?" and he is not on screen. Jols, however, is and he stands as though there is no one talking to him. In the very next shot he is looking at the assistant and speaks to him as though they were talking the whole time.
Factual error: The scene in which the two armies confront each other on the frozen lake contains several flaws. First, when thick ice is broken with a sharp object like a pickaxe, you merely get a hole through the ice, it will only fragment into large pieces if it is thin. Clearly, this is not the case, as the armies are able to walk on it. Second, ice does not shatter in the way depicted in the film, with cracks travelling outwards a great distance, but just crumbles around the area where force is applied. Third, if cracks did radiate outwards, they would propagate sideways and backwards as well as forwards (like glass does when it is punctured by a small, sharp object), meaning that both armies would end up falling through the ice.






