First Knight (1995) - 11 corrections

Directed by Jerry Zucker, starring Julia Ormond, Richard Gere, Sean Connery (add more)

Comments made in brackets are corrections from other visitors. As such, any aggressive/abusive corrections (and I get quite a few) written as if they're comments I've made myself will be ignored. To submit your own corrections for mistakes, just click the edit icon under an entry, then choose "correct entry". Some entries have "duplicated entry" after them - these are entries which were already listed on the main page, but were submitted again. I occasionally leave these online for a while, just in case they were moved in error, so don't worry about pointing them out to me.

Mistakes

Trivia

Pictures

Quotes

Easter Eggs

Corrections

Questions

Submit

Entry Malagant imprisons Guinevere in an 'oubliette', which is French for 'place of forgetting', a dungeon where prisoners are left to rot. But oubliettes were only in use during the Middle Ages, centuries after King Arthur's time, and even then they were not platforms over pits as the film depicts. They were dungeon cells beneath the castle floors. [It's not impossible or even unlikely that Malagant would design his own style of cell. And "oubliette" was a word long before the dungeons named this were concieved.]
Entry Right at the end, when a burning arrow is shot at the "floating tomb" in order to set it on fire, flames appear on it before the arrow hits it. [The arrow ignites the vapors from the oil used to soak the tinder and body, therefore, it doesn't have to hit the tomb itself to light the tinder.]
Entry King Arthur dies at the end and is put on a pyre that is then drifted out to sea and set on fire by a blazing arrow from afar. This is a Viking funeral rite, hardly suitable for the burial of a great English king. [Why not? Arthur presumably requested this for his funeral - his wishes would hardly be ignored. Even to this day people make odd requests about their burials.]
Entry When Lancelot is fighting with the leader of the bad guys, you can clearly see that Lancelot throws the leader's sword up in the air, but when Lancelot is cutting him, you can see the sword back in his right hand. [The item he is holding might be his dagger which he drew during the fight.]
Entry Towards the end, in the Great Square, Maligant sends his men in to burn the city. Immediately, the Knights of the Round Table start to defend their city. One of the Knights is shot by an arrow, and is presumably dead. However, at the end when King Arthur is floating in the lake, the knight is fine. [Actually two Knights are shot. First, Sir Mador is shot and killed. Second Knight is Sir Christophe. He is shot in the arm. I can see him in the end scene when Arthur is floating on the lake. I can't see Mador anywhere.]
Entry Many of Arthur's knights are shown using bows at the battle of Leonesse. This is a glaring historical error, as the code of chivalry borne by all medieval knights strictly forbade the use of ranged weapons in combat. Killing an enemy at a distance was considered dishonorable. [Those troops are archers.(Which is fairly obvious) Archers weren't actually Knights themselves, but they were a core part of any army. You can also see Malagants men using crossbows in the ambush and the final battle.]
Entry At the end, Lancelot takes up Excalibur and slays Malagant with it, yet there's no blood to be seen on Malagant's body when he falls dead. There's no blood on Excalibur either when Lancelot carries it to Arthur's deathbed. [If you look closely at Meleagant's neck when his head falls for the last time you can see blood on his neck. It is assumed that Lancelot cut him in the neck.]
Entry In the first reference to his people burning in the church Lancelot relives the event in his mind without verbal explanation. Guinevere responds to his anguish by specifically mentioning the church. How did she know about it? [Lancelot and Guinevere had previous conversations in which he indicates a secret anguish from his past. She could have guessed what his secret was by his reaction to the burning church - a reaction not shared by any other knight.]
Entry Around the time that it was theorized King Arthur was around, chain mail (which they are prominently wearing), did not exist...neither did plate-glass windows...or 14th century French chateaus. [Chain mail was invented by the Celts in at least 300 BC. See http://www.barca.fsnet.co.uk/Rome-weapons-armor.htm]
Entry Sean Connery is the only person in the movie with a British accent. The King Arthur stories take place in Great Britain, so it would seem that everyone should have a British accent. [British accents over 1000 years ago would be nothing like modern ones. Since all the dialogue is in modern English, one accent is as good as another.]
Entry The stories of King Arthur take place in the Dark Ages, between 500-1000 AD. In the movie, lots and lots of people, mostly Arthur and his knights, wear blue clothes. Yet blue dye wasn't used in Europe until Marco Polo brought it from China in 1274, and even then it was extremely expensive. [Woad was an extremely well-known blue dye, used for thousands of years in northern Europe (see http://www.botgard.ucla.edu/html/botanytextbooks/economicbotany/Isatis/). Far from being a rare and expensive colour, blue would have been one of the most common colours available.]

You may also like: First Daughter | First Wives Club | 10,000 B.C. | Chicago | First Sunday

Submit this page to:

StumbleUpon Slashdot Facebook Delicious reddit