King Arthur

Revealing mistake: When Arthur is giving his speech before the last battle, in the background are three radio towers. You never know Arthur might need a radio to find out tomorrow's weather.

Revealing mistake: At the beginning, when the Woads are attacking the Bishop's Carriage, Lancelot is hitting one of the Woads. The sword isn't even touching the Woad.

Revealing mistake: When Lucan draws the ring of dead Dagonet's finger, you can see the finger move and keep its position. (01:14:00)

Revealing mistake: At the start of the film when the Bishops convoy is ambushed by the Woads Arthur stabs his sword at the ambusher, totally missing but the Woad still falls as if stabbed.

Revealing mistake: Despite at least two days of near blizzard conditions there is never more than a few inches of snow on the ground. The amount of snow we see falling should have left well over a foot of snow.

Revealing mistake: Just before the battle of Maldon, the British spy climbs into the big tree and you can see the tree is fake. The spy isn't actually climbing the tree (by grabbing branches), he's using some kind of ladder. (01:36:55)

More for King Arthur

Mistakes

Factual error: I normally wouldn't bother with this sort of nitpicking, but this film specifically claims to be historically researched - and it's full of historical blunders. For a start, the film is set as the Empire withdraws its last troops from Britain - which was in 407 AD. Now Artorius Castus was a real Roman officer who really did command Sarmatian foederati at Hadrian's Wall, but he died around 200 AD. Cerdic was a real Saxon warlord who did go raiding the Britons with his son Cynric, but he did this in the early 500s. Pelagius really was tried for heresy, but he was acquitted and died of old age; the trial was a decade after this setting, and in the fifth century you couldn't be executed for heresy anyway. Also in the fifth century the Pope had no authority over Imperial troops. I could go on and on but that will do for now.

More mistakes in King Arthur

Quotes

Cerdic: You come to beg a truce, you should be on your knees.
Arthur: I came to see your face so that I alone may find you on the battlefield. And it will be good of you to mark my face, Saxon, for the next time you see it, it will be the last thing you see on this earth.
Cerdic: Ahhh. Finally, a man worth killing.

More quotes from King Arthur

Trivia

Trivia: Twenty years ago, there was a series on British TV called Robin of Sherwood. Will Scarlet was played by Ray Winstone. One of the other Merry Men (Nasir) was played by Mark Ryan, who was the sword master on King Arthur. The horse master was Steve Dent who is (you guessed it) horse-master on this movie as well.

More trivia for King Arthur

Questions

Question: What does the Saxon who rallies the troops actually yell? He yells it twice: once, after Cerdic meets with Arthur in front of the wall and gives the order to "prepare the men for battle", and then a second time when Cerdic gives the signal after the only survivor of the first "wave" comes back through the wall. (And I don't mean his cry of "battle formation.").

Answer: I don't think it's supposed to be German. Probably Old Saxon. Could be something like "slahten fiand" - slaughter enemy.

Answer: He yells 'Schlachtet den feind!' (In very, very bad "German") - 'slaughter the enemy!'. And his army seems to yell: "Schlachtung! Schlachtung! Schlachtung..." - "Slaughter! Slaughter! Slaughter..."

More questions & answers from King Arthur

Join the mailing list

Separate from membership, this is to get updates about mistakes in recent releases. Addresses are not passed on to any third party, and are used solely for direct communication from this site. You can unsubscribe at any time.

Check out the mistake & trivia books, on Kindle and in paperback.