(WSVN) - Destiny can sometimes be a hard thing to accept. Just ask the British street kid who’s actually the rightful ruler of England — that’s the story in theaters this weekend in “King Arthur: Legend of the Sword.”
Deco’s own heir to the throne, Chris Van Vliet, fulfilled his destiny when he talked to the stars.
Director Guy Ritchie’s “King Arthur: Legend of the Sword” is a new take on the story of Camelot.
I talked with Guy and King Arthur himself, Charlie Hunnam, about the man who pulled a sword from the stone.
Charlie Hunnam plays the title role in “King Arthur: Legend of the Sword.”
The story’s been around for more than a thousand years — what it needed was a fresh coat of paint for today’s audiences.
Charlie Hunnam: “We definitely wanted to make this rendering of the legend as young and fresh and accessible to this generation as possible.”
Pulling a sword out of a stone is one thing… but learning how to swing it in battle is something completely different.
Charlie Hunnam: “Hundreds of hours of preparation to learn all of the sequencing and stuff.”
It’s actually kind of a miracle that no one was hurt during filming.
Charlie Hunnam: “On the eighth hour of the fifth day, everybody’s exhausted but you’re still wielding, you know, things that can be lethal, and so we had to be very, very careful not to kill anybody.”
It didn’t take a lot of arm-twisting to get Charlie to sign on to the project.
Charlie Hunnam: “If one of my pals had said, ‘Do you want to see King Arthur directed by Guy Ritchie?’ I would say, ‘Absolutely I do.'”
For Guy Ritchie, making “King Arthur: Legend of the Sword” is something he can finally cross off his bucket list.
Guy Ritchie: “I’ve been wanting to make an Arthurian movie for the last eight years and I suppose the stars aligned.”
Arthur may be a born king, but he never forgets his connection to his people.
It was crucial that Arthur remain a man of the people no matter what changes he was going through.
Guy Ritchie: “There’s a terrible danger of making someone look noble and thereby smug and once you’re smug you lose any attractive quality that you could have accrued.”
The title character never becomes a snob — and all the credit for that goes to the man behind the camera.
Guy Ritchie: “It’s an ongoing journey and my job to try and keep Charlie muzzled from turning into something that becomes unattractive.”
Charlie said they originally rehearsed the action scenes with plastic swords but after he broke about fifty of them, there was no choice but to move on to the real thing.
“King Arthur: Legend of the Sword” swings into theaters Friday.
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