New take on an old legend
Guy Ritchie brings a different sort of King Arthur to the table
Charlie Hunnam is a paparazzi target thanks to his hit show Sons of Anarchy, movies such as Pacific Rim and a brief flirtation with the Fifty Shades franchise.
But when Guy Ritchie first set his sights on him, Hunnam got the cold shoulder.
“I hadn’t seen any work that he’d done, really. I think I was slightly prejudiced against him because he was good looking,” says the director. But eventually, felled by Hunnam’s drive and charisma, Ritchie crowned him as the lead in King Arthur: Legend of
the Sword (out May 12). The new, darkly supernatural
King Arthur could yield a new wave of the Arthurian legend, thanks to a chiseled new king, Jude Law as Arthur’s murderous uncle and a fresh current of power running through the infamous sword in the stone.
Arthur “has always been rendered as the noble man who goes on the noble journey to become the noble king,” says Hunnam. But Ritchie had another take: “He said, ‘Let’s do the opposite. Let’s make him ignoble and selfish with a heart of gold, but just a bit more rough around the edges.’ ”
In the film, Arthur is made an orphan after his parents’ murders, and grows up fighting on the streets; a cocky thief who finds an adopted family in a dingy brothel. Hunnam showed up prepared. “He never seems to carry more than 6% body fat. When he first took his top off, I was horrified. Usually I have to work with actors and they take their top off and I’m horrified in the wrong way,” Ritchie says, chuckling. “But Charlie walked in all pleased with himself with his 26-pack ready to rumble.”
Ritchie calls him level-headed; while his Lost City of Z co-star Robert Pattinson uses the word “determined.” “He’s seeking out the right things,” Pattinson says.
At 37, tentpole-size fame isn’t likely to corrupt the British star, says James Gray, who directed him in Lost City (out Friday). “He’s old enough to understand to some degree the silliness of it and to have some perspective. And at the same time, he’s ambitious enough to still want it.”
For King Arthur, that meant patience, reshoots and faith. The film has morphed. Ritchie, who last adapted Sherlock Holmes into a wry franchise starring Robert Downey Jr., had a classic take on the thousand-year-old myth, and it’s what attracted Hunnam.
But it was clear as they shot, the film was getting bigger and the tone, more irreverent.
“We set out to make a different film than we ended up with,” says Hunnam, describing the initial concept of King Arthur as more somber. “Guy had wanted to do something creatively that was a departure from what he’d been doing over the last few movies.” But on set, “everybody sort of got into the Guy Ritchie cheeky, fun mentality,” he says.
Reshoots followed, and the movie’s release date was pushed several times — in Hollywood, an eyebrow-raiser.
“I understand that perception when things get pushed and there’s a lot of reshoots, it’s often a sign of problems and I think that was accurate early on,” says Hunnam, noting tweaks made to give the film tonal “fluidity” and action sequences that were reshot to up the ante.
The end result is a brawny, bombastic, myth-altering Arthurian spectacle.
“I had to watch it a couple of times to start to appreciate what it was as opposed to what my expectation of it was going into it,” says Hunnam. His verdict? “It’s really fun. It delivers, I think and I hope, what people would want from a Guy Ritchie version of King Arthur.”