[Sans-Culotte]

Excalibur basically followed the Victorian era telling of the legend. It’s visually beautiful, but like the Victorian illustrators they put them in late medieval armor. The real Arthur if there was one would have been fighting the Saxon invaders around 500 AD, so that’s all wrong. I liked the 2004 King Arthur retelling it as at least looking right for the period.

IMO the Arthurian Legends are just that-legends. Sure there might have been some late-Roman era version of Arthur, but all the stories from Le Morte d'Arthur are stories/legends and there is no point IMO in trying to be historically correct about a bunch of people and events that never existed (at least not in the form that Malory wrote).

I prefer the Excalibur approach to King Arthur. I also like Knights of the Round Table from the mid 1950's. It is stilted and corny and removes the magic from the story; but it looks splendid in 3-strip technicolor and cinemascope.

[Eddie01]

Dennis: Listen. Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.

Arthur: Be quiet!

Dennis: You can’t expect to wield supreme executive power just ‘cause some watery tart threw a sword at you!

Arthur: Shut up!

Dennis: I mean, if I went around saying I was an emperor just because some moistened bink had lobbed a scimitar at me, they’d put me away!

[Bratch]

Guinevere from Excaliber

Guinevere from King Arthur

[Oztrich Boy]

There was also that Richard Harris one (kidding).

I liked the Dark Age ambiance of Excalibur(even with full plate, but the two best "period" versions were a couple of Brit TV series: the 1979 Legend Of King Arthur the traditional version in a Post Roman Britain, and the 1972 Arthur Of the Britons no legend here.