They don't do entertaining tripe like First Knight anymore

Yesterday would have been the perfect day for blogging. I was stuck at home anyway, waiting for delayed luggage (which still hasn't arrived, by the way). In spite of a number of possible blog subjects, however, I just thought "nah". Why is summer blogging so difficult? Is it the weather? Post-travel inability to settle? Sheer laziness?

Anyway, a less complex subject for a blog post than First Knight, which for some reason (I'm not complaining) has made it to Netflix, would be hard to find. This schmaltzy Arthurian romance was filmed in the 90s, and it shows. I was surprised at how much it triggered my nostalgia. Back in the day, the younger me wasn't much taken with First Knight. I did not see the appeal of Richard Gere as the apparently irresistible Lancelot, and the depiction of Camelot wasn't close enough to how I imagined it (based on reliable sources such as Howard Pyle and the Prince Valiant comic). But now, a number of "gritty" reimaginings of the King Arthur legend later, this film feels endearingly straightforward.

The film centres on the famous love triangle between King Arthur, Queen Guinevere and Sir Lancelot (I've always felt torn about this part of the lore as Pyle, maybe mindful of his young readers, insisted that Guinevere and Lancelot were "just good friends"). Gere is Lancelot, Julia Ormond Guinevere – more beautiful than envious younger me gave her credit for – and an attractively regal mature Sean Connery is King Arthur. We also have Ben Cross, usually cast as an intensely brooding hero, as the intensely brooding villain Malagant (as far as I know a character made up for the occasion – what's wrong with Mordred, I'd like to know?). Not badly cast, in other words. John Gielgud, never too haughty when it came to his roles, shows up in a bit part.

The challenge anyone who wants to tackle the Arthur-Guinevere-Lancelot triangle faces is that they're all good guys, but I can see that that's part of the story's appeal. First Knight solves the problem by not making Guinevere and Lancelot too duplicitious. They want to do right by Arthur, and only indulge in one bout of passionate kissing (that's when Arthur walks in). It's all very airbrushed, but I'm fine with that. It's in keeping with the silly bit of entertainment this film is.

For it is silly, I'll not deny it. In a battle sequence, Lancelot idiotically removes his helmet to let his locks fly free. Earlier, Guinevere marvels at his ability to channel rainwater in leaves, as if it were a consummate skill. The secondary characters have no function at all except to admire Lancelot's prowess and Arthur's wisdom or (if it's the villain's sidekick) sneer. The film has "formulaic, vaguely historical Nineties adventure/romance" written all over it, and I enjoyed it very much.

So what do I mean by my title? Surely generic adventure flicks are churned out all the time? Well, maybe, but it's not so easy to find entertaining hogwash of this kind, where some effort has been put into making the formula work, nowadays. Take the romance. I was partly ashamed of my prissy "whoa, there" reaction when Lancelot kisses Guinevere, whom he's just met, out of nowhere and claims "I know when a woman wants me". You wouldn't get a scene like that in a 2020s film, which is perhaps no great loss in itself, but a sign of how restricted the parameters of romance have become. When we say that something has "aged badly", what we often mean is that our own age has become more intolerant. Lads should not try this kind of behaviour at home, but fictional romances can't be wholesome all the time – it kills all the fun.

Then there's the Arthurian legend part. For the last couple of decades, when someone tries their hand at the King Arthur story, it's mostly in order to make it more "realistic" and "historical". But this, I would argue, is not what we want from a King Arthur story. We want the round table, Excalibur, Merlin, a brave Lancelot, a witty Gawain, the Lady of the Lake, at least one wicked sorceress, the whole caboodle. Of course that's not in any way a "true story", but the trueness isn't the appeal here, as little as it is in the Robin Hood myth. I've got my problems even with the sanitised merry folk hero Robin Hood, and would stomach him even less well were he to lean more into actual highwayman/robber behaviour.

First Knight does't tick all the Arthurian boxes – there's no Merlin, for example. But it doesn't try to turn Arthur into some boring Roman centurion or local chieftain, and for that I at least am grateful.

Mysteries of the box office: the case of Elio

Summer vacation blogging means low-hanging fruit. A Pixar film should do. The problem is, while I enjoyed Elio, there isn't an awful lot to discuss about it. Oddball kids united in friendship and shenanigans in colourful space settings are nice to see, but it's hardly new. The only unexpected part of this film was the focus on struggling parents or parent figures. Otherwise, Elio in its comfortable predictability is less easy to blog about than Turning Red or The Good Dinosaur, though I liked it better than both those films.

So let's return to the old angle of the box office. Since I last broached the subject, it has continued to puzzle me. I don't want to pan a film I haven't seen, but wasn't the success of Minecraft: The Movie somewhat surprising? I haven't seen a single good review of it. On the other hand, Thunderbolts*, appreciated by critics and by those who saw it (including me), did not draw the crowds. I know there's a gap between what critics and audiences like, but I'm not talking about snooty film buffs who abhor everything that isn't Bergman or Citizen Kane here. Popular YouTubers (well, most of them) enjoyed Thunderbolts*, but did it help the movie? did it heck.

And now, Elio, a good solid Pixar flick, has bombed despite good ratings on Rotten Tomatoes, while the lacklustre Moana 2 met box-office approval. It's hard to see a pattern here. Yes, there seems to be a fondness for "known IP", but Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves was based on "known IP", and that was no help. (I've mentioned that it's good, right?) All whining aside, though, the disappointing audience figures for Elio at least provides a mystery to be pondered in a blog post. Why didn't people go to watch it?

To start with myself, I very nearly didn't go to watch it either. What put me off was that the story, judging by the trailers, didn't seem that engaging. True, there was an early trailer way back in 2023 (I think), which was worse, as the film then seemed to focus on a tiresome "Earth on Trial" plot (has anyone but Star Trek: Next Generation made that cliché work?). This story, I'm happy to say, has been scrapped completely, but maybe a few potential cinemagoers were scared off early. The later trailers, by contrast, looked nice enough, but had "good streaming content" written all over them. They didn't sell Elio as something you necessarily had to watch in cinemas.

In all fairness, maybe it's not, the magnificent visuals notwithstanding. I went to see it because 1) my summer vacation has started 2) I'm a mousehead who wants to keep Disney animation and Pixar in business 3) films aren't released for streaming as early as they once were, as Disney especially has become disenchanted with streaming services as a stable source of income and 4) it looked like a fun time. As it happens, Elio exceeded my expectations, though the story wasn't the film's greatest strength. It felt oddly paced at times, with the title character's orphan status being a particularly forced plot point which didn't elicit the pathos the film makers were perhaps hoping for. But I am glad I went and didn't wait around for months for the Disney + release.

What I appreciated most was the overwhelmed parent angle. As Elio's parents are both killed off (without explanation) before the story starts, he's living with his father's sister Olga, who has no family of her own and has to give up her ambition to become an astronaut in favour of her safe, earth-bound job in order to care for him. Elio picks up on how his presence has upended his aunt's life and draws the conclusion that he's unwanted. Aunt Olga's struggles to connect to Elio are paralleled, not very subtly, with those of the alien war lord Grigon, who doesn't understand his peaceful son Glordon at all, but who still loves him. The scenes where Elio and Glordon respectively finally realise how much they mean to their parent/parent figure pulled at my heartstrings far more than Elio's dead mum and dad.          

Maybe here's another clue as to why the film hasn't done better. There's plenty of fun for kids, and something to chew on for adults, but there isn't much for the inbetween audiences. I'm not sure I would necessarily recommend Elio to teenagers and twentysomethings, at least not as something they needed to see at the cinema. For this middle-aged aunt, though, it did the trick.