The Arthurian legend is a popular choice among filmmakers historically, making ranking every King Arthur movie from worst to best a journey spanning 59 years. A central figure in the legends making up a body of medieval literature and arcane texts known as the Matter of Britain, the King Arthur legend has since developed into a figure of international interest. This is especially true in modern television and film mediums, with King Arthur’s story cited as inspiring numerous live-action interpretations, as well as animated shorts, parodies, and modernizations of the famous Camelot story.
According to the oldest medieval histories and romances, King Arthur was a famed military leader who led the staunch defense against Saxon invaders of Britain in the late 5th and early 6th centuries. The widely accepted version of the Arthurian legend today, however, is far more fanciful, with Geoffrey of Monmouth’s 12th-century Historia Regum Britanniae responsible for commonly known beats of Arthur’s story, including the magician Merlin, King Arthur’s wife Guinevere, the sword Excalibur, his final battle against Mordred at Camlann, and the concept of Avalon. While other stories around this time regarding King Arthur all vary from text to text both in creativity and narrative, modern historians have decided that Arthur is a fictitious character designed to embody the ideal image of a forthright medieval knight.
However, this consensus has done little to dampen contemporary appetite for his character, with 2021 seeing the release of several prominent King Arthur-based films. From farcical rehashes of the Arthurian legends in Monty Python and the Holy Grail to gritter, realistic fare in the form of The Last Legion, there is no shortage of creativity from filmmakers looking to repurpose Geoffrey of Monmouth’s original stories. Here’s every King Arthur movie ranked from worst to best.
#20 – Arthur & Merlin: Knights Of Camelot
Audiences looking to understand the legend of King Arthur should seek out any source material other than this dire attempt at a feature film. Arthur and Merlin: Knights of Camelot sees Arthur (Richard Short) and his men race home to prevent the evil Mordred from taking over Camelot castle, yet this classic story is somehow twisted beyond recognition in director Giles Anderson’s hollow attempts at making a rugged and realistic period piece. Knights of Camelot is the kind of unforgivable, straight to streaming, and cheap fantasy fare that is best left unseen due to how it turns the Arthurian legend’s rich history into a joyless, by-the-book medieval slog.
#19 – Sword Of The Valiant: The Legend Of Sir Gawain And The Green Knight
Stephen Weeks’ Sword of the Valiant somehow manages to turn a project featuring legendary movie actors Peter Cushing, Sean Connery, and Trevor Howard into a heinous 102 minutes of film. A strangely low budget, poor production values, and dreary fight sequences conspire to make Weeks’ medieval epic feel more like B-Movie fare than its stellar cast have any right to feature in. Yet perhaps Sword of the Valiant‘s worst crime is its screeching, synthesizer-led score, which takes a toll on the eardrums long before Gawain (Miles O’Keeffe) meets the Green Knight (Sean Connery) on the field of battle.
#18 – A Kid In King Arthur’s Court
Loosely based on Mark Twain’s iconic 1889 novel A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, A Kid in King Arthur’s Court decides to take all the best elements of Twain’s novel and dispense with them entirely while championing the (assumedly sponsored by Nike) unforgivable catchphrase “Joust Do It.” Instead, this ill-advised Walt Disney movie production sees a young, baseball-obsessed boy named Calvin transported from contemporary Los Angeles to Camelot, where he helps King Arthur keep his throne using a CD player, a Swiss Army Knife, and rollerskates. While nearly a total misfire from Disney, A Kid in King Arthur’s Court is worth viewing if only to see performances from a young Kate Winslet and Daniel Craig, who both went on to become huge stars despite featuring in this shocker of a film.
#17 – Shrek The Third
Shrek the Third proves that a third bite of the apple was decidedly unlucky for the Shrek franchise, with Chris Miller and Raman Hui’s animated movie a bridge too far for the ogre’s story. At its core, Shrek the Third‘s concept is seemingly designed to be a film for adults that is instead shackled by its core demographic of a child-based audience, containing multiple jokes about existential ennui that undoubtedly fly straight over most of its viewer’s heads. While the cast of Shrek the Third is still clearly having a good time voicing the characters that made Shrek and Shrek 2 such fantastic family movies, there is little about Shrek the Third‘s story to excite or enthrall beyond Shrek’s (Mike Myers) anxiety dream early in its runtime.
#16 – The Last Legion
To form the backbone of a gritty narrative, Doug Lefler’s The Last Legion brings together a crop of fine English actors, including Colin Firth, Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Ben Kingsley, and Rupert Friend. Loosely inspired by the events of 5th-century European history, including the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, The Last Legion blends these historical events with fantastical elements from the legend of King Arthur to provide a fictional basis for the Arthurian legend. The Last Legion is decent enough combat-based fare. However, it pales compared to other historical action films released around the same time period, including Troy and Antoine Fuqua’s King Arthur.
#15 – Transformers: The Last Knight
Although Michael Bay’s assertion that a group of Transformers aided Merlin and Arthur against the Saxons is outrageous even in a fantasy setting, Transformers: The Last Knight otherwise does exactly what it says on the tin. The fifth installment in the Transformers film series is not looking to think too hard about any of its narrative choices, instead delivering the epic battles and collision of worlds that Bay’s Transformers titles have become known for. Transformers: The Last Knight‘s special effects essentially prop up an otherwise nonsensical movie, but the CG work is so clean in this latest Transformers offering that it masks the franchise’s now-familiar shortcomings more palatable than some of its predecessors.
#14 – Tristan & Isolde
Tristan and Isolde is a serviceable attempt at a medieval romance wrapped up in Arthurian legend, although the Scott Free-produced film occasionally fails to elicit the levels of emotion needed to sustain its core love story. A young James Franco (Dawn of the Planet of the Apes) excels as Tristan here, playing the prince with a well-tempered blend of duty and passion, while his chemistry with co-star Sophia Myles is palpable throughout despite some awful dialogue the pair have to contend with. Put simply, Tristan and Isolde promises to be a medieval version of Romeo and Juliet but instead ends up being an accurate portrayal of Lord Marke of Cornwall’s life and links to King Arthur rather than championing the love story on the sleeve of its DVD cover at the time of release.
#13 – First Knight
First Knight sets out its narrative stall early in the film’s runtime, with King Arthur’s (Sean Connery) proclamation of Merlin’s death acting as a precursor to the numerous, gritty fight scenes that soon follow this statement. Ironically, First Knight would benefit greatly from a little magic, or indeed humor, to elevate the otherwise strong performances from Bond legend Sean Connery and several of his co-stars. While Richard Gere is perhaps a fatal miscasting arrow straight to the heart of First Knight as an uninspired Lancelot, the film is a gorgeous spectacle visually, with Adam Greenberg’s cinematography transporting audiences to the rolling hills surrounding the fabled Camelot.
#12 – King Arthur: Legend of the Sword
The bizarre six-film deal struck by Warner Bros. and Village Roadshow pictures ahead of King Arthur: Legend of the Sword‘s release certainly overshadowed the film’s massive potential, with both production companies overly confident in the film’s success. Guy Ritchie’s take on the Arthurian legend is certainly bold, with Charlie Hunnam strutting around as the titular king in a manner more akin to earlier Guy Ritchie gangster movie fare such as Snatch, while the director cheekily also draws parallels to the Brexit issue dominating his home country at the time of the film’s release. Yet despite the tongue-in-cheek fun posited by King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, its box office failure scuppered the other five sequel films in the pipeline, leaving Ritchie’s franchise starter as a standalone film that is a highly enjoyable ride whose narrative never really goes anywhere.
#11 – A Knight In Camelot
Disney was acutely aware of their failure with A Kid In King Arthur’s Court in 1995, with the studio attempting a more mature-skewing remake just three years later as a result. This time, however, the production studio landed much closer to their usual standard of the movie, with A Knight In Camelot providing genuine laughs alongside a more robust, cohesive script. The real star of A Knight In Camelot is leading lady Whoopi Goldberg, whose turn as scientist Vivien Morgan out of her time is both touching and hilarious as she saves King Arthur’s bamboozled court from the nefarious Sir Sagramore (Robert Addie).
#10 – Dragonheart
Getting into the good stuff now is Dragonheart, a Hollywood oddity that treated audiences in 1996 to a mulleted, sword fighting Dennis Quaid, Sean Connery voicing the last living dragon Draco, and David Thewlis attempting a heart transplant in medieval Britain. Far from jostling to be taken seriously, Dragonheart unselfishly frees its actors of the script’s potentially grandiose shackles, instead allowing each character (especially the villains) monologues and overt mannerisms to run riot, making Dragonheart feel a maximalist production in every sense. Dragonheart‘s visual effects were also stunning at the time of its release, with Draco’s animations holding up well some 26 years later.
#9 – King Arthur
Of all the films listed here, director Antoine Fuqua’s King Arthur is in a class of its own when delivering visceral, bone-crunching medieval action. Several battle scenes from King Arthur live long in the memory, with Lancelot (Ioan Gruffudd) impaling Cynric (Til Schweiger) through the head with a sword and Dagonet taking arrows to the chest the pick of the bunch. Yet King Arthur remains much more than a sum of its goriest scenes, with its key cast representing the crop of British acting talent in 2004. Clive Owen, in particular, plays the part of an Artorius stripped of his typical bravado with such conviction it is hard to imagine a more convincing portrait of the burgeoning ruler in modern King Arthur movies to date.
#8 – Lancelot And Guinevere
Lancelot and Guinevere remains not only one of the oldest King Arthur stories to grace the big screen but also one of the most touching following its initial 1963 release. Cornel Wilde’s classic depicts a lesser-known version of the Camelot legend, in which Lancelot (Cornel Wilde) must shed his image as a paragon of virtue to pursue and court King Arthur’s (Brian Aherne) wife Guinevere (Jean Wallace), with their tryst ending in Arthur’s wife being burned at the stake amid accusations of witchcraft. Originally titled Sword of Lancelot for U.S. audiences, Lancelot and Guinevere remains a heartbreaking depiction of the inner working of Camelot that stands the test of time.
#7 – The Kid Who Would Be King
Despite being a commercial flop owed in part to a poor marketing strategy, The Kid Who Would Be King is an unbridled joy of a film for any of those able to look past its less than stellar title. A bold blend of Arthurian legend, CG monster action, and sharp comedy, The Kid Who Would Be King modernizes a classic story and makes it accessible (and enjoyable) for all ages, whether they are familiar with the medieval legends of Bedders and Morgan le Fay or not. If for no other reason, The Kid Who Would Be King is worth watching simply for the scene in which Alex (Louis Ashbourne Serkis) summons the Lady of the Lake in a bathtub while attempting to convince his mother Excalibur is real.
#6 – Army of Darkness
Of all the ways to adapt the classic Arthurian legends, the most left-field option is undoubtedly Army of Darkness‘ choice to place King Arthur and his fabled knights at the center of Ash’s (Bruce Cambell) battle against the Deadites. The Raimi brothers’ Army of Darkness marks a distinct departure from earlier Evil Dead franchise entries, taking on a more comical tone as Ash attempts to recite passages from the Necronomicon and fix his time travel gaffe which landed him in the Middle Ages, to begin with. Despite an outrageous premise, Army of Darkness is great fun wrapped up in surprisingly deep Evil Dead lore that is enhanced by its medieval setting and characters.
#5 – Excalibur
Excalibur‘s cast list reads like a who’s who of premium actors in the early 1980s, with the peerless Helen Mirren, Patrick Stewart, Taken‘s Liam Neeson, Gabriel Byrne, and Ciarán Hinds all lending their prowess to John Boorman’s dazzling visual spectacle. More important than the film’s visual settings, however, is how Excalibur humanizes the main players within the Arthurian legend, reducing Arthur, Merlin, and company to humans following their base urges as they attempt to navigate a harsh medieval landscape. Moreover, Helen Mirren is in dazzling form here, playing the evil Morgana’s every salacious action with a glee that marks Excalibur as a must-see King Arthur movie.
#4 – The Sword In The Stone
The Sword In The Stone taught generations of children the Arthurian legend in the years following its 1963 release and continues to be celebrated to this day. In typical Disney fashion, the animated feature forgoes the overt bloodshed of the real 15th Century to instead deliver a wholly captivating coming of age story as a young King Arthur comes to terms with his destiny. In this way, The Sword In The Stone is a towering example of Disney’s enduring magic as a classic that weaves poignant narrative beats into a vibrant historical world.
#3 – Monty Python And The Holy Grail
Although there are many King Arthur movies that provide comical moments, there are none that hold a candle to Terry Gilliam’s comedic masterpiece, The Holy Grail. In a fashion typical of the legendary Monty Python troupe, The Holy Grail‘s zaniness is infectious as it zips between references to Homer’s Iliad, the Arthurian classics, and gratuitous pokes at Christianity with gleeful abandon. While The Holy Grail pales only in comparison to Monty Python‘s sketch adaptation The Life of Brian, it nonetheless remains a monument to the genius of Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Michael Palin, and Gilliam himself.
#2 – The Green Knight
Not many superlatives can adequately do justice to the visual feast that is The Green Knight‘s entire 130-minute runtime as it honors and deconstructs its source material in equal measure. The Green Knight from David Lowery, put simply, is spellbinding in that it weaves audiences into the inverted coming of age journey that the phenomenal Dev Patel goes through as Sir Gawain. Stripped away from its numerous aesthetic thrills does little to diminish The Green Knight’s story as a spectacle, with its core message of facing one’s demons as relevant and poignant today as it was in King Arthur’s time of chivalry and mysticism. The Green Knight tackles heavy themes in an almost spectral manner, allowing each idea to float and take form as the seasons change around Gawain and his terrifying opponent, making it undoubtedly one of the best King Arthur movies on offer to date.
#1 – Camelot
The only film able to oust Lowery’s The Green Knight from the top spot is the timeless Arthurian tale Camelot. Based on the 1960 stage musical of the same name by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe, Joshua Logan’s Camelot is an unabashed and glittering production whose every shot is sumptuous by design. Intricately crafted sets, costumes, and a leading career-best duo of the highest order in Richard Harris and Vanessa Redgrave conspire to make this 1967 classic a must-see for any audience regardless of their passion for the tales of the round table. Camelot cemented its status as one of the all-time great musical adaptations in its inaugural year by taking home three Golden Globes and three Academy Awards is a ceremonial sweep worthy of the best King Arthur movie to exist to date.
