Guy Ritchie: “King Arthur is the story of a poor man who becomes king”

It begins as pure Guy Ritchie – Arthur's origin story in the underbelly of London. Before diving into anonymous heroic fantasy. For what ? We tried to ask him the question.

TF1 will end the weekend with the rebroadcast of King Arthur: The Legend of Excalibur. See you later Spider-Man: No Way Home, at 11:50 p.m. When it was released in 2017, we met its director, Guy Ritchie. Flashback.

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First: We have difficulty making the link between the very chic Very special agents And King Arthur. Where is the real Guy Ritchie hiding?
Guy Ritchie: In the characters! No need to go far, that's where they should look for me! I take the heroes and I feed them with my interpretations or my fantasies.

But you also have a signature. She's there, by the way. With this funky start that looks like a Snatch medieval…
Ah… It’s easier if you tell me you like it! In this presentation scene, I wanted to convey a lot of information in a very short time. I shot for eight minutes, and watching the rushes I felt that I could reduce it, be more efficient. I cut. And I dropped that to three minutes…

But isn't it a little easy to make Arthur a character from the gutter? It's a light film concept, isn't it?
But no ! The idea was to tell the story of a poor man who becomes king. It was this trip that interested me; this transformation through trials – magical or not. Becoming king when you come out of the gutter, it's fun, it speaks to me, but above all it's a wonderful story to tell, because there are necessarily trials, an initiation… You're talking to me about a scene then that it is a story arc.

Yes, but then you lose yourself in fantasy delirium…
I wanted to merge my style with a world and a genre that I don't know. It allows me to discover universes and in return it makes this universe fresher.

And you weren't afraid of drowning yourself in special effects?
No. This isn't the first time I've used it. The story never gets diluted in the SFX. Anyway, King Arthur would not have been possible if it had not been a fantasy… We needed this fantastic component to make it work.

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I still can't understand what attracted you to this project…
The story. And the music.

The music ?
I wanted a soundtrack that married the old and the new. I like Celtic music, but native Celtic music. The folk, the real. Not today's soup, diluted in modernity. What I wanted was to capture the original robustness of this music.

Are we talking about Charlie Hunnam? When you have chosen it…
I'll stop you: he's the one who found me. I wasn't looking to cast, he bought a plane ticket to take the tests while I was thinking of the usual suspects. He tried it and it was the best! It was against my prejudices that he got the role.

Well… when he won, didn't you tell yourself that he was going to get eaten by Jude Law?
I don’t think… Jude is great. I've worked with him several times… But he never makes the film his own.

You will go from Arthur to the live version ofAladdin ? In fact, you have become Hollywood's myth-busting specialist.
Disney is doing just fine without me. The producers just want their brand to stay fresh and I will try to live up to that.

How to convey the passion of Guy Ritchie in a Disney?
Ask me again in two years.

Trailer for King Arthur: The Legend of Excalibur :

The legend of Arthur rock'n'roll version in the cinema