A Knight's Tale:
Medieval and Modern Worlds Collide
A Primer
A Knight's Tale contains all the elements in a typical Hollywood-made movie set in the Medieval period; it has knights, royalty, dueling, horses, maidens, and so on. However, there are certain... elements in the movie that make it ostensibly modern (at least by 2001 standards, when this movie was released)
For example, the beginning of this movie starts off with three squires, their recently deceased knight that they attend to, and a tournament that said knight is, or was, going to participate in. One of the squires, William, (our protagonist) says he will take his master's place and participate in the tournament, and become the knight he always wanted to be. So far, all typical Medieval components; there are knights, squires, tournaments, a young hero rising to the challenge - all basic Medieval fare.
The tournament starts. The peasants are watching from the stands. William and his opponent are staring each other down from opposites ends atop their horses.
"We Will Rock You" starts playing
Wait, what?
Yeah, "We Will Rock You", by Queen, starts playing. And to top it off, the crowd is chanting along with it.
It's not just background music, either - the crowd, the soldiers, and all the other characters in the movie, (which is supposed to be set in the Medieval times, in case you forgot), start chanting along with the song, completely shattering any and all immersion of being set in Medieval times. It's basically the director more or less saying: "Hey, look, Medieval people aren't so different than us! If Queen was around during that time period, I'm more than positive that's what people would be chanting at these tournaments and whatnot."
Oh, and in case you don't believe me, here's footage of said scene:
Yeah, so this is a thing.
"We Will Rock You" starts playing
Wait, what?
Yeah, "We Will Rock You", by Queen, starts playing. And to top it off, the crowd is chanting along with it.
It's not just background music, either - the crowd, the soldiers, and all the other characters in the movie, (which is supposed to be set in the Medieval times, in case you forgot), start chanting along with the song, completely shattering any and all immersion of being set in Medieval times. It's basically the director more or less saying: "Hey, look, Medieval people aren't so different than us! If Queen was around during that time period, I'm more than positive that's what people would be chanting at these tournaments and whatnot."
Oh, and in case you don't believe me, here's footage of said scene:
Yeah, so this is a thing.
A Summary
This will be a cursory summary, seeing as this plot is as basic as it gets. I'll even give bits of my abridged version to spruce things up a bit.
Here are the three squires I mentioned.
Here you can see in this picture Roland and Wat are totally done with Will's bullshit
Our protagonist and squire-becoming-knight is Will, the one on the left.
The other two are from left to right, Roland and Wat, and they are there to help Will become a knight.
However, Will becoming an actual knight poses a problem. He is a peasant, and is not of noble birth. Only those of noble birth can be a knight. What is Will ever to do?
Enter Geoffrey Chaucer(Yeah, THAT Geoffrey Chaucer)
Here we have an angry Will 'convincing' a naked Chaucer to help him out and not to expose his secret of being a peasant.
Due to Will's silver tongue, Chaucer agrees, and forges papers of his royal lineage, and creates a fake identity for him:
Ulrich von Liechtenstein
Thank God nobody read back then, because 'Ulrich' would've been found out about his fake identity way longer than it should have taken.
Oh yeah, spoiler alert: 'Ulrich' eventually gets found out that that isn't his real identity.
More on that later.So our four companions start entering Will into tournaments and it it turns out Will is just a NATURAL at sword fighting and jousting and shit, because why not I guess, and then he sees some pretty girl and falls in love. Crazy unexpected, I know.
This is the woman he fell in love with upon first sight, Jocelyn:
Take special note of her ridiculous outfit. He fell in love with this travesty. What's worse is her outfit changes every scene she's in, and they only get worse with each subsequent scene.
Not to mention, not only did Will fall in love with a woman who got her outfit from some knockoff Versace outlit store, but here's more-or-less how their first conversation went:
"You're beautiful. I love you"
"Would you love me if I wasn't beautiful?"
"No? Wait, shit, I mean yes."
So their love between each other is a totally uninteresting and basic subplot which more-or-less goes like this:
"I love you"
"Why do you love me?"
"Because you're beautiful."
"That's sexist. You should love me for other reasons."
"I love you because you're cool, too"
"In that case I love you too!"
The End.
At least for that subplot.
As for the MAIN plot. Our main antagonist is this guy:
His name is Count Adhemar. You can totally tell he's a bad guy because he wears all black and he's slightly menacing-looking-but-not-too-menacing-just-menacing-enough-to-look-like-an-asshole.
Also note Jocelyn's even more ridiculous outfit. Like my God, how are all these men interested in you?
Basically, Adhemar is threatened by 'Ulrich' because he's really good at horsey-lancey fighting and Jocelyn totally prefers Will over him. He feels threatened, beats Will the first tournament, and feels better about himself. But then Adhemar sees Will winning a whole bunch of subsequent tournaments he couldn't be at because reasons, and then at the final tournament they go head-to-head in the Finals and Will totally wins.
Also somewhere in between that Adhemar finds out 'Ulrich' is nothing more than a commoner and is actually 'Will Thatcher', and has him sentenced to death.
But don't worry, Edward, the Black Prince, and future king of England absolves him of this crime because he thinks Will is a totally cool dude because he beat him in a joust at one of the tournaments, where the Prince was participating incognito, even though everyone knew it was the Prince. Everyone surrendered whereas Will was the only one to go up against him.
Here we see Prince Edward and Will share a totally bro moment. This is what the REAL love story should been about: These two handsome studs.
The conversation was more or less this:
"We jousted against each other. That's pretty cool"
"Yeah"
"We're totally bros now"
"Totally"
"I'll absolve you of your crimes and knight you now, since we're bros and all."
"Sick, dude"
And then Will went to finish the final tournament against Bad Guy McBaddyson and everyone lived happily ever after.
The End.
The other two are from left to right, Roland and Wat, and they are there to help Will become a knight.
However, Will becoming an actual knight poses a problem. He is a peasant, and is not of noble birth. Only those of noble birth can be a knight. What is Will ever to do?
Enter Geoffrey Chaucer(Yeah, THAT Geoffrey Chaucer)
Here we have an angry Will 'convincing' a naked Chaucer to help him out and not to expose his secret of being a peasant.
Due to Will's silver tongue, Chaucer agrees, and forges papers of his royal lineage, and creates a fake identity for him:
Ulrich von Liechtenstein
Thank God nobody read back then, because 'Ulrich' would've been found out about his fake identity way longer than it should have taken.
Oh yeah, spoiler alert: 'Ulrich' eventually gets found out that that isn't his real identity.
More on that later.So our four companions start entering Will into tournaments and it it turns out Will is just a NATURAL at sword fighting and jousting and shit, because why not I guess, and then he sees some pretty girl and falls in love. Crazy unexpected, I know.
This is the woman he fell in love with upon first sight, Jocelyn:
Take special note of her ridiculous outfit. He fell in love with this travesty. What's worse is her outfit changes every scene she's in, and they only get worse with each subsequent scene.
Not to mention, not only did Will fall in love with a woman who got her outfit from some knockoff Versace outlit store, but here's more-or-less how their first conversation went:
"You're beautiful. I love you"
"Would you love me if I wasn't beautiful?"
"No? Wait, shit, I mean yes."
So their love between each other is a totally uninteresting and basic subplot which more-or-less goes like this:
"I love you"
"Why do you love me?"
"Because you're beautiful."
"That's sexist. You should love me for other reasons."
"I love you because you're cool, too"
"In that case I love you too!"
The End.
At least for that subplot.
As for the MAIN plot. Our main antagonist is this guy:
His name is Count Adhemar. You can totally tell he's a bad guy because he wears all black and he's slightly menacing-looking-but-not-too-menacing-just-menacing-enough-to-look-like-an-asshole.
Also note Jocelyn's even more ridiculous outfit. Like my God, how are all these men interested in you?
Basically, Adhemar is threatened by 'Ulrich' because he's really good at horsey-lancey fighting and Jocelyn totally prefers Will over him. He feels threatened, beats Will the first tournament, and feels better about himself. But then Adhemar sees Will winning a whole bunch of subsequent tournaments he couldn't be at because reasons, and then at the final tournament they go head-to-head in the Finals and Will totally wins.
Also somewhere in between that Adhemar finds out 'Ulrich' is nothing more than a commoner and is actually 'Will Thatcher', and has him sentenced to death.
But don't worry, Edward, the Black Prince, and future king of England absolves him of this crime because he thinks Will is a totally cool dude because he beat him in a joust at one of the tournaments, where the Prince was participating incognito, even though everyone knew it was the Prince. Everyone surrendered whereas Will was the only one to go up against him.
Here we see Prince Edward and Will share a totally bro moment. This is what the REAL love story should been about: These two handsome studs.
The conversation was more or less this:
"We jousted against each other. That's pretty cool"
"Yeah"
"We're totally bros now"
"Totally"
"I'll absolve you of your crimes and knight you now, since we're bros and all."
"Sick, dude"
And then Will went to finish the final tournament against Bad Guy McBaddyson and everyone lived happily ever after.
The End.
The Conveyance of Medieval Themes with Modern Elements to a Modern Audience
Obviously, this movie was juxtaposed with a Medieval setting with Modern elements to be able to reach an audience back in 2001.
The usage of modern music like 'We Will Rock You' or the 'Boys are Back in Town' convey a sense of similarity with people from a thousand years ago, suggesting that we are not so different from them after all.
The characters and their personalities were also a blend of modern and medieval, as well. For example, Will was medieval in that he had a huge sense of pride, and was sexist, but was modern in the sense that he was an underdog rising to the top, which is very popular in our culture.
Jocelyn was a keen woman who would rather been heard and not seen, wishing to dispel the sexism rampant in the medieval times. Also, Jocelyn's style in fashion was a much more modern take than a medieval, and her clothing and hair resembled something much more out of what you would see today in a fashion magazine than you would of Medieval times.
The idea of class was also a theme in the background, emphasizing the modern, underdog story that's everywhere in modern-day culture. The antagonist was a high-class jerk who believed he deserved everything due to his birth, and others were beneath him if they weren't noble. He represents all the bad we associate with cultures past, in this medieval, whereas Will represents what we like in modern culture: An underdog.
Overall, the movie does something that not a lot of other Medieval movies do, and that's have an interesting blend of modern elements thrown into a Medieval setting, without having to include a literal 'modern' character, due to time travel or some such.
The usage of modern music like 'We Will Rock You' or the 'Boys are Back in Town' convey a sense of similarity with people from a thousand years ago, suggesting that we are not so different from them after all.
The characters and their personalities were also a blend of modern and medieval, as well. For example, Will was medieval in that he had a huge sense of pride, and was sexist, but was modern in the sense that he was an underdog rising to the top, which is very popular in our culture.
Jocelyn was a keen woman who would rather been heard and not seen, wishing to dispel the sexism rampant in the medieval times. Also, Jocelyn's style in fashion was a much more modern take than a medieval, and her clothing and hair resembled something much more out of what you would see today in a fashion magazine than you would of Medieval times.
The idea of class was also a theme in the background, emphasizing the modern, underdog story that's everywhere in modern-day culture. The antagonist was a high-class jerk who believed he deserved everything due to his birth, and others were beneath him if they weren't noble. He represents all the bad we associate with cultures past, in this medieval, whereas Will represents what we like in modern culture: An underdog.
Overall, the movie does something that not a lot of other Medieval movies do, and that's have an interesting blend of modern elements thrown into a Medieval setting, without having to include a literal 'modern' character, due to time travel or some such.
I'm actually really glad someone brought this up because I completely forgot that this movie even existed.
ReplyDeleteYour analysis is excellent and I dig your abridged summary. Your commentary made the post that much more enjoyable.