Yes, even in the ancient world, there were spinoffs of popular tales! So much of what we know of The Iliad, for example, was added later in the oral tradition. Well, these characters are essentially a spin-off. What about Sir Gawain and the Green Knight? 'First Knight' Credit: Sony Pictures Releasing But he appeared as the character alongside a really rough casting choice for Lancelot. Side note: who is your favorite King Arthur actor? Mine is Sean Connery. You know Arthur, Guinevere, Merlin, and Lancelot even if you don’t. Its influence on everything from Tolkien to Star Wars is well documented. You surely know some version of it.ĭisney’s Sword in the Stone, the musical? Maybe the grail from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade?Īrthurian legend is a massive piece of western civilization and storytelling. The legend goes that on Christmas Day, the Green Knight crashed a party in Camelot. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight summary and The Green Knight Story an Anti villain.īut to decode who he is, first we need to talk about the story as a whole. He combines many story archetypes into one figure. He’s the antagonist in the story, but he’s also the quest-giver, the teacher. Here is his adapted character for the 2021 film: Who is the Green Knight? Here is an image of him from the original text (he’s the green guy holding his own decapitated head):
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The title of the 2021 movie is simply The Green Knight, the original title is Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Not just as it was, but as it felt, or what it meant, to the people of its time. So here we stand in 2021 attempting to use The Green Knight movie as a key to glimpsing the past.
Obscured behind a misty fog of oral history, unwritten accounts. It probably all made perfect sense to the people of its era. This ancient fascinating text holds mysteries that critics, artists, and thinkers have been trying to unlock for over a thousand years. The importance of this story to our storytelling tradition looms so large that implications of it apply to history, narrative craft, and maybe even life itself. The good news: that’s kind of the fun part, right?īut we’re not just figuring out what The Green Knight movie made in 2021 means, or even the meaning behind the original story itself. We can only attempt to decode it and use it as a time travel device to a culture that's over a thousand years old. We are incapable of knowing precisely what The Green Knight is about, or what it meant to the people of its era. What is Sir Gawain and the Green Knight about? So don some chainmail, grab the nearest legendary weapon, and let’s go. The short answer is-we’re not entirely sure. If you have seen it, you’re probably wondering what the hell Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is about. If you haven’t seen it yet, consider this post a deep dive and a primer, and there will be some spoilers. Lowery’s feature version starring Dev Patel attempts to decode and unravel the ancient tale in a manner that does the original text justice, but also opens up some of its mysticism to a modern audience. We did a similar deep dive on the super dense Dune (2021) explaining its meaning and symbols as well.īased on the Arthurian Lore, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a deeply symbolic, meaningful, and challenging story. If we can understand this film and its history, we can truly better understand our craft. Lessons or parables told and retold in new ways, or the same ways.Īll of this is why David Lowery and A24’s The Green Knight is such a fascinating and dense feature film. We create a more powerful interpretation of the world, of events… we create the meaning of existence.Īnd if we do this well enough, it transcends time and lasts for generations.
When we loosen our grip on the facts and allow meaning and interpretation to drift, magical things happen. This convergence of elements is actually where the narrative form, storytelling at its core, draws all its power. There is an overlap between religion and history, between metaphor and truth, between what actually happens and what we feel like happens. The Green Knight hit theaters recently and is a super dense movie.