Guy Ritchie‘s 2017 action movie flop King Arthur: Legend of the Sword is currently trending on UK streaming.
The film stars Queer as Folk and Sons of Anarchy actor Charlie Hunnam as the man who pulls the mighty sword Excalibur from the stone and discovers his destiny as ruler of the realm.
It was meant to be the start of a six film series, but bombed at the box office, making less than its reported $175 million budget.
While it may have greatly underperformed in cinemas, it is doing well with Prime Video subscribers at the moment.
In the UK, it is the second-most watched film today on Amazon’s streaming service, up from third place earlier this week.
Warner Bros.
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Over on Rotten Tomatoes, 69% of ratings from fans are positive, while only 31% of the 277 critics’ reviews are positive.
“King Arthur has a vulnerable heart beating somewhere under all the grimy, sweaty muscles lovingly displayed for the camera. It’s just buried too often under narrative chaos,” wrote The Verge.
Variety stated that the visuals were similarly chaotic, stating: “Ultimately, King Arthur is just a loud, obnoxious parade of flashy set pieces, as one visually busy, belligerent action scene after another marches by, each making less sense than the last, but all intended to overwhelm.”
“Ritchie’s geezerfied King Arthur occasionally sparkles before being scuppered by generic effects, conflicting ideas and an embarrassing celebrity cameo for the ages,” Empire wrote, referring to David Beckham’s panned appearance.
Warner Bros.
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The Financial Times‘ review called the film “a long, unstoppable, barely sufferable explosion of digi-battle scenes, digi-pachyderms, digi-snake-monsters, digi-Armageddon”.
Slashfilm actually liked the film, while admitting its faults. It wrote: “The good outweighs the bad, especially when that good comes from risks that are rare in would-be franchises.”
King Arthur: Legend of the Sword is currently streaming for Prime Video subscribers.
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Joe Anderton is a freelance news writer at Digital Spy, having worked there since 2016. In his time, he’s covered a host of live events and interviewed celebrities big and small. A big fan of TV and movies both mainstream and obscure, Joe also enjoys video games and in particular PlayStation. Joe currently does not use Twitter, but he only ever used it to tell people to watch the film Help! I’m a Fish.