It covers a lot of the Matter of Britain in just over two hours, includes a good-sized Grail Quest, uses big chunks of Wagner both Arthurian and not, and has some great ideas and some baffling ones - it seriously overdoes the green light and uses the same font style for its opening title card as The Goodies. And Nicol Williamson’s wildly comic Merlin is a dream... to some. A nightmare to others!
Excalibur earns the title role. The film begins with seeking the sword to unite the land, addresses the Sword in the Stone not being Excalibur by having it broken in a powerful moment and then (very quickly) repaired and returned from the waters, and finally switches the weapons in the final battle to give Arthur a last heroic moment and make the sword vital at the beginning and the end.
Pendragon addresses its choices in discussing which media it uses, and RPGnet’s In Genre talks about it in the Arthurian Romance article.
Boorman planned to make an Arthurian film before he and Rospo Pallenberg wrote a script for The Lord Of The Rings in the early 70s - starring the Beatles - and wrestled with how to condense an epic into a single film, even a long one. Having a legend cycle where you can switch bits in and out rather than a single story to adapt definitely helped. Making Zardoz in the interim probably taught him a thing or two as well, which is easily the best thing I can say for it.
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