When you break it down, there are very few movies to have ever existed that can genuinely be deemed as universally-beloved classics, because there’s always going to be at least one person out there who disagrees strongly with the consensus. Despite being one of the best-reviewed and most widely-acclaimed releases of 2021, The Green Knight has already fallen victim to the trend.
David Lowery is without a doubt one of the most interesting filmmakers working today, precisely because his output has proven to be so varied. If you didn’t know, then there’s absolutely no way you’d be able to guess crime thriller Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, the live-action Pete’s Dragon remake, opinion-splitting fable A Ghost Story, and biopic The Old Man & the Gun all hailed from the same filmmaker.
Even though A24’s sweeping medieval fantasy was Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes with an 89 percent score, an audience approval rating of just 50 percent indicates that The Green Knight wasn’t for everyone. Hammering that notion home even further, a Reddit thread remarking on the atmosphere and intensity of the final showdown has spawned a deluge of negativity.
While plenty are showering the sword-swinging adaptation of the 14th Century poem in the same sort of praise that greeted it in the aftermath of its initial release, there are just as many denouncing it for being a lethargically-paced, self-indulgent slog that believes itself to be a vastly superior film to what it actually turned out to be.
Your mileage may vary, but that doesn’t make it any less curious to see the sands of sentiment shift so quickly on The Green Knight.