Just because a property or story exists as public domain, it doesn’t mean it has to be adapted over and over again, especially if the results continue to be reliably dire. Failing to heed such a warning, The Winter King has become the latest misfire rooted in Arthurian legend. Or has it?
It would be an understatement to say King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table haven’t been proving their worth as a valuable source of film and television content recently, with Guy Ritchie’s infamous Legend of the Sword going down in the history books as one of the biggest box office bombs in history after losing north of $150 million.
In addition, Joe Cornish’s acclaimed and overlooked The Kid Who Would be King flopped hard, while Netflix axed blockbuster fantasy series Cursed after a single season. The Winter King has been faring much better among critics, though, even if ITV and MGM’s co-produced adaptation of Bernard Cromwell’s The Warlord Chronicles literary series has been coming under a suspicious amount of fire from viewers.
On Rotten Tomatoes, the series holds a respectable critical approval rating of 80 percent. However, the user rating is much lower at 46 percent, with 28 of the 52 reviews so far rating it as either 0.5 or 1 out of 10. Over on IMDb, The Winter King is packing a 5.2/10 average from over 1300 votes, but the most popular rating of them all is 1/10, with over 27 percent of voters bestowing it the lowest honor.
We’re not jumping to conclusions, but suffice to say the word “woke” rears its head more than once, and mentioning that both Merlin and Guinevere are played by actors of color may not be a coincidence, either.
Published: Aug 30, 2023 02:42 am