Movie ”Excalibur”

The entire story of Excalibur is based on three things which intertwine with each other. Those three things are magic, power and fate. Excalibur would not exist with out the magic of the all-powerful Merlin; the town of Camelot would never been created with out the power and strength of Arthur and his men ; and furthermore with out fate Arthur would have never have pulled the sword from the stone. With out these three things to be the center themes, there would be no story of Excalibur.

In the movie, “Excalibur” a lot of magical incidents took place, mostly done by Merlin. If not for Merlin, Arthur wouldn’t had ever been alive. Merlin is the one that conjoured up “the dragons breath” which allowed Uther to change his own identity in order to have sex with Tintagil’s wife , and thus Arthur was born. Excalibur, Uther’s sword, was created solely by some sort of magical forces. Merlin uses his magic through out the entire movie. Merlin would never use his magic against his own king, only for the purpose of helping him. Even when Merlin was tricked and then frozen, he was still able to use his magic to become a dream and help Arthur win his battle against Mordred. Just to prove Merlin’s intelligence, he used his own mind to trick Morgana into using all of her magic and created the fog which later was used to defeat her own son.

The main source or power in “Excalibur” was indeed Excalibur itself. The king wasn’t very strong without this special sword which aided him much throughout his rein. With first being King Uther’s and then stuck in a stone upon his death for only his blood to take out, then it became Arthur’s. With out Excalibur there was no real power or sense of togetherness within the land. When Uther first received the sword the kingdom was under control. When he was killed and he stuck the sword in the stone, there wasn’t a king for many years and there was also no control or central power in the land. When Arthur pulled the sword from the stone and became king, the kingdom had once again, a central power and it’s all because of Excalibur. The power of the sword truly showed when he fought Lancelot because everyone knew Lancelot was a much greater knight than Arthur, but since Arthur had the power or Excalibur he used it to defeat Lancelot. The sword broke because it was being used for “evil” and Arthur realized that. The lady of the lake’s hand came out from the surface of the water and fixed the sword and it was returned to its rightful owner.

No matter what, destiny and fate controls life, it’s just how it goes. There’s no alternating or twisting it around. It was destiny and fate that Arthur pulled Excalibur out of the stone and became King. It was only fate that Arthur met Guinevere and married her. It was Sir Lancelot’s fate to fall in love with Guinevere and die serving his king. It was also fate that Perceval found the Holy Grail and saved the life of King Arthur after all of the other knights of the round table had lost their lives in doing the same.

In short, magic, power, and fate played a huge role in “Excalibur”, there is no doubt about that. Although they were the center themes of the movie, they can easily be the center themes of just about anything. Without magic, Excalibur would never have been created and used by Arthur to defeat the slightly misguided and evil Morded. Without power, there would be no great Kingdom of Camelot. Without fate, nothing would have ever happened.