Kingdom of Heaven

[Armatus]

I'm a little surprised I haven't heard more on the supposed controversies surrounding The Kingdom of Heaven. With the movie due to be released in May we will have to wait and see, however I was a little disgusted with the article at FilmForce ign which quoting the ignorance of some columnist named David Poland (who I've never heard of) writing for a site called The Hot Button (also never heard of) as if it was wisdom... Here's what this historical genius has to say:

"The New York Times went way out of its way to create a controversy around a film that is still not finished, is nine months from release, and does not, as The Passion of The Christ did, center around major religious, or even historical, figures, with the thin exception of Tiberias."

with the thin exception of Tiberias ....

This coming from someone who claims to know what they're talking about. This is the kind of comment that fuels controversy if there is any. While you're average American may know of the Crusades few can actually tell you anything at all about who is who, where and just how and why things went down the way they did. Just like this guy.

Here's another genius comentary by Cathy Schultz Ph.D. History Professor who states

"But, here's the odd thing. The two articles give contradictory accounts of the film's portrayal of Muslims. Jonathan Riley-Smith, Britain’s leading authority on the Crusades, charges (in the January Calcutta piece) that Kingdom of Heaven is "Osama bin Laden's version of history. It will fuel the Islamic fundamentalists." Yet the New York Times quotes a professor of Islamic law warning that the film will "teach people to hate Muslims" by promoting vicious stereotypes. Did they look at the same script?!"

Uh... excuse me but did it ever occur to you that they could have come to separate conclusions based on what was important to them. I don't have to read it to understand that Osama would use it as a tool to justify his idealogy, while at the same time it could very well show poor stereotypes of Muslims. In fact Osama would use anything he could bad stereotypes included to support his cause. But I don't have a Ph.D. so what do I know? LOL

Honestly it looks like a good film from the trailer, at the very least it should be a whole lot of eye candy :w00t

[HunterKYA]

I remember all the controversy surrounding a film such as Alexander with the whole homosexual theme before the film came out, when people thought it was actually going to be good. Thank God they weren't right on the fact of the movie being good, because for me, who's a big fan of history, it was the longest three hours of a movie I've ever seen. But moving on. When Oliver Stone did Alexander, he was taking a bold risk and failed on a spectacular level, but knowing what Ridley Scott did with Gladiator, which was part of a genre everyone had long since thought of as dead and gone, and turned it into a ciritically acclaimed and widely revered film, despite historical inaccuracies, is a testament to his genius. With Kingdom of Heaven, which I'm anxiously anticipating, Scott is tackling the Middle Ages, a genre whose films are so few and far between that the last film I remember seeing set in thiis period was Braveheart, which was 10 years ago. But Scott, with his creative film-making style will portray the Middle Ages as a bloddier age in history more so than during Rome and though early on, historians are bashing the script for it's inaccurate portrayal of the people involved with the Crusades, there were those bashing Gladiator for it's same historical inaccuracies because of Hollywood taking license of historical facts.

Nonetheless, all the controversy surrounding Kingdom of Heaven will not overshadow the fact that it'll be a great film, inaccuracies or not, and become as widely revered as Scott's previous venture in historical epics.

[Armatus]

Originally posted by HunterKYA@Feb 23 2005, 11:48 AM
Scott is tackling the Middle Ages, a genre whose films are so few and far between that the last film I remember seeing set in thiis period was Braveheart, which was 10 years ago.

Aye! I'm so sick of people comparing everything to Braveheart! heh... maybe we can move on now *wink*

[ThiudareiksGunthigg]

The trailers and stills I've seen offer the hope that they have done one thing which is absolutely amazing - in fact almost unprecedented: they have actually got the armour and costumes right. This is possibly the first medieval film which has managed to do this (simple) thing since The Name of the Rose; which was, in turn, possibly the first film to do it, ever.

The story, however, sounds pretty silly and the 'history' is total gibberish.

But no surprises there ...

[Mehmed II]

I found this on imdb guys check this out, he claims that he has seen the movie somehow.

haha. lets see if i can recall the whole storyline...

starts off with the blacksmith, orlando bloom (Balian of Ibelin) finding out that his wife committed suicide and so a priest arranges for his father (Godfrey of Ibelin) a crusader to take him back to Jerusalem. they are currently in some village, most likely far to the east.

The crusader comes, and offers to take Balian on because he has lost his wife, he refuses. Balian recognizes that the priest tried to make him go with the crusader so that he could take his land, he kills the priest. he then goes to find Godfrey.

Upon finding Godfrey, they travel toward jerusalem and Godfrey teaches him the "high guard" which was probably the extent of his training. While training the "police" i have no idea who they are, want to take Balian back for murdering the priest. Because Godfrey is a baron they feint a retreat, and here is where #1 skirmish occurs. Godfrey is injured by an arrow. 2 of the people from Godfrey's band also die.

They travel to some city, where there are a bunch of crusaders, Godfery is about to die so he gives his inheritance to Balian which is basically a sword and a ring with a ruby encrusted in it?

Balian travels by boat to Jerusalem and there is a big storm which results in a shipwreck. No one is alive except him and a black horse which he frees. He walks for some distance, probably in the Giza desert and finds water as well as the horse which has previously ran away. There he also meets an arab and his translator/scribe. which is where the #2 skirmish occurs. basically the arab says that the land belongs to him and the horse also belongs to him because it is on his land. they fight. Balian kills the arab, and makes the scribe/translator take him to Jerusalem.

They arrive at Jerusalem and he is found my his father's soilders which meet him at a well and attempt to authenticate him as the real heir. Balian goes to his father's house which he now owns and here he meets Sybilla which is the sister of the king of Jerusalem.

Balian meets the king, who has leporsy as well as a friend of Godfrey, Tiberias who is the marshall of jerusalem. They goto dine and there is the introduction of the 2 bad guys, Reynald and Guy.

Balian travels to Ibelin and finds that the land that Godfrey owned which he now owned lacked one thing, water. So they spend some time digging for water and find it. They are then greeted by Sybilla who is supposed to be on her way to some city but instead came to find Balian. They have implied sex.

At the same time, the king of Jerusalem has been trying to keep peace with the arabs because they have conflicting holy grounds, currently the crusaders hold Jerusalem and some crusaders, namely Reynald and Guy want to goto war with the arabs. Reynald has been conducting raids against arabs and breaks the delicate peace between the arabs and crusaders and leads to the introduction of Saladin, the leader of the arabs.

The arabs and their army approaches Reynald's castle, while they approach peasants are still trying to go back to the castle so Balian appears to attempt to save them. Balian leads a handful of men to hold off the arab army so that the peasants are able to get back in the castle, but he is defeated. suprisingly the leader of the arab army was the scribe that he had spared earlier after the shipwreck and he was not really a scribe but actually Balin's counterpart in the arabs. so Balian is spared from death.

meanwhile, the king of jerusalem hears about what Reynald has done and in a council meeting he decides that he must lead the army to meet with Saladin or else everyone will die. So they gather armies. The king and Saladin come to an agreement, and they part, there is peace.

king of jerusalem goes and meets with reynald and sends him to prison after making him kiss his leprosied hand and the king is severly weakened.

king of jerusalem dies and appoints his nephew king as well as makes Balian the new marshall. Sybilla is the new king's mother and makes a deal with Guy so that her son will be able to stay in power by controlling Guy's knights while Sybilla becomes Guy's wife.

Sybilla finds that her son also has leprosy and decides to kill him or else he will become like the old king of Jerusalem. Guy releases Reynald from prison and Reynald kills Saladin's sister to start war once again.

Guy is essentially king of jersualem now and leads his army to fight Saladin. They are salaugthered because of lack of water. and Saladin's army approaches Jerusalem which is guarded by Balian.

insert epic battle scene here. Balian comes up with a strategy that defeats Saladin's attempts on entering into Jerusalem and after lots of loss on both sides, Saladin decides to comes to terms with Balian.

Balian offers over Jerusalem in exchange for the lives of all the people.

cut to Balian is back at being the blacksmith with Sybilla as his wife, Richard lionheart approaches him and asks for Balian, defender of Jerusalem and he replies that he is only a blacksmith, which is kinda like the beginning and the story ends there.

[Rapax]

God I hate it when people can't properly recount a story from memory, just put down the bits and pieces of gibberish as they spring into their minds. I'm sure it'll all make sense once I see it. Anyhow, I hope that Mr. Scott doesn't feel tempted again to put the action on slow-mo and insert slow music right in the middle of it, that kinda threw me off-balance in gladiator and it wasn't really good to follow on the big screen, just a big blur.

[qnzkid711]

I really hope thats not the story because I just read it. *tongue*

[matthew the black prince]

i read the first paragraph then thought i don't wanna know anything...

[qnzkid711]

Well let me tell you if thats the story.....it sounds pretty crappy

[Justinian]

It better not be.

[GodEmperor Nicholas]

Riddley Scott is great--I have high hopes for it to be like a gladiator.

Not historically accurate, but entertaining

NM

[S.P.Q.R.]

Yes man I've been waiting this movie for 4 years now is coming and tthe Trailar looks so amaizing! Since he had already a nice experiance with the Gladiator I believe that he have done a better job this time! At least I hope :cool

[Armatus]

Originally posted by ThiudareiksGunthigg@Feb 23 2005, 06:28 PM
The trailers and stills I've seen offer the hope that they have done one thing which is absolutely amazing - in fact almost unprecedented: they have actually got the armour and costumes right.

It looks pretty good from the trailer, but to go as far as saying they got it right is a quite a leap considering it's not out yet. The one thing I noticed right off the bat was the typical form fitting dark colored outfits so many modern films give actors in these period (Troy) /slash/ fantasy (LoTR) movies, so as to give them that "hip" look.

[Orolinwe]

Originally posted by Rapax@Feb 23 2005, 07:03 PM
I'm sure it'll all make sense once I see it. Anyhow, I hope that Mr. Scott doesn't feel tempted again to put the action on slow-mo and insert slow music right in the middle of it, that kinda threw me off-balance in gladiator and it wasn't really good to follow on the big screen, just a big blur.

Haha, that's the exact part that pissed me off in the first movie. It started off awesome, then that cheesy, overdone slow-mo battle crap with the singing voices came on and I said, "mediocre."

And Gladiator was a mediocre movie, just like Braveheart. Both very entertaining, though, for the most part.

As long as he stays away from the cheesy slow-mo with singing voices in the battles, and as long as we don't get some lousy speech about, "There was idea once, called Rome," blah blah blah.

And I'll say if Russel Crowe deserves a Best Actor for Gladiator then Kurt Russel deserves like 20 for Tombstone.

No justice.

[GodEmperor Nicholas]

No justice.

Who guaranteed you any?

NM

[-nick-]

from the trailer the movie looks pretty hot, but so did troy and alexander. guess ill have to wait and see >8(

[Patton85]

The movie is historically garbage.

[CrayonVonCaesar]

The movie is historically garbage.

What wise words you had to share for us patton85!
You noted no-doubt that the last post on this thread/film was nearly a year ago?
I say, see if you can find some more archaic/fossilised threads to dig up and spray with one liner wisdom, go quick!

p.s. i could not resist, safe to close now maybe?

[Rush Limbaugh]

The movie is historically garbage.

Yes it is. So why did you resurect it?