As I watched this movie, one word kept running through my head:

Beautiful.

The scenes. Beautiful.

The scenery. Beautiful.

The costumes. Beautiful.

The battle scenes. Beautiful.

The music. Beautiful.

The dialogue. Beautiful.

The characters. Well, not beautiful, but damn awesome.

I can't recommend enough that everyone see this movie.

The premise: awful.

Probably more because you're not religious than anything.

Forgot to post the rest.

I've wanted to see this since I saw it in previews. Hopefully it doesn't suck (to me).

I'm through arguing with you.

Ouch...

Er...I didn't mean to burn him. I was telling the truth. If I remember right, Free's an athiest. That would definitely lessen the appeal of a somewhat-religious movie to me.

I'm not sure what's wrong with the premise. Man tries to defend Jerusalem against the Muslims.

Not to disagree so strongly, but I am embarassed to list Ridley Scott on my top ten list of directors. This movie is just bad. Just plain bad.

It looked good.

Everything else employed each and every hollywood cliche in the book. Everything was so cliche.

Here's a plot synopsis: A man whome is established at the start of the movie to be an everyman, is thrust into a situation by the death of his wife and kid where he has to assume control of a situation which will result in the death of many people. The man is supposed to become ruler of a nation, but instead a man who is established at the start of the movie to be a complete ***-hole becomes the ruler. The ruler orders the everyman's assasination, because he sees him as a threat. The everyman escapes assassination, and has to group with a small number of other every-men to stay alive against great odds in a situation which is completely unneccesary, and is the cause of many unneeded deaths in human history.

Funny, it sounds alot like Gladiator, doesn't it. Here's the difference. Gladiator spends much of its time setting up characters, that way when something happens to one of them, we feel bad. Gladiator has a villan, but he's not a huge cookie cutter hollywood baddie. The villan is a jerk at the start, but at the start of the movie we can relate to the things he does. The villan in KoH is a madman, and 2/3 of the way through the movie, he ceases to be the villan, because he simply doesn't show up in the movie anymore. We don't know what happened to him. He must have been killed... Who cares, he was evil anyway. [/sarcasm] KoH does a good job of trying to showcase the uselessness which was the crusades, and it's a decent anti-war epic. The only problem is, the anti-war theme is the only thing that actually works, and it barely works at that. The only characters whom support the war are demonized. The characters opposing the war are idealized. I'm sure everyone who thought the crusades were a good idea was a complete *******... right.

Normally, if a movie is bad, I will just not enjoy it. This is the first movie I have ever laughed at for being so bad. I honestly laughed at least once each ten minutes.

Now, it's not all bad. Jeremy Irons is good. Too bad he's only on screen for a few minutes. Liam Neeson is good. Only a few minutes. Bloom sucks, as always. Too bad he's on screen for almost the entire movie. The villan is the villan from triple x. He is virtually the same character. "I will kill the people which do not share the same rediculous ideology as I." Only difference is this time instead of anarchy, it's christianity.

This movie honestly would have been better if Scott had just demonized the Arabs. At least the movie would have had a plot other than what we are already expected to know about the crusades... What we get here is "There was this big war, because group x wanted to own Jerusalem. Group y owned Jerusalem. They pray to a different invisible man in the sky. Kill them." All of this goes on while Scott stands off screen and says "Isn't this stupid..." And everyone else is nodding and screaming yes. Only problem is, he's talking about the things people do in the movie, and we're talking about the movie.

DO NOT SEE THIS MOVIE!!

Yaaas, but Bill, your idea of a good movie is the pretentious crap Oliver Stone trots out. "Well the film is technically very good, lets blindly ignore what rubbish the story is".

You have no credibility son.

I'll keep that in mind Ted. I'm glad you entirely ignored the fact that every complaint I have with Kingdom of Heaven came from the fact that it has no story. I said it was technically very good, but was a crap movie because it had no story.

Stop using the computer, take a few years off from being an idiot, and learn to comprehend text properly.

And here's some more food for thought, Ted, while you're complaining about Oliver Stone, keep in mind that the man revolutionized the face of modern cinema, has been nominated for, and won, more various types of awards, and while he may spew out "pretentious crap" at least that keeps him from spewing out Hollywood trash cliches.

Congratulations. You are now a level 2 idiot. Somewhere, a village is missing you right now.

I'll probably see it but I'm not going to expect much. Most of the reviews appear to be mediocre.

Can't be as bad as an Oliver Stone movie though.

Mmm, Bill didn't like it. That makes it a must-see.

Bill hated all the LOTR movies as well if I recall...yeah, there's an opinion we can trust...:rolleyes:

How do you "trust" an opinion? An opinion can't be "right" or "wrong." It's just different than yours.

You can "trust" it to be similar to yours or not.

Good point.

I was going to see this last night but somehow ended up watching Sin City again. I'll probably see it because I thought the Crusades were interesting.....and Jeremy Irons is in it >_>

What? the arabs were the good guys in the crusaudes? When the arabs were in control they let the christains stay with a small tax, and the christains would draw and quarter or decapatate the arabs when they had control.

My point was that it would have given the movie a plot... it would have been cliche and bad, but so was everything else in the movie. It would have been historically inaccurate, but who cares, it's hollywood crap, and it doesn't have to be realistic.

And yeah, I hated the Lord of the Rings. Go figure. I have my own opinion, instead of accepting what everyone else says, I actually voice what I think. I'm glad that makes me wrong.

Yeah, and making a movie based off a real historical event with a cast of characters that actually existed (save Liam Neeson's character) and then making it completely historically inaccurate would really pan out well. I'd prefer a bad movie that's historically accurate rather than have them ****ing with history.

Yeah but half of the cast is demonized anyway... that's the thing. It's not accurate at all. You can't tell me that all of the people who supported the crusades were complete jerks all the time. It would have been ok if the characters were developed at all. Give them a reason to act the way they do. Hell no! Let's just make them act like *******s the entire movie for no apparant reason.

Well the Crusades weren't an exactly happy time for anyone.

This movie isn't a happy time for anyone either... unless seeing how many horses you can fit on the screen at once makes you happy, and judging by the number of LotR fans on this board, I think it usually does.

You know, using false generalizations does not make your argument any stronger.

I have not seen this movie yet. Ridley Scott is awesome. The only problem I anticipate is Orlando Bloom. He looks like a beautiful woman. Liam Neeson is a real man. Bloom just doesn't work for me.

<3.

I really enjoyed this movie. Bloom doesn't really fit the leadership role in my opinion, but he did well nonetheless.

I remember reading about 2000 french crusaders who kicked the muslims out of a fort, then locked out the 3000 germans who had been just behind them on the road. The germans besieged the fort for two weeks and kicked the french out.

Then there was the 7th or 8th Crusade(thereabouts), where the Crusaders never actually made it as far as Jerusalem, they got to their allies city, Constantinople, and sacked that place instead.

It's hard to make movies about Somalia in 1993, Vietnam, or the Crusades, where the Westerners lose, and aren't always the good guys anyway.

I thought it was better than Gladiator and Troy, but not as good as Black Hawk Down.

Orlando Bloom wasn't a skinny elf in it either, I don't think he'd been eating the big macs, chopper-style, but he'd certainly lost the anorexic look.

That part where buliwyf was almost dead from the poison, sitting in front of the village, giving his speech before the battle with the Wendol with his warriors listening/participating was awesome. A great way to setup the big battle seque--

OHHH that's right, they ripped the music RIGHT from the 13th warrior when he gave his little "I will knight you because we need knights" speech.



I miss jerry goldsmith (was it goldsmith?), that good conductor
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Oh yeah, I thought the movie was WAAYYYY too drawn out. the ign.com review was completely right. The movie couldn't decide which side it was appealing to. Can't portray muslims as bad, can't portray Christians as bad, hell, since the muslims won anyway, we can't make it an alamo movie for the christian crusades...we'll make em both good guys and have some corrupt king on the Christian side who wants to take the crusade army to the muslims be the bad guy.

I REALLY liked, by the way, that Edward Norton had a different role. He was like the good guy. Very atypical for him. He wasn't like some insomniac or drug attic or anything like that. It was like a noble-esque character. Very good.

Sorry for the qausi-necro post, but just saw this movie.



Yeah really agree with that. Apart from the adundance of gaping neck wounds and liberal sprays of blood I dont think the movie had any guts. It seemed to be treading in very safe waters.

I thought it was, in a word: mediocre. The story, mediocre. The acting, mediocre. The dialogue, mediocre. The special effects, well I kept expecting cave trolls and a row of mummakil to show up during that last battle.

Can someone please tell me what the hell happened to Jeremy Irons' character? He was in Jerusalem with Orlando Bloom before the last battle then as near as we can figure just plain dissapeared...

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I saw the movie the other day.

Not going to go into the details, but I'd give it a D+ if I had to grade it