Excalibur is now available in 4K from Arrow Video: John Boorman’s epic returns 45 years later

Arrow Video has just put out a new 4K restoration of John Boorman’s 1981 Arthurian epic, bringing the film back in front of audiences 45 years after its original release.

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The movie grew out of Boorman’s abandoned attempt to adapt The Lord of the Rings, and you can feel that ambition all through it. Excalibur takes Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur and treats it as myth, not modernized prestige drama, with sudden leaps through time, performances pitched well above realism, dreamlike logic, clear echoes of the Fisher King and The Golden Bough, and Boorman following what he called “mythical truth, not historical truth.”

You’re also getting Alex Thomson’s Oscar-nominated cinematography, Wagner, and “O Fortuna”; the film’s 1981 Cannes win for Best Artistic Contribution; a $35 million U.S. box office haul off an $11 million budget; and early appearances from Helen Mirren, Liam Neeson, Patrick Stewart, and Gabriel Byrne. Some of the energy onscreen was sharpened by the offscreen tension between Mirren and Nicol Williamson. And its influence is still easy to spot in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones, even if most people know the aftershock better than the film that caused it.

If darker, more psychological fantasy is your thing, this restoration is an easy recommendation.

You can pick up Excalibur in 4K from Arrow Video now.

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