Entertainment
New King Arthur Series Rises To The Level Of Game Of Thrones In Episode 5
By Jennifer Asencio
| Published
Episode 5 of The Pendragon Cycle: Rise of the Merlin is titled “The Price of Failure.” While that may seem like the name of a young adult book, it’s a layered story that deftly establishes the future of the legends we know.
The cold open is not the only time we see Merlin as a child, as his past is woven throughout the episode through flashbacks that explain his “missing years.” All this history is resurrected in his memory by a necessary return to the lands of Yr Hen Ogledd, the site of his childhood. His Atlantean heritage doesn’t help him, either, since he’s hardly aged while people he knew in his youth have.
Meanwhile, Aurellius and Uther have gathered the kings of England to make an alliance that names Aurellius high king, where they are having troubles of their own. Gorlas has the most battle experience and thinks he should lead the armies, much to the chagrin of notorious hothead Uther. But when Uther goes to negotiate with the war leader, his life will be changed forever.
A Step Back From The Previous Episode
This episode wasn’t quite as good as the last, mainly because it lacks the kind of large-scale battles that made the last so intense. However, there is a lot of drama here, as tense negotiations are taking place across England. Gorlas, played by experienced Arthurian actor Chick Allan, delivers vigorous opposition, but the intrigue runs throughout as characters work at cross-purposes to undercut one another.
There are a couple of instances of errant CGI in the episode: Merlin’s eyes always seem to glow when he does something magical, and this hasn’t improved. A wonderful scene of approaching Saxon ships would have been even better (and eerier) had it looked a tad less cartoony. Merlin’s magic tricks this time aren’t as overwhelming as they should be, including a levitation scene in which the harness on the actor is so obvious that you can tell where the crane must have been. I have to admire the use of practical effects and the adept deletion of their mechanics, but it reduced the dramatic effect of what was supposed to be an important scene.
However, these scenes are offset by attention to other important facets of production.
You’ll Believe You’re In The World Of King Arthur
The makeup that comprises wounds and injuries that are important to the story is very well done and really conveys the savagery of 6th-century fighting. A scene in a medical tent is brutal in its realism. None of this ever devolves into gore, but empathetic viewers will cringe and wince along with the patient.
The settings this time were extremely well-done. The war camp brings the audience into the reality of early medieval campaigns. Most notable is the stronghold of Goddeu, which is stunning both inside and out. I can forgive if the long exterior shot was CGI, because the interior sets brought it to vivid life as a working structure with real people living within its walls.
The natural scenery steals the show, though. Lush groves are juxtaposed with green-blue river valleys and rocky coasts. One mountainous valley where a child gets lost conveys such urgency and isolation that it makes me wonder how many other children have wandered through there and never come back. The lighting that accompanies the episode’s resolution illuminates it in gorgeous gold, heightening the scene’s contrast.
Great Performances Continue Carrying Pendragon
Alex Laurence-Phillips once again shines as Merlin’s sidekick Pellaus. He doesn’t have as much to do in this episode other than comment about events, but his snappy dialogue, coupled with the actor’s comic timing and expressive delivery, make him the best part of the show. This was the only thing that kept me engaged in the events in Goddeu.
Myles Clohessy’s Uther displays all the character’s infamous temperament, while Aurellius, played by Finney Cassidy, confidently holds in at bay while trying to charm the other kings. The dance between them and Gorlas was so engaging that, no matter how gorgeous the set of Goddeu was, I couldn’t help but want to be back in the war camp watching the machinations taking place. The men dominated this episode, with only two important female characters involved: the mysterious Ganieda and a young princess with a big destiny.
Arthurian Legend And Christianity Collide
Fans of Arthurian legend will start to recognize the names of some of these characters. Uther, for example, is a very important figure to Camelot, and so is Morgain. A few of the other names are more obscure, and I don’t want to give away any spoilers, but once these figures begin to come into the scene, it’s hard not to anticipate what’s coming.
What must be said for Stephen Lawhead’s writing and Jeremy Boreing’s adaptation is that they were very aware of this when they wrote it, and they use what the audience thinks it knows against us. Just when you think you know what’s going to happen, that anticipation is deftly subverted without being ignored.
Christianity appears a little more prominently in this episode, as key characters have converted to the new religion. The overtones are a little thick at times, but the show has still gone out of its way not to attack or denigrate other religions. The cold open contradicts itself by declaring an action ignorant, then showing the very same character performing the ignorant act, but religion in the episode is highlighted by one of Rose Reid’s few appearances, when Charis gives Merlin very sage advice about belief.
The Pendragon Cycle Maintains A High Level Of Quality
Although Episode 5 wasn’t quite as good as its predecessor and doesn’t use the techniques that succeeded for Episode 4, the script is still strong enough to be interesting. Once again, I compare it to its most famous competitor, Game of Thrones, because there is a very similar struggle going on. Several people think they should be in control of events and are willing to come to blows for it. The biggest difference between that show and this one is that the places were real, and the diffracted kings recorded in poetry.
The Pendragon Cycle: Rise of the Merlin has risen to the level of the Westeros saga, and even when there’s not a lot of action, there’s still plenty of conflict. There are only two episodes left after this one, and it will be exciting to see how the series concludes. Episode 5 drops at 9 pm on Thursday on Daily Wire+.
Entertainment
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Mashable Deals
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Entertainment
Star Trek’s First Broadcast Episode Was Very Carefully Chosen, Because It Was Boring
By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
These days, Star Trek is a bona fide pop culture phenomenon. But during the development of The Original Series, there was anxiety that the general public wouldn’t really understand Gene Roddenberry’s mashing up Western tropes with a sci-fi setting. Making matters worse was that the original pilot, “The Cage,” had been rejected by NBC for being too brainy. Fortunately, Roddenberry got a chance to shoot another pilot, one which impressed the network enough to order an entire season worth of episodes.
Several episodes of Star Trek: The Original Series had already been shot when the time came for this new show to make its broadcast premiere. The first episode that the general public saw was “The Man Trap,” which featured a shapeshifting monster that was revealed to be an alien salt vampire. This good-but-not-great episode was an odd choice, and it was one that the cast and crew hated. As it turns out, though, this episode was very carefully selected by executives because it served as an inoffensive, relatively straightforward encapsulation of everything Star Trek had to offer.
It’s A Trap!
Most of the information we have about why “The Man Trap” was selected as Star Trek’s first episode comes from the book Inside Star Trek: The Real Story. Within this impressive reference tome, Robert H. Justman and Herbert F. Solow revealed something surprising: NBC had several other episodes to choose from for the premiere, including “The Corbomite Maneuver,” “Charlie X,” “Mudd’s Women,” “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” and “The Naked Time.” All of them had already been shot and were mostly finished, so it was just a matter of figuring out which episode would serve as the best introduction to Star Trek, a heretofore unknown sci-fi series.
“The Man Trap” won out, mostly because the powers that be worried that other episodes would be off-putting to general audiences in some very specific ways. For example, they worried that audiences would find “Charlie X” a story that was “too gentle” because it focused on an adolescent with special powers. This was probably the right call, in retrospect: when Variety gave a negative review of “The Man Trap” (an episode chosen, in part, because of its relative maturity), they declared that Star Trek: The Original Series was “better suited to the Saturday morning kidvid bloc” (ouch!).
A Monster Hit Of An Episode
“The Corbomite Maneuver” was a great potential choice, but this episode’s impressive special effects were still in post-production, and almost all of its action took place on the ship. “Where No Man Has Gone Before” really outlined the premise of the new show, but it was deemed “expository” for general audiences expecting more action and danger. Justman thought “The Naked Time” was a killer introduction to the crew’s personalities, but the network passed, presumably because of how over-the-top (half-naked, swashbuckling Sulu? Oh, my!) that episode gets. “Mudd’s Women,” meanwhile, was deemed too offensive because the plot involved literally selling women to miners.
Through this process of elimination, executives decided that “The Man Trap” was the best intro to Star Trek. It had cool scenes on both the Enterprise and a distant outpost (a strange new world) and featured a straightforward action plot you didn’t have to be a sci-fi aficionado to understand. Finally, it was all about finding and defeating a creepy monster, which offered thrills to audiences of all ages. The network’s choice paid off, and Star Trek: The Original Series became the most popular sci-fi show in television history, even though the cast (including William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy) thought “The Man Trap” was the worst possible episode they could have chosen.
All of this is a keen reminder of how much thought and work went into putting Star Trek’s best foot forward. It might be a reminder that Paramount’s current upper leadership needs, as Starfleet Academy hit the ground running with the worst episodes of Season 1. The show got better after that, but it didn’t matter because the prospective audience had already been driven away. As it turns out, today’s execs need to learn something that the network execs of the ‘60s had learned very well: series succeed when you give the audience what they want to see and not what you want to show!
Entertainment
How A Fantasy Box Office Bomb Lost $200 Million In Theaters, And Suddenly Became A Streaming Hit
By Jonathan Klotz
| Published
For the last decade as streaming has taken off in homes around the world, it’s become possible for films that lost historical amounts of money in theaters to find success, even if it might be the post-Mystery Science Theater 3000 trend of “so bad it’s good.” That’s why a massive flop, for example say, Morbius, and films that slightly missed the mark like The Fall Guy can turn it around and become a streaming success.
What’s even more impressive is the amazing turnaround of 2013’s Jack the Giant Slayer, which lost Legendary Pictures an alleged $200 million, only to end up topping streaming charts in 2025.
The Classic Fairy Tale With A Twist
Everyone knows the story of Jack and the Beanstalk, the classic fairy tale about selling a horse for magic beans and climbing a beanstalk to find a giant living in the clouds. It’s simple, contains multiple morals, and can be easily adjusted to turn Jack into the villain, but Jack the Giant Slayer instead asks, “What if there was no moral, and instead of one giant, there was an entire army of evil giants?” The movie is the classic story, as you’ve never seen it before, and it almost works.
Nicholas Hoult plays Jack, the young man who finds himself trading his horse to a monk in exchange for beans that he can’t allow to get wet, ever. Like the rules in Gremlins, it’s not long before Jack accidentally gets the beans wet and a beanstalk grows under his house with the princess, Isabell (Eleanor Tomlinson), trapped inside as it grows into the sky. All the king’s men gather to rescue the princess, including Lord Roderick (Stanley Tucci), who, thankfully, Jack the Giant Slayer makes obvious is very evil, very quickly.
It’s up to Jack, Isabell, and the loyal Knight, Elmont (Ewan McGregor) to save the kingdom and stop the invasion of giants led by Roderick and the giant two-headed General Fallon (Bill Nighy). If there’s one thing Jack the Giant Slayer does better than every other adaptation, it’s the third act featuring a full-blown war between humans and giants, with a touch of humor and absurdity. Watching a giant toss a windmill like the glaive from Krull is the perfect amount of off-beat to distract from a surprising amount of body horror in both the giant’s designs and Fallon’s ultimate fate.
A Movie For No One
Jack the Giant Slayer looks too good, and the star-studded cast is having way too much fun for it to be a truly bad movie. The problem is that the pacing is off: it takes a little too long to get to the good stuff, then it feels a little too rushed, and though it is a fun adventure, it’s also, like the source material, simplistic. It’s not like the movie wasn’t watched in theaters; it made $197 million worldwide, which would be a great haul except it cost $185 million to make, and that’s not including the extensive marketing campaign.
The push and pull of director Bryan Singer’s vision of a dark take on the fable, complete with actual people-eating on screen, and the sanitized version that hit theaters, which was still too dark for children, since the film is surprisingly rated PG-13, meant it ended up being a film for no one. The Rotten Tomatoes ratings, of 52 percent from critics and 55 percent from the audience, are proof that the final product is not great, but not bad; it’s a movie that will keep you watching for a few hours and then leave no lasting impression. These days, Lionsgate and Sony wish they’d release a movie that is that well-received, as even Jack the Giant Slayer looks like a masterpiece compared to Borderlands or Kraven the Hunter.
Streaming is the perfect home for Jack the Giant Slayer, and 10 years later, it no longer matters that the movie lost hundreds of millions in theaters. It finally gets to stand on its own as a fun, if unremarkable, fantasy adventure.
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