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Snakes in Movies
 
King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017)
 
Spoiler Alert !

Some of these pictures and descriptions may give away plot details that you might not want to know before watching the film.
 
King Arthur King Arthur King Arthur King Arthur
This movie is a King Arthur origin story that remakes him into a comic book superhero with a magic sword. It's missing some key players in the legend but it does give us a magician who uses animals to help Arthur fight his enemies, a few of the future knights of the not yet round table, and a bunch of giant computer animated monster movie snakes that hiss and whine and make all those stupid noises we've come to expect from them.

Once upon a time, Arthur's King and Queen parents are killed by his super evil uncle Vortigern who takes over the throne and makes everybody wear black while baby Arthur escapes downriver to grow up in a whorehouse and become a gangster. (I wanted to see more of that movie.) Fortunately, Arthur conveniently forgot his heritage, or else we couldn't movie. When he's grown, true to the folktales, Arthur pulls the sword Excaliber out of a rock, but he can't use it without passing out. To help cure his Excaliber Disfunction, a creepy-hot magician woman called the Mage sends him to The Dark Lands where he can learn how to control his sword by sticking it into a magic slot that makes it light up. (If this isn't phallic enough, later Art destroys a giant tower that gives Vortigern more power the higher he builds it.) When walking through the Dark Lands looking for that slot, Arthur encounters a lot of nasty critters that try to kill him, incuding giant rats, bats, wolves, and some big nasty computer-generated movie snakes. The first snake he encounters chases him into a cave, but just as it rears up to bite him, a giant bat grabs it and flies away with it. Bat ex-machina. Then a different giant bat carries Arthur off and drops him in front of another bat that is holding a captured snake in its claws. But in a flash that bat is eaten by another giant snake. Snake ex-machina. Then Arthur finds the slot and finally gets his sword all lit. It's good to be the King.

King Arthur King Arthur King Arthur King Arthur
King Arthur King Arthur King Arthur King Arthur
Later the Mage grinds up a bunch of stuff into a magic potion. She tells Arthur that the venom will induce what is hidden from him and show him things he does not want to see, but he'll need its protection. She holds some potion in one hand and tells Arthur to hold her other hand. Then a venomous Adder snake comes out of her sleeve and crawls up his arm and around his neck.
Arthur, with snake around his neck: "I don't like snakes."
Mage: "No one likes snakes."
(What does she know?)
Then the Adder bites Arthur on his neck, hanging on for a long time before it crawls away, leaving a nasty scar on his neck.
The first vision Arthur sees is himself as a little boy watching a huge snake crawling toward him on the dock at the same time and place where his parents were killed by his wicked uncle Voldemart and he finally remembers who he is.

King Arthur King Arthur King Arthur King Arthur
King Arthur King Arthur King Arthur King Arthur
King Arthur King Arthur King Arthur King Arthur
Mage tells Arthur he will feel the venom for a few hours, then we see him riding to Camelot stoned out of his mind, hearing medieval psychedelic folk music and seeing tree bark turning into naked women and other cool hallucinations. (Maybe it's some new kind of club drug.) Meahwhile, Mage puts on her magic snake eyes and gets her monster snakes ready for action.

When Arthur gets to Camelot we see an eagle carrying a snake flying above him. Soldiers take his sword, tie his hands, and bring Arthur to King Vortigern while the eagle drops the snake on a window ledge. The snake crawls into the King's chamber then wraps itself around a column next to the King, who is holding Excaliber. The snake strikes at him, squealing like a pig, but the King quickly spins around and cuts off the snake's head, raining blood down on everybody and making poor Mage hiss like a snake, but Excaliber gets stuck in the column and King V can't remove it. Then with one of those thunderous explosions that movie sound designers love to make, an enormous computer-generated animated snake crashes through the front doors, shows us its huge fangs, smashes up the palace, and kills everybody in the room except the King, who has disappeared, and Arthur, who is spared because of that venom protection thing. The snake exits, crawling over the castle bridge back to wherever and Arthur takes his sword in hand and becomes the comic book superhero he was meant to be. But the movie flopped so I doubt there will be a sequel.

The computer generated animated snakes in the movie don't look too bad, mostly because the always dark screen, the rapid editing and the lack of focus make it so you can hardly see them. The computer jockeys do a good job of making the animated snake that bites Arthur look like a real Adder, Vipera berus, the only venomous viper native to England, but the others aren't so easy to identify. One kind of looks like a giant Cottonmouth, but who knows what they were going for. Unfortunately, they're all accompanied by the usual absurd movie snake sounds.