Line #29 YMMV/Camelot


1	!!Camelot (''musical'')
2	* EnsembleDarkhorse: For the 1967 film, Creator/VanessaRedgrave as Guinevere, Laurence Naismith as Merlyn and Anthony Rogers as Sir Dinadan.
3	* HarsherInHindsight:
4	** Used in-story. Guinevere, in the beginning, seems flattered by the idea of her being the subject of a war. Later...
5	** One can't help but wonder if the writers intended for "C'est Moi" to be {{Foreshadowing}} of what Lancelot ultimately does.
6	* HilariousInHindsight:
7	** "What Do The Simple Folk Do?" is a song about [[Music/{{Pulp}} wanting to live like common people and do whatever common people do]].
8	** Years later Richard Harris would play a [[Film/HarryPotterAndThePhilosophersStone wizard mentor]].
9	* MemeticMutation: "Camelot" as a term for US President UsefulNotes/JohnFKennedy's administration stems from an interview given by his First Lady and widow [[UsefulNotes/JacquelineKennedy Jacqueline]] shortly after his assassination, where she referred to his love for the musical, particularly the line "Don’t let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment that was known as Camelot". She added, "There'll be great Presidents again [...] but there'll never be another Camelot again". Ever since then, "Camelot" has become shorthand for the JFK administration, particularly in the sense of it being mythologized as a time of idealism which was tragically cut short, akin to the legendary Camelot. Incidentally, Lerner was a classmate of JFK's.
10	* OneSceneWonder:
11	** Nimue, singing "Follow Me."
12	** Morgan Le Fay is one as well should she be kept in the show, having a grand time ChewingTheScenery and belittling "nasty" Mordred.
13	** Merlin only appears in two scenes in the film, but Laurence Naismith make them very memorable.
14	* ParodySue: Sir Lancelot. Invincible in battle, incorruptibly pure, and completely insufferable. Exemplified in his signature song [[GratuitousFrench "C'est Moi"]], where he exalts the perfect knight as impossibly strong, brave and [[TemptingFate chaste]], then "humbly" confesses that he happens to be this knight.
15	* {{Wangst}}: Arthur during his monologues. Most likely intentional given the satirical nature of the play.
16	* TheWoobie: Arthur, at the end. He's had to watch as his dream dies around him, the Round Table falling apart, his son is plotting against him and he's forced to fight his best friend in a pointless war.
17
18	!!Camelot (''series'')
19	* CryForTheDevil: Morgan Pendragon in her ''very first'' scene (and the first scene of the entire show, no less), to the point where some viewers felt so sorry for her they ended up rooting for her over Arthur in spite of her evil actions. Morgan's [[AbusiveParents abusive father]] killed her mother so he could marry his mistress, Igraine, then sent her away to a nunnery. When she returns years later to try and make things right between them, Uther violently rejects her and [[IHaveNoSon refuses to acknowledge her as his daughter,]] prompting her to [[AssholeVictim poison him]] so she can take her rightful place as his heir and get revenge on him for his cruelty towards her and her mother. However, just as she thinks she's about to get back the life and inheritance that was taken from her, Merlin suddenly produces Arthur, a half-brother she never even knew about and declares him the new monarch - mostly [[BecauseDestinySaysSo because destiny (i.e. Merlin) says so]] rather than any actual leadership qualities he possesses; he's also the son of the stepmother Morgan despises, who replaced her murdered mother, did little to stop Uther from mistreating her and is now supplanting her with her own child. Though it doesn't excuse her actions, it's not surprising Morgan snaps. She also discovers that [[spoiler: Igraine]] was the one who urged Uther to send her to a nunnery, because Uther had originally been intending to ''[[OffingTheOffspring kill her]]'' to get her out of the way (which [[spoiler: Igraine]] never mentioned for some reason).
20	* DesignatedHero: Arthur is a SpoiledBrat who is introduced to us while he's ''' ''sleeping with his brother's girlfriend.'' ''' He becomes king primarily because of Merlin's manipulation and plotting, rather than any merit on his own part. Then he gets into a LoveTriangle with Guinevere and her NiceGuy betrothed/husband. His character develops a little over the episodes but, as seen below, he ended the season pretty much as unpopular as he started.
21	* DracoInLeatherPants: ''Morgan''. Well, she may be an unrepentant, self-righteous villain who goes so far as to [[MoralEventHorizon rape her own brother]] at the end, but she's so ''hot'' and her backstory is so ''sad''! [[SarcasmMode Surely that justifies every one of her atrocious crimes, right?]]
22	* EnsembleDarkhorse: Among the knights, Gawain for being the most badass. His actor Creator/CliveStanden later got more recognition as the also-badass Rollo in Creator/TheHistoryChannel's ''Series/{{Vikings}}''.
23	* EvilIsCool: Morgan is a very charismatic, intelligent, snarky, and badass sorceress who comes up with all kinds of schemes to regain the throne and has a fabulous dress sense. She's generally one of the most popular characters on the show.
24	* FandomRivalry: With ''{{Series/Merlin\|2008}}''. ''Merlin'' fans couldn't accept new actors as their favorite characters, and ''Camelot'' fans said ''Merlin'' was aimed at kids and too loose with the legends. "Merlin" fans also felt "Camelot" focused more on sex, violence and bad language than on plot.
25	* FanPreferredCouple: In keeping with the lukewarm response to Arthur, some fans were bewildered that Guinevere was so interested in him when she already had Leontes.
26	* HilariousInHindsight:
27	** Creator/JosephFiennes is the legendary iconic wizard Merlin while his brother Creator/{{Ralph\|Fiennes}} is the modern iconic wizard [[Film/HarryPotter Voldemort]] -- and they're both bald for the role. The show ended around a mere month before Voldemort's final movie was released as well.
28	** The show has a CanonForeigner knight in Arthur's circle named Leontes while its rival of sorts, BBC's ''Series/{{Merlin\|2008}}'' has a Canon Foreigner knight in Arthur's circle named Leon. [[spoiler:Leontes dies at the end of the show's only season, while in the final season of ''Merlin'' airing the year after, Leon outlives Arthur himself.]]
29	* HoYay:
30	** Arthur and Kay are quite close anyway, due to having grown up as brothers, but Arthur shares way more chemistry with him than Guinevere.
31	** Morgan is much closer to her servant Vivian than [[LesYay she is to anyone else]].
32	* JerksAreWorseThanVillains: A pretty extreme case; Arthur - the ''main protagonist'' - is hated by a large chunk of the fandom due to being perceived as a hedonistic spoilt manchild who does little to earn the throne and sleeps with women who he knows are already in committed relationships (including his brother's girlfriend and the bride-to-be of one of his knights). That being said, his actions pale in comparison to Morgan's, who is willing to commit multiple murders and rapes (including [[spoiler:raping her own brother]]) to gain the throne, yet she's easily one of the show's most popular characters. To make matters worse, [[spoiler:the Jerk (Arthur) is the ''rape victim'' of the Villain (Morgan)]], but most viewers tend to brush that aside. This is likely due to Eva Green's charismatic and nuanced portrayal of Morgan, while Jamie Campbell Bower is widely seen as miscast as Arthur and makes him a very difficult protagonist to root for, but the dissonant fan reception can still seems a tad extreme.
33	* JustHereForGodzilla: Several viewers admitted they were mainly interested in the show because of Creator/EvaGreen's performance as Morgan (she's generally agreed to be one of the best parts of the series).
34	* MemeticMutation: Merlin being Voldemort's brother and vice versa, made all the easier by the Fiennes brothers going bald for their roles.
35	%%* MindGameShip: Merlin and Morgan.
36	* SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome: "You are nothing! You will always be nothing but my father's bastard!"
37	* {{Narm}}: The sword Excalibur is custom-made by an ordinary smith for Merlin. Fine. But the sword being named after the ''smith's daughter'' who is ''literally'' named Excalibur? Hilarious, and that's not even factoring in that [[spoiler:Merlin accidentally causes both their deaths due to essentially poor communication]].
38	* OlderThanTheyThink: Arthur and Morgan as paternal half-siblings instead of maternal originates with ''Film/KnightsOfTheRoundTable''. BBC's ''Merlin'' also presented them as both being the children of Uther with different mothers, albeit neither were aware of this until midway through the series.
39	* QuestionableCasting: Arthur is played by Jamie Campbell Bower, known for playing evil or jerkass pretty boys. While that might not normally be a problem, the fact that he's the main character makes it hard to root for him, though to be fair this is an issue with the writing as much as if not more than the casting. Some feel Arthur might have come across as more sympathetic with a different actor playing him, and some also feel that Arthur and Kay's actors and characterizations should have been switched, since Kay looked and acted more like the conventional hero they wanted Arthur to be, and the traditional Kay was indeed somewhat of a jerkass in the later romances (but this still leaves the issue of the love triangle with Leontes, which Bower's bad-boy vibe plays into but which makes Arthur possibly more unsympathetic than intended). Some even feel that Bower had the right look and bearing for ''[[BigBad Mordred]]'', but he was playing Arthur.
40	* RomanticPlotTumor: Arthur/Guinevere and the consequent LoveTriangle with Leontes was generally considered boring and shallow, particularly since Arthur/Guinevere's attraction was based almost solely on lust (occurring on the basis of ''one'' dream, ''two'' short conversations, and sex in a cave on her wedding day to another man), and most viewers' sympathies lay with Leontes.
41	* RonTheDeathEater: [[DesignatedHero Arthur]] is often at the receiving end of this. While he's not without his faults, he does show himself to be heroic, especially [[CharacterDevelopment towards the end of the series]]. It's especially jarring when he's, at worst, an asshole, yet Morgan, a murderer and a rapist, gets about as much love from the fandom as Arthur gets hate.
42	* RootingForTheEmpire: Lots of viewers ended up rooting for Morgan over Arthur. The latter tends to be [[TheScrappy disliked]] by many viewers due to coming off as whiny and spoilt, while Morgan is generally seen as one of the most compelling and charismatic characters. It helps that she actually has quite a [[FreudianExcuse sympathetic backstory and motivations]] and is something of an underdog (she was cast off by her abusive father who murdered her mother, is viewed as being an unsuitable heir mostly because Merlin says so, and just when she's about to become queen, some random half-brother she's never heard of turns up to take her place, despite being an immature and unqualified teenager). The fact that fans ''still'' root for her after she goes so far as ''raping her brother'' is, needless to say, disturbing.
43	* TheScrappy: Arthur was not a popular character. Although the point of the show was that he started out as a SpoiledBrat before undergoing CharacterDevelopment, fans felt he was ''too'' unsympathetic to begin with and Eva Green was simply [[EvilIsCool too charismatic]] as Morgan. He solidified himself as a Scrappy when he slept with Guinevere before her wedding day and felt no remorse, while she at least regretted it and tried to make amends. Still, the fact that fans can't forgive him for this, but nearly always forgive Morgan for much worse crimes (rape, for instance), is... well, jarring.
44	* [[SugarWiki/HeReallyCanAct She Really Can Act]]: Claire Forlani was considered a weak attempt at hyping up a new star in the 90s, and her hype faded in the 2000s. She went quite against type here and turned in a spirited performance as Igraine, bringing the character to life in a way not usually done.
45	* TheyChangedItNowItSucks: The reinterpretations of the Arthurian legends, especially regarding the main characters, didn't go over well with some viewers. Of course, the legends themselves have always been subject to [[DependingOnTheWriter some kind of reinterpretation]]... not often with characterization, though.
46	* TheyCopiedItSoItSucks: The show was criticized for being a knockoff of ''Series/GameOfThrones'', but without the elements that made that series good (well-developed and nuanced characters, compelling multi-layered story, a decent script).
47	* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodCharacter: King Lot (Creator/JamesPurefoy), Uther's greatest rival and Arthur's challenger to the throne alongside Morgan who allies with him and becomes his lover out of mutual convenience, [[spoiler:dies in just the second episode in a MutualKill with Arthur's foster-father and Kay's father Ector (Creator/SeanPertwee), when both men and Lot especially could have been kept around longer to better develop the show's characters and worldbuilding]].
48	* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodPlot: The show is rife with this, but for Arthurian lore fans, one bit sticks out: the legendary but probably part-historical [[TheSiege siege of Mount Badon]] (''Mons Badonicus'') had an iconic place in early Arthurian lore as the battle where Arthur spectacularly halted invaders from troubling the British for a generation, [[OneManArmy supposedly slaying over 900 men himself]]. Here, it becomes the underwhelming siege of "Bardon Pass", fought with {{Suspiciously Small Arm\|y}}ies -- Arthur and a dozen knights defend not a fort, but what amounts to [[http://www.denofgeek.com/tv/10442/camelot-episode-9-review-the-battle-of-bardon-pass "a farm with two sentries"]], and the enemy force doesn't look that much larger despite outnumbering them.
49	* WTHCostumingDepartment: Guinevere clearly has a modern hairstyle with layers and highlights, which takes one out of the series.
50
51	!!The Creator/GoldenFilms work
52	* AngstWhatAngst: Arthur isn't angry about Guinivere and Lancelot's affair, and even considers them good friends as he lies dying.
53	* SugarWiki/AwesomeArt: The scenarios, the castle, and Avalon in general are very well designed.
54	* SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic: All the songs.
55	* DesignatedEvil: While the movie avoids portraying Mordred as a strawman, it fails to explain why his will to punish Lancelot and Guinivere's affair is misguided. The closest thing is a comment that Mordred fails to see the bigger picture, but this explanation is too vague. Lancelot and Guinivere most certainly broke the rules by having an adulterous affair.

Context YMMV / Camelot