YMMV / Kingdom of Heaven

• Alternate Character Interpretation:
  • Does the village sheriff really intend to obey his father’s order to kill Godfrey for his lands? He only leaves the village to go after Godfrey and his companions after wanted fugitive Balian joins them and gives them a chance to surrender Balian rather than attack while he has the advantage of surprise. Granted, one of his men did kill a sentry at the camp beforehand, but it is unclear if the sheriff ordered that or if they even knew that Godfrey was in the camp at the time.
  • Does Guy give Reynald the water to try and transfer Saladin's Sacred Hospitality to him and save his life? Is he unaware of that custom and simply concerned about how his right-hand man is tired and thirsty? Or is he not petting the dog like the other two options and just trying to look tough and contemptuous to his captor?
• Anvilicious: The final title card: "Nearly a thousand years later, peace in the Kingdom of Heaven remains elusive." Some also consider the movie in general to be this.
• Applicability: Given that it was released during the Iraq War, it's not hard to see it as a parallel to that, especially in light of the end title card (see above).
• Awesome Music: The melancholic Arabian chant that plays while Saladin enters Jerusalem, "Epitafio" by Luis Delgado and Mohammed El-Arabi, comes from a real life work by Ibn al-Zaqqaq, one of the greatest poets of Al-Ándalus. Its lyrics speak about death and the passage of time, and they reflect profoundly the change of era after the fall of Jerusalem.
• Complete Monster:
  • Guy de Lusignan is the head of a faction of knights who chafe at not being allowed to make war on "the Saracens". Together with his violent-For the Evulz sidekick, Reynald de Châtillon, Guy massacres a Muslim caravan, hoping to provoke war with Sultan Saladin, but is foiled when King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem persuades Saladin to relent and jails Reynald. Following Baldwin's death, Guy frees Reynald and sends him out to waylay and butcher another caravan, this one including Saladin's own sister. When Saladin sends an envoy to request the return of his sister's body, Guy murders the envoy in view of his party then sends his head back to Saladin as a declaration of war. Ignoring the advice of those who have fought the Muslims before, Guy marches his entire army into the desert without sufficient food or water, damning all those who disagree with this plan as cowards, and gloating about the glory he will attain when he bests Saladin. When his army is killed almost to a man, and Reynald executed in front of him by Saladin, Guy refuses to accept any responsibility, blaming everyone but himself for the way that things have worked out.
  • Reynald de Châtillon in the director's cut is worse than in the theatrical version. Reynald is a vicious nobleman who hates Muslims and seeks any excuse to slaughter them; he is known to frequently slaughter caravans of Muslim civilians. Later, Reynald tells Guy de Lusignan that he wants war with the Saracens "soon". Together, they slaughter the caravan, with Reynald having an evil smirk the entire time and seeing to really enjoy the violence. After Guy de Lusignan becomes king, he asks Reynald to give him war, with Reynald provoking Saladin by slaughtering yet another caravan and beheading captives. Reynald also personally rapes and murders Saladin's sister. When captured by Saladin, Reynald grins to him and shows no remorse for his actions.
• Creepy Awesome: King Baldwin, due to his mask (even more without it, tragicomically) and sheer badassery.
• Cult Classic: Not to the degree of Scott's Blade Runner, but like that film, the Director's Cut has its following.
• Ending Fatigue: The epilogue was especially prominent in the shorter theatrical release.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Even (or maybe especially) in the poorly-received theatrical cut, Edward Norton's King Baldwin impressed critics and audiences.
  • Ghassan Massoud also received a lot of love for his role as Saladin.
  • Odo, the German knight among Godfrey's warriors who manages to keep fighting competently despite taking a crossbow bolt through the neck.
  • The unnamed English Sergeant, played by Kevin McKidd, who has minimal screen time and vanishes before Balian leaves Messina. Many viewers wish he'd stuck around longer.
• Faux Symbolism: Reynald's beard and the hair around his shoulders have streaks of red mixed with normal grey hair that are not quite natural looking and are reminiscent of blood stains.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Even in its tarnished form, it was better received in European and Middle Eastern/African territories. Natural, given that they are countries directly impacted in the Crusades, but not so easy as it sounds, given that we are talking about both sides of the conflict.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Spanish voice actor Jordi Pons dubbed here a character whose illness impedes him from fully doing his job and soon will kill him. Only a few years after this film, Pons had to retire from voice acting when a throat illness left him unable to do it anymore.
• He Really Can Act: Orlando Bloom had been receiving lots of the standard 'Pretty Boy backlash' that comes with being a heartthrob among young women, and this wasn't helped by his role in the divisive Troy. He went slightly against type here, playing a more serious and withdrawn character, with a very understated performance. To those who find Balian a bit dull as a protagonist, some feel that the performance saves him.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Eva Green (Sibylla) willingly gives up the throne for love. Fast forward to Camelot where she stops at nothing to try and become Queen. And the original plan for Sibylla was to go to a nunnery at the end of the film. Morgan is introduced in Camelot having been away at a nunnery for years.
  • At one point in the Director's Cut, Balian throws a rock at a bush and it sets a blaze, with him balking at The Hospitaller's "That's your Moses". Come almost ten years latter after KOH's release and Ridley Scott is doing a movie about Moses.
  • This isn't the last time Jeremy Irons played a Knight Templar.
• Improved by the Re-Cut: The theatrical version is a mediocre action film, at best. The Director's Cut edition restores over 45 minutes of plot, and is a far superior political drama/war movie, and explains a lot about why Balian is such an effective leader, and why certain decisions were made in pivotal moments. Notably, Balian's relationship with the Priest at the beginning of the movie is drastically reduced, as the two were actually brothers, and Balian is shown to be pacifistic, simply taking the Priest's verbal and physical abuse at his wife's grave. This makes his later decision to decline accepting leadership of Jerusalem a lot more consistent, as he couldn't allow hundreds of knights to be executed if they didn't swear fealty to him. Even worse was Sibylla, whose son was completely excised in the theatrical cut, causing her decision to agree to be faithful to Guy and allow him to lead Jerusalem make absolutely no sense without that context.
• Iron Woobie: King Baldwin is a leper whose sister can't bear to look at him, and he knows he won't live to see thirty. But he's considerably un-angsty about it.
• Just Here for Godzilla:
  • Some tune in (to the Director's Cut anyway) for Eva Green as Sibylla - a Politically-Active Princess who plays political games to ensure the future of both her son and the kingdom, and also spends most of her screen time in Pimped Out Dresses.
  • The same can be said for King Baldwin and Saladin, who are considered by many to be the highlights of the film
• Memetic Badass:
  • Saladin. He has a province named after him in Iraq. Which might be ironic, given that he was a Kurd.
  • Baldwin's scenes are used in all kinds of motivational vids in YouTube, emphasizing his dignity, wisdom, stoicism in the face of his illness and respect for his enemies.
• Moral Event Horizon: For Reynald, this would be his aforementioned mass slaughtering of innocent Muslims just to provoke Saladin, peaking with his murdering (and also possibly raping) Saladin's sister.
• One-Scene Wonder: Odo, the golden-braided German (played by World's Strongest Man champion Jouko Ahola) has about two minutes of cumulative screen, but kills four guys with an axe and sword after taking a goddamn crossbow bolt through the neck.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Balian's brother is played by Michael Sheen in a two-bit part. He did have fame for Underworld (2003), but he'd start appearing in more blockbusters and Oscar Bait films following this and the next decade.
  • Eva Green secured her true breakout in Casino Royale (2006) the next year.
  • Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (later to be known as Ser Jaime Lannister of Game of Thrones) appears in a small role as the village sheriff.
  • Related to the above, many people will likely recognize Iain Glen as King Richard the Lion-Hearted prior his iconic role as Ser Jorah Mormont in Game of Thrones.
• Special Effect Failure: The blood effects can be a bit wonky. In one instance, Guy de Lusignan stabs an Arab messenger under the chin, causing blood to explode out from under his shirt. In another, Balian smacks a knight on his helmet with what seems to be broken pottery, again causing blood to inexplicably splatter everywhere. Freshly broken pottery can be sharp enough to use as a weapon, but it's not sharp enough to cut through a helmet or chainmail, making the blood hard to justify.
• Spiritual Licensee: It is essentially an adaptation of The Talisman by Walter Scott. Such similarities include Saladin as a noble ruler, a young European nobleman coming alone to the Crusades and encountering and fighting a Saracen warrior who is later revealed to be of higher birth than the viewer/reader is led to believe, his becoming a good friend of the latter, and finally a forbidden romance between the young nobleman and a young woman of royal heritage.
• Stoic Woobie: Considering Sibylla has already lost her first husband and is trapped in an unhappy arranged marriage at the start, along with her strained relationship with her brother, it's impressive how stoic she is. While she is heartbroken at learning her son has leprosy and choosing to Mercy Kill him, she again is remarkably stoic.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Although considered otherwise excellent, the Castilian Spanish dub contained a pair of inexplicable changes of dialogue that weren't so well received. The main might be Saladin's line when Balian threatens to destroy the sacred sites: instead of musing ironically that it may be actually better than Balian fulfilled his threat, in the dub he simply says amusedly that Balian should just hand the city over, thus taking away a lot of the scene's power. Also, the Patriarch's line proposing Balian to convert to Islam and repent later is turned into an indignant refusal to convert to Islam if Saladin dared to ask the Christians to, ironically making the Patriarch a much more dignified character.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Godfrey and his companions (the unnamed English sergeant played by Kevin McKidd, the massive German brawler Odo, and the Moorish Firuz) are rather striking and distinctive characters that are 1) played by incredibly talented actors and 2) give the impression of being a hardened group of warriors who've already fought many battles offscreen.) Instead of joining Balian on his journey and kicking ass together in the Holy Land, they're almost immediately killed off before they can do much of anything.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Balian's decision not to go along with Baldwin and Tiberias' plan leads to the idiotic Guy taking over the army and sending tens of thousands of men to an absolutely pointless death. The viewer might feel a bit miffed that Balian doesn't seem to realize this.
• Vanilla Protagonist: Balian is a Knight in Shining Armor with a humble personality, making him a rather typical "good guy" hero. His screen presence is far outshone by the substantially more colorful side characters, including the Angel Unaware Hospitaller, the Handicapped Badass King Baldwin, the beautiful and strong-willed Sibylla, the Large Ham Tiberias and the brilliant Saladin.

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