The Green Knight (film)

The Chivalric Romance Gawain is awakened on Christmas morning in a brothel by his lover, a commoner woman named Essel. He returns to Camelot, following a scolding by his mother Morgan le Fay. The Christmas Court Gawain attends a feast at the Round Table with his uncle King Arthur, who invites Gawain to his side. In a tower, le Fay performs a magic rite which summons the mysterious Green Knight who barges into Arthur's court as Merlin gives Arthur a look. He states that any knight able to land a blow on him will win his green axe, but must travel to the Green Chapel the following Christmas and receive an equal blow in return. Gawain takes up the challenge. The Knight yields and Gawain, wielding Excalibur, decapitates him. The Knight rises and lifts his severed head, reminds Gawain of the bargain and leaves. A Too Quick Year Gawain spends a year reveling before Arthur reminds him to uphold his end of the challenge. The Journey Out Gawain departs on horseback for the Green Chapel, taking the green axe and a green girdle made by his mother, who claims that no harm will come to him so long as he wears it. A Kindness During his journey, Gawain meets a boy scavenging a battlefield littered with dead warriors. The boy directs Gawain to a stream that will lead him to the Green Chapel. He asks for payment and Gawain gives him a single coin. Shortly afterwards, the boy and two others ambush Gawain and steal the axe, girdle and horse, leaving him tied up. Gawain scrambles to his sword and uses it to cut the ropes binding his hands and then pursues them. A Meeting with Saint Winifred By nightfall, Gawain arrives at an abandoned cottage and falls asleep in the bed. He is awakened by the ghost of a young woman named Saint Winifred, who asks Gawain to retrieve her head from a nearby spring. He asks what he will receive in return but is rebuffed. He reunites her skull with her skeletal remains and the next morning finds the axe has been returned to him. Interlude Gawain befriends a red fox who accompanies him on his journey where they see some giants. He reaches a castle inhabited by a Lord who informs him that the Green Chapel is nearby, and Gawain accepts his invitation to stay. An Exchange of Winnings The Lord's lady, who resembles Essel, makes seductive overtures towards Gawain. The Lord proposes they exchange what he obtains while hunting with whatever Gawain finds at the castle. The next morning, the Lady presents Gawain with the green girdle, which she claims to have made herself. Gawain accedes to her advances in exchange for it. Gawain flees and encounters the Lord in the forest. The Lord kisses Gawain in return for his Lady's actions, but Gawain does not give him the girdle. The Lord reveals that he has captured Gawain's fox and releases it. A Beheading at the Green Chapel Gawain reaches a stream where a boat is waiting. The fox speaks, imploring Gawain to abandon the quest. Gawain takes the boat to the chapel, where the Knight is seated in hibernation. Gawain waits through the night, and the Green Knight awakens on Christmas morning. As the Knight swings the axe Gawain flinches. The Knight chides him. Gawain kneels for the blow again but at the last moment scrambles away while apologizing on the way out. He finds his horse outside the chapel and rides back home. The Voyage Home Gawain flees back to Camelot. Gawain is knighted and becomes king after Arthur's death. In his reverie, Essel bears his son, but Gawain abandons her, taking the child and marrying a noblewoman instead. His son comes of age and dies in battle. Many years later, Gawain has become a reviled king. With his castle under siege and his wife, daughter, and mother abandoning him, he removes the green girdle, and his head falls from his shoulders. Finale It is then revealed that all that was just a vision. The kneeling Gawain removes the girdle, telling the Knight he is ready. The Knight praises Gawain for his bravery, then drags his finger across Gawain's throat and points past him, stating "Now, off with your head". He smiles kindly. ==Cast==

An uncredited voice actor voices the red fox that becomes Gawain's companion. The giants that Gawain and his red fox companion encounter are motion-captured by Andrea Deaskovic, Melinda Dempsey, Aoibheann Garry, Isabel Friosi, Rachel Quinn, Hannah Sjoden, and Lucy Waters. ==Production==

, Ireland, commemorating its use as a filming location for The Green Knight. , used for filming as the "crooked tower." It was announced in November 2018 that David Lowery would direct and write a modern retelling of the 14th-century tale Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, with A24, Ley Line Entertainment, and Bron Studios set to finance. In March 2019, Dev Patel was announced to be in negotiations to star in the film. That month, Barry Keoghan and Ralph Ineson joined the cast. In April 2019, it was announced Alicia Vikander and Erin Kellyman had been cast. Principal photography began in Ireland in March 2019. Ardmore Studios and Cahir Castle, County Tipperary, were used as filming locations, as was Charleville Castle in Tullamore, County Offaly. Weta Digital created the visual effects. Lowery was inspired by fantasy films of the 1980s such as Willow and Excalibur. The inclusion of Saint Winifred was inspired by the mention of the Holy Head (Holywell) in the original poem. The highway robbery is an allusion to the 1975 film Barry Lyndon, while the battlefield where Gawain first encounters the robber is inspired by the Battle of Badon. Another major influence on the film was Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992) by Francis Ford Coppola, according to Lowery this was one of his all-time favorite films, and the use of practical effects, dissolves and old-fashioned cinema tricks never ceased to inspire him, and he paid deliberate homage to its magic when St. Winifred first approaches Gawain in her cottage. ==Themes==

Integrity and character Lowery describes the film as being about the importance of comporting oneself with integrity and goodness over being concerned with one's legacy. Familial relationships The complicated relationship between Morgan le Fay and Gawain written for the film also evoked Lowery's experiences with his mother and needing to be pushed to stand on his own as an adult. Nature The film also deals with the conflict between mankind and nature. This is further emphasized by Lowery's decision to portray Arthur and Guinevere as sickly, alluding to the waning control of the civilization they represent. ==Music==

forced the release of The Green Knight to be delayed from May 2020 to July 2021. Originally, The Green Knight was scheduled to have its world premiere at the South by Southwest film festival (SXSW) on March 16, 2020, with a full theatrical release following on May 29. The COVID-19 pandemic, however, forced the cancellation of SXSW and a mass closure of movie theatres worldwide. With no timeframe for when cinemas might reopen, some studios opted to release their new films through video on demand (VOD). Lowery told the A24 Project podcast and IndieWire that he would prefer The Green Knight to see a theatrical release, but that he was ultimately not in control over whether or not it opened on VOD. Later, Lowery revealed that he would have been unhappy with the cut of The Green Knight that was set to debut at SXSW, and that he spent six months during the pandemic re-editing the film into something with which he could be satisfied. In December 2020, A24 announced that The Green Knight would receive a theatrical-only release, opening in US cinemas on July 30, 2021. One streaming video option was available in the US: The A24 Screening Room allowed viewers to purchase a $20 ticket that allowed them to stream The Green Knight, with an additional Q&A session with the cast and crew, during a four-hour window of their choice on the night of August 18. Although the US release progressed as planned, Entertainment Film Distributors chose to pull The Green Knight from UK cinemas two weeks before its scheduled theatrical release on August 6, citing the surge in COVID-19 cases from the Delta variant. After some deliberation, Entertainment opted to release The Green Knight simultaneously in theaters and through Amazon Prime Video on September 24 in the UK. As part of a partnership between A24 and IMAX, the film was re-released exclusively in IMAX theaters for one night only on December 11, 2024. Home media The Green Knight was released on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray, Blu-ray, DVD, and digitally through Lionsgate Home Entertainment on October 12, 2021. While the Blu-ray release contained a number of special features that highlighted certain elements of the film's production, no deleted or alternate scenes from The Green Knight were included. ==Reception==

Box office The Green Knight grossed $17.1 million in the United States and Canada, and $2.8 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $20 million. The film made $2.9 million on its first day, including $750,000 from Thursday night previews. It ended up slightly over-performing, debuting to $6.8 million and finished second at the box office behind Jungle Cruise. The film played best in big markets such as New York City, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. The film fell 62% to $2.6 million in its second weekend, finishing sixth, then made $1.6 million in its third weekend. Critical response On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 89% based on 331 reviews, with an average rating of 8/10. The site's critics consensus reads, "The Green Knight honors and deconstructs its source material in equal measure, producing an absorbing adventure that casts a fantastical spell." Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 85 out of 100 based on 56 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C+" on an A+ to F scale. Brian Tallerico of RogerEbert.com gave the film a score of 4 out of 4 stars, describing the film as "one of the most memorable films of the year, a fascinating swirl of masculinity, temptation, heroism, and religion", adding: "It's a film that embeds the concept of storytelling and performance into its narrative ... while also weaving its own enchanting spell on audiences." Barry Hertz of The Globe and Mail described the film as "a beautiful, haunting and enigmatic work that reckons with the folklore's grave and tragic elements to deliver a masterpiece of blood, sex and magic", and praised Patel's performance as Gawain. John Nugent of Empire gave the film a score of 5 out of 5 stars, describing it as "a rivetingly weird and exceptionally beautiful fantasy film that offers no easy answers but ponders the biggest questions", and wrote that the film was "Revisionist Fantasy, doing for the genre what the likes of Robert Altman or Alejandro Jodorowsky did with their Revisionist Westerns: bringing an avant-garde flair and an ambiguous morality to a previously occasionally cheesy and childlike world." Keith Watson of Slant Magazine gave the film a score of 2.5 out of 4 stars, describing it as "a self-consciously revisionist take on Camelot lore", and wrote that the film "smooths out the enduring mysteries, opaque psychology, and narrative idiosyncrasies of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, resulting in a work that's only superficially more daring and enigmatic than its source material." Simon Abrams of TheWrap wrote that "while there's a lot of commendable chutzpah and curious longing baked into The Green Knight, the movie's never as compelling as it is unusual." In December 2024, Collider ranked the film at number 2 on its list of the "10 Best Fantasy Movies of the 2020s," with Robert Lee III writing "David Lowery has always succeeded in this type of somber, yet undeniably large-scale filmmaking, with The Green Knight easily being the director's magnum opus." In June 2025, IndieWire ranked the film at number 45 on its list of "The 100 Best Movies of the 2020s (So Far)." Accolades ==See also==