The Sword in the Stone

[osprey_archer]

Funny story about The Sword in the Stone: I know that I’ve seen this movie, because I vividly remembered the actual pulling-the-sword-out-of-the-stone part: Arthur looking ridiculous in his giant squire’s tunic! The magic glowy light! Sir Ector and Kay scoffing when Arthur comes running with the wrong sword, which turns out to be the sword that proclaims Arthur king!

(Side note: as I watched this movie, with its portrayal of Kay as a bullying oaf, I kept remembering that book that skygiants reviewed, the one with the Woobiest Kay who is Tragically Unappreciated by everyone else in Camelot. I now suspect that the author was permanently traumatized by The Sword in the Stone and this book was her attempt to set the record straight.)

Anyway. Although I remembered the actual sword-pulling bit vividly, I’d completely forgotten the rest of the story, the parts where Merlin turns Arthur into a fish! a squirrel! (and then poor Arthur gets sexually harassed by a lady squirrel while Merlin chortles in glee about how nature is just like that… until another lady squirrel falls for Merlin herself), and a bird, which leads to a confrontation with a violently pink evil sorceress named Mim.

It’s an interesting reflection how memory works, I guess. The pulling of the sword fit into the story of King Arthur as I knew it (where the sword in the stone is only the beginning, and the real action is the Knights of the Round Table), so perhaps that’s why the bit that stuck in my brain.

Or possibly I grew up with a VHS compilation that only included that bit. That also seems entirely possible.

***

Technically Mary Poppins is not on my list of Disney animated movies, buuuuut it does have an animated section… and it does come next in chronological order… and also it’s Mary Poppins… so we may watch it anyway. I mean, it’s Mary Poppins! How could we resist??

Comments

[evelyn_b]

Disney used to do a lot of clip shows, with iconic (or would-be iconic) scenes from a whole bunch of movies strung together, sometimes with a half-assed theme, so it's very possible that you saw it in that format.

Have you read the book by TH White? The Sword in the Stone is Part One of The Once and Future King, but it was also available as a separate book. It's better and weirder than the Disney movie, and Kay is not a woobie, but a complicated, lovable, and difficult character. When I first read it as a child, I got really mad at how they made Kay a big dumb bully in the movie (instead of a very complicated bully), and oafed up Sir Ector to an unforgivable degree.

[osprey_archer]

Yes, I'm thinking more and more that it must have been a clip show. I can't remember anything else that was on there, though.

No, I haven't read The Once and Future King, which is funny because I read a number of other Arthurian books as a child... but somehow I missed that one.