The Kid Who Would Be King

When it rained dur­ing school lunch, rather than charge to the play­ground, I would occu­py myself with mod­els of Aragorn, Lego­las and Gan­dalf. I’d tuck some books and a lunch­box under some green felt, and soon enough the table in front of me became the rolling hills of Rohan. With some card­board and sel­l­otape, two tables were joined by the Bridge of Khaz­ad-dûm; with a bit more, those snack size Pringle cans were Isen­gard itself. Play­ing Lord of the Rings at school was a com­fort­ing escapist fan­ta­sy, but that’s all it was, now that Joe Cor­nish has made The Kid Who Would Be King, it’s a lit­tle less so.

Arriv­ing eight years after coun­cil estate alien inva­sion flick Attack the Block – a per­fect audi­tion for galac­tic defence from John Boye­ga – Cornish’s sec­ond fea­ture again places the gaunt­let of earth­ly pro­tec­tion in the hands of an unex­pect­ed bear­er: a 12-year-old boy named Alex, who may be the heir to King Arthur. In that time, Cor­nish found him­self sat at tables (round or oth­er­wise) with Dis­ney, Mar­vel and Para­mount to dis­cuss poten­tial projects, but instead of helm­ing the deck of the Star­ship Enter­prise, he set­tled on a mod­ern retelling of the Arthuri­an leg­end that breathes a drag­on breath of life into the children’s adven­ture film.

Alex is played by Louis Ash­bourne Serkis (son of Andy) who, along with his knights of the round fold-out kitchen table, must learn the true mean­ing of chival­ry and defeat Mor­gana (Rebec­ca Fer­gu­son), a force of moral and lit­er­al poi­son who has been thriv­ing from the recent upturn in humanity’s vit­ri­ol and neg­a­tiv­i­ty. It’s a sim­ple alle­go­ry, but after pre­sent­ing a vil­lain who was very much an oth­er in Attack the Block, Cornish’s shift towards an antag­o­nist cre­at­ed from with­in is a wel­come one.

The sto­ry is sim­ple and has sign­posts fit for a motor­way, but per­haps its the famil­iar­i­ty of the tale that allows Cornish’s cre­ativ­i­ty to thrive. The love and atten­tion to detail in the film isn’t just about fill­ing a world, it’s all in ser­vice of its char­ac­ters and their adven­ture. While the tur­ret-logoed con­struc­tion site hoard­ing that reads ​‘start your sto­ry’ is a nice touch, the best exam­ple of this is the ​‘men at work’ signs that through won­der­ful wiz­ardry become shields for school­child­ren prepar­ing to ward off demons of the dead.

For those unfa­mil­iar with this par­tic­u­lar sign, it doesn’t so much resem­ble a man at work but some­one strug­gling to open a sun para­sol. In this case, though, it’s a per­son pulling a sword from a stone. Like The Last Jedi, The Kid Who Would Be King isn’t con­cerned about lega­cy or pre­de­ces­sors, it’s about per­son­al belief regard­less of who came before you. It means that in the finale, when those kids line up, shields in hand, ready for Helm’s Deep on tar­mac, they’re all King Arthur. They’re all legends.

When Andrew Lesnie shot The Lord of the Rings he trans­formed New Zealand into Mid­dle Earth. Here, vet­er­an cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Bill Pope shoots Eng­land in a sim­i­lar­ly epic and beau­ti­ful way, per­fect­ly bal­anc­ing the scales of land­scape and char­ac­ter. It’s a pre­cious thing to see on the big screen, but what’s more excit­ing is that, because The Kid Who Would Be King is so firm­ly root­ed in the real­i­ty of a kid’s life, those vis­tas don’t feel like Mid­dle Earth; adven­ture lies just out­side the school gate.