Hacker Cinema
Kingdom of Heaven
2005 · Film · 144 min
Directed by Ridley Scott
DramaActionAdventureHistoryWar
After his wife dies, a blacksmith named Balian is thrust into royalty, political intrigue and bloody holy wars during the Crusades.
3 positive1 negative2 mixed10 neutralfrom 16 commenters
Where to watch
No streaming data for this title.
16 comments on Hacker News
stuff like this. if i enjoy a movie but the script simply doesn't check out from a rational perspective (plot holes, implausible behavior, inconsistencies etc.) then i sometimes decide to switch to a fairy tale mental mode where those issues are excused magically. only works with some movies. kingdom of heaven comes to mind.
Anti-corporate attitudes were completely normalized in the 2000s and arguably only really lulled during the mid-2010s. There were several films from that period that featured countercultural messaging:
Disney’s Incredibles had allusions to Kafka
Monster’s Inc. is a commentary on corporate vampirism.
Kingdom of Heaven was if not a commentary on the Global War on Terror at least a bold film to have released 4 years after 9/11.
The second Pirates of the Caribbean film was a (childish) commentary on global empire and rationalization eliminating places for the human person to live freely.
The Corporation, Capitalism: A Love Story, and Supersize Me were all released post-9/11. They screened Supersize Me in elementary and high schools when it was released.
Anti-globalization as a movement completely collapsed during the Occupy Wall Street protests. These movements had attitudes towards international mobility rights that completely undermined organized labor. Most of them recognized what impacts illegals were having on these industries but took the position that labor solidarity would somehow make everyone better off. This could have worked in theory except that they had no operational plan to enact this solidarity and the illegals were never interested in it to begin with.
Once the bankers realized that they could just pay off the OWS leadership with fake email jobs, you started to see the conventional partisan divide on globalism that we observe today, with liberals being in favor of it and conservatives opposed to it.
Your pedantry probably requires a rewatch.
I also think "masterpiece" is a heavy term to throw around but the emotional impact of the this series and the complexity of its narrative as it catalogs a hero's journey from reluctant participant to true believer with an epic story arc can be held up next to most film and historical epics like Laurence of Arabia, Ben Hur, The Matrix, the Original Star Wars trilogy, Dune, Kingdom of Heaven, Gladiator, The Handmaid's Tale (series), The Odyssey (epic poem). His personal journey which leads to his persecution and enslavement, his role in leading a slave uprising, rescuing his friends from the aftermath of a rebel uprising, building the foundations of a rebel army, risking his life countless times and ultimately sacrificing himself to prevent his enemy from having an insurmountable edge.
The series makes the very popular "Avengers" film series look like trite dogshit and does the same for most of the "Star Wars" sequels and prequels so I don't fault people for using the term "masterpiece".
> The historical record is important, but sometimes inaccuracies are useful in conveying symbolic power and threats. Some translation and interpretation is always necessary if you want to produce a coherent narrative.
Translation and interpretation is something I have no problem with, as these are not flaws of the work. However, I'm of the view that valuing a work of art requires being able to scrutinize it, while still being able enjoy it. It doesn't do one any favors to accept false facts. There are several works that establish "truths" compelling enough to be credible for someone without the background knowledge. To those who fail to question if something is true, art becomes artifice and fiction becomes indistinguishable from reality.
> Realistically, with history-as-entertainment, if you can capture some things well you're doing far better than many even try to.
> I love Ridley Scott but his depictions of history are far more of a discussion about how the west views itself today rather than even trying to translate something from the time to today.
That you're able to appreciate the ideas being conveyed and the motives behind doing so is precisely the reason a sense of scrutiny is necessary. Kingdom of Heaven is definitely an example of a movie that provides a retrospective/revisionist examination of the Crusades rather than an historical one. Such an insight can't obtained from mindlessly watching it as a "realistic Lord of the Rings".
While these things might be discussed in interviews, behind-the-scenes featurettes, or in the audio commentary, public exposition of these aspects of storytelling is rarely afforded to anime or manga.
No, the whole reason "Director's Cuts" exists is that those represent the cut the director wanted, not the theatrical cut released by the studio (which is driven by the studio's or producer's wants).
See, for example, Alien 3, Blade Runner, and Justice League for the most notorious/well-known examples. Lesser known examples include Aliens, The Abyss, Kingdom of Heaven, Doctor Sleep, Lethal Weapon, Dark City.
Only a handful of directors at the big studios get the right to control the final cut. You'll notice the director responsible for 3 of the 4 highest-grossing movies of all time has 2 movies in that list; this is because James Cameron didn't earn the right to control final cut until after his 3rd blockbuster success.
A few studios, like Netflix and A24, adhere to the "auteur's theory" of filmmaking, and let the director have full control over the creative process of the film, including the final cut, even without an established record of hits, but this is the exception, not the norm.
> The way I learned of Invincible was through a couple memes, which eventually lead me to research and watch the series
Seeing lots of Kingdom of Heaven memes lead me to watching the movie.
It's worth asking before anyone loses their mind about this, who made this change and why? Licensors like Criterion can't and don't "re-edit" (if you can call removing 4 seconds re-editing). Others can and do pretty frequently.
It's decisions about market fit by executives, not a moral crusade (as we have seen, Hollywood execs aren't really the type for that). Sometimes the whole film is affected, as in Blade Runner, Brazil, Once Upon a Time in America, or Kingdom of Heaven. Those movies were "butchered" (to use the language of the histrionic Forbes article). Yet in Leon (The Professional) the director supposedly intended the titular character to sleep with his underage protege. I'm glad someone overrode the sacred "artist's intent" there, and I wish someone had done the same for George Lucas's ill-advised Star Wars editions.
Here someone probably looks at a report and says, OK here are the movies in our pile with more than 20 slurs in them. Let's try to get that number below 10 so we don't have to add a "the language in this film represents the time in which it was made..." warning, that turns a lot of people off.
These decisions get made to maximize shareholder value, and the original film is not lost (except in the case of Star Wars), it's just one of a dozen variant cuts — you think they show the same exact movie everywhere in the world? Ever been to China? Believe it or not art is flexible and resilient. A film can survive a temporary blip while some VPs try to minimize complaints from sensitive viewers. If you disagree with those viewers that is another issue in my opinion.
It's a quote from the 2006 film "Kingdom of Heaven". I choose to interpret it as a comment on the pointlessness of posting a line of dialog from a movie as a response to an ongoing news story with no other commentary.
Most of the time flops have had too much material cut out to hit runtime requirements ("nobody will watch a 3 hour movie!"). Kingdom of Heaven, Batman v Superman, Watchmen, Alien3 all get better with restored material.
Blade Runner is interesting as there are 3 different versions, all about the same length but with some very different scenes. Theatrical also has a terrible voice over which was later removed.
The Shining is one that gets better when shortened - most feel that the 119 minute European version is better than the 144 minute US cut.
Apocalypse Now is interesting - Redux (193 minute) is a slog compared to theatrical (147); but Final (182) is probably the best version and a great example of the balance needed.
There's also the video 'How Star Wars was saved in the edit' which has a lot of good information on what editing can do. The video has kindof been co-opted by the internet as definitive proof that George Lucas is a talentless hack, but it's really not that much different than what happens on every other film. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEHRNS-Scrs
> "Nemo vir est qui mundum non reddat meliorem"
That quote is present in (originates from ?) the movie "Kingdom Of Heaven", in the workshop of the main character Balian, where it is translated as "What man is a man who does not make the world better?".
I'd risk to suggest that "Andrei Rublev" is Tarkovsky's best film as it is both approachable, auteur, commercial, poetic, symbolic, naturalistic and everything you'd imagine one of the vertebras of the 20th century culture to be.
Yes, late Tarkovsky is great too, but it's not really quite cinema at that point. "Rublev" is The Movie in Tarkovsky's filmography.
It's also probably one of the best medieval films there is, regardless of the genre, "7th Seal" to "Kingdom of Heaven".
Another great, often overlooked movie is his very first one - "Ivan's Childhood". You can see him still begin somewhat cautious there, but the movie is as poignant as they get. It was created by one of the best artists of the generation as he watched the dawn of the 60s era as a member of the society for which World War 2 and Red Terror are yet to become "yesterday".
Bullshit.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=kingdom+of+heaven+movie
Well, such folks also like post imagery related to the film "Kingdom of Heaven".
The entire point of that film is to portray the crusades as pointless, but those guys don't really get it.
There are some really interesting things you find on the message boards:
- I once came across a nomadic TV watching club - they'd decide to watch a classic TV series, and then go to the board for that series to hold weekly discussions (you go in one week and see them discussing the first episode, then go in the next week and see them discussing the second, etc.). When the series was finished, they'd announce the next series they would watch and migrate to that board.
- At one point the board for Kingdom of Heaven was a bunch of history buffs discussion history (and occasionally mentioning the movie).
- Coming across threads that had been going on for over a decade was always interesting. Someone made a comment, a year or two later (long after they've left) someone else comes along and responds to them, a couple years later someone else responds to that, etc.
- The discussion of movie finances could be really informative, and definitely gave me a much deeper understanding of how things work and what it means for a movie to be profitable (basically, it's really complicated).
And of course, the boards were a great place for things like recommendations, up to date news, and learning about things you missed in the film.
So, I was the wife/homemaker and he did not have a startup. We had an amicable divorce, in part because I wanted to keep lawyers out of it and I have had a college class on Negotiation and Conflict Management. Given that we did not have much money, I did not want the lawyers bleeding us for money we could not remotely afford. So I did a lot of steering that to make it as painless as possible for all parties. He was cooperative, but I at times agreed to things that were a convenience for him because I understood that screwing him over was absolutely not in my best interest.
But if you are negotiating with an idiot who does not understand that bleeding you is a bad negotiating tactic, you need to get better at a) negotiating tactics and b) communicating to them why this is not in THEIR best interest. Don't talk about what you need/want/feel. Talk about how this is likely to impact her, and not in a positive way.
Make absolutely sure you are not making threats. You need to make it clear this will cost her and you need to do so in a way that cannot be construed by the court system as bad faith or threatening behavior and that cannot be construed by her as hot air or empty talk that you won't really follow through on. This is not a scare tactic. The point is to educate this fool.
For example, it might help to get figures on what a nasty, long drawn out divorce litigation costs in both time and money. (I knew we were saving like $40k or more -- money we absolutely did not have -- to divorce without lawyers. That left lots more on the table for us to split, so I didn't quibble about small things.)
Let me also recommend that you pick up "Getting to Yes" and "The Mind and Heart of the Negotiator". They are both research based and were both required texts for my college class on negotiating and conflict management. The first is a quick read. You should be able to get it through in a weekend. The second is much meatier, but I strongly suggest you do your best to find/make time for it as it contains lots of good info.
If you just cannot come up with the money, you may need to do all in your power to insist she accept stocks to cover the part of the business she is "owed."
If you can get a copy of the movie Our House https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_House_(2006_film) and also Kingdom of Heaven, both contain good lessons in effective hardball negotiating.
Please get your feelings out of the way. You need to be goal-oriented here. This is not about the fact that she is breaking your heart or doesn't love you anymore or a thousand other personal pains involved in the end of most marriages. Keep a journal or do therapy or something, but find a way to get your feelings out of your way when negotiating this settlement.
This is business, not personal. There is enormous money on the table. You must treat it like business -- and never mind that she probably won't. You need to do all you can to avoid getting dragged into her emotional crap or provoking her. Be diplomatic and sensitive to her hurt feelings, but do so in a way that sidesteps the issue as much as possible. Don't pick at old wounds. Don't throw things in her face. Stuff like that will cost you money.
This is advice rooted in having been through a divorce and managing to not screw over either party in the process.
Best of luck.
There are always other options. I suggest you watch "Kingdom of Heaven" if you have not yet seen it. Painfully bad movie, totally worth watching all the way through one time in order to see the negotiation scene in context.
I have negotiation skills in spades. But I tend to be a doormat. Being under the gun has been extremely uncomfortable but is getting results in ways that simply studying the subject intellectually was not. Getting over some things has been terribly difficult for me.
My situation is complicated and a comment or two on HN won't convey it. If we had more time to talk, we might find we agree more than it seems.
Peace.