What are your thoughts on the ending of the green knight? Little disappointed with it.

Ahhh thank you, my anonymous hero, for giving me the opportunity to ramble about this movie. I saw it last night and I’ve been thinking about it pretty nonstop. Disclaimer before I get into this: I’m not a proper medievalist. I am, however, an English student with a focus on British literature, so I’ve read a few different translations of the original source material and studied it fairly in-depth.

That being said, my first reaction to The Green Knight was… well, that it’s not really Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Which is fine! Mostly. Every movie adaptation changes things from the source, but this one changed so much, so drastically, that I can’t really think about it as the same story. In the original poem, Gawain is a good (if inexperienced) knight who consistently keeps his promises and retains his honor right up until the very end of the story, when he lies about the green belt and refuses to give it to his host, Bertilak. The storyline of the movie seems to flip this? Gawain doesn’t start off as a good knight, or even as a knight at all, and in the movie he consistently fails to live up to knightly virtues throughout his quest. However, at the end he succeeds where the original Gawain did not, and voluntarily removes the belt (after that memorable flash-forward sequence).

To me, this is a fundamentally different story from the original. And I’m not mad about the character changes! A movie has to create a self-contained character arc in a way that the anonymous Pearl Poet did not have to. So to me, the movie seems to present the story of someone who must learn to accept death. Death (and rebirth) is certainly a major theme in the original, too, but I’ve always interpreted the og poem as placing more importance on honesty, chivalry, chastity, humility, and shame.

So the movie is telling a different story, with different themes. With that in mind, I guess it could make sense to skim over the 3 days of Christmas games and the kissing exchange in the original poem. However, even if it does make sense, I’m mad about it because I really liked the Christmas games and the kissing exchange in the original poem. I would’ve swapped out Gawain’s existential flash-forward sequence for a few good kissing exchanges in a heartbeat.

That being said, with the story the movie seems to be trying to tell I’m not terribly mad at the ending? Maybe? I’m still conflicted. I suppose the problem is that the themes feel very confused to me. The strongest one I can latch onto is the inevitability of death/ the importance of embracing the natural cycle of the world. With that in mind, Gawain’s vision of the future could be his realization that his life will, eventually, end, no matter what he does in the green chapel. His decision to remove the belt and face the green knight without its protection can then be seen as an acceptance of death, and the decision to die with honor and dignity. I’m not unhappy with where his character arc ends up here, considering he’s been framed as a screw-up since the beginning of the movie, but I’m left repeating #notmygawain because this is, again, a fundamentally different character arc from the original story. Again, I understand why they changed Gawain’s character for a movie. I just don’t like the changes very much.

I’m also not a huge fan of the cliffhanger (although I did love the final “Green Knight” title card!) mostly because all elements of cliffhanger are removed if you’ve actually read the original poem (or even just checked Wikipedia). Like, we know that the knight doesn’t kill Gawain. It’s not a new story. Although? I suppose this version of it is. So who’s to say whether he dies or not? I suppose the cliffhanger could work in the context of this adaption because, if we’re going with the ‘accepting death’ theme (which I’m still not sure about!), the outcome of Gawain’s decision doesn’t matter as much as the decision itself. We’ve seen him drift around the kingdom for almost 2 hours, breaking chivalric code, lying to his host, and overall being a pretty self-absorbed knight who’s terrified of his own mortality. The decision to accept death and embrace honor is the culmination of a character arc and seems like a fitting end to the movie. But I do wish we had gotten to see Gawain work more towards this growth through the events of his quest, rather than simply achieve it through a flash forward in time.

And I still think they should have left in the full three days of Christmas games.

Overall? This adaption was beautiful. Dev Patel is hot. And, more importantly (to me), this adaption felt right. The blending of Catholic imagery with pagan Celtic influences, the weird vibes, the use of title cards and the vaguely disconnected adventures was fun, and it felt more “Arthurian” than any other round-table-related movie I’ve ever watched. But I’m still not entirely sure what the story was trying to say, or if it said it. If you’re going to deviate from the source material this much, it’s my opinion that you’ve got to do it for a clear reason, to make a clear point, not just to subvert audience expectation. I’m not quite sure what the point of these changes were, or how the ending of the movie revealed the movie’s core thesis. It felt a bit more like a “gotcha!” from the director than a genuine end to Gawain’s story.

But, I mean, at least Dev Patel was hot.