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People are rightfully talking about the greatness of the Lord of the Rings films today on Tolkien's birthday. Some of you may know that the great director John Boorman made Excalibur (my favorite fantasy film of all time) after years of trying & failing to make a LOTR film.
But what I just realized is that Boorman still had Lord of the Rings on the mind when making Excalibur, & subtly wove some of Tolkien into the Arthurian mythos. While Gandalf was clearly inspired by Merlin, there's some of Gandalf's wit & mischief in Excalibur's Merlin, too...
More importantly, Boorman gave Excalibur itself a lot of properties of the One Ring, particularly its ability to tempt men with dreams of power. In the film, Arthur gives Excalibur to three other men: Kay, Uryens, and Percival.
We see each man as he's tempted to keep the sword for himself, and all three prove their worthiness by doing the right thing and giving it up (or throwing it into the water) instead.
Uryens resisting the temptation to keep Excalibur & instead knighting Arthur, then falling to his knees is awe is one of my favorite movie scenes of all time. And it's so damn poignant that the last we see of Uryens is him dying by Mordred's hand rather than renounce his king.
