Excalibur (1981 film) = Finished

What do you get when you combine shonky 70s Kung Fu movie sensibilities with overdubbed dialogue, an Extremely Irish King Arthur, rape, incest, and a director who turned down The Lord of the Rings to make it all happen?

Excalibur!
Apparently!

I was so ready to laugh this movie off. It is patently ridiculous in its visuals, storytelling, and firm belief that the best way to record an actor's performance is through pantomime before they shout their lines into a tin can three feet long in a studio fourteen hundred miles away three months later. It's an R-rated movie, not because of some extreme sense of violence, but because Lots of Boobs was seen as an essential addition to Arthurian legend. In the movie, magic is by turns a calling upon the primal forces of the universe itself, a mysterious set of abilities, or a parlor trick. Internally consistent, internally conshmistent.

But then there's Arthur.

I don't think I've met a character like Excalibur's Arthur before. Arthur is a man absolutely riddled with flaws. Impulsive to a fault, he breaks Excalibur, and makes mistake after mistake that end up costing him every single thing he ever cared about. He's betrayed by those he loves, losing his wife and best friend to an very clear prophecy. He initiates a quest to save the land that ends up killing every member of the Round Table except for like, one. Two?
It might have been two.
There are a lot of dead knights, is what I'm saying.

Played by anyone else, Arthur should have been supremely frustrating. A willingly ignorant screw-up of a protagonist with no upswing in sight. In the hands of Nigel Terry though, Arthur became something very different for me.

Arthur became a fundamentally good man.
One who I regretted to see fall - but understood.

'Good' is a subjective thing in media, especially when applied to characters. Some people still think that Walter White used to be a good person, and those people are wrong. However, in Excalibur, Arthur's actions, no matter how stupid in hindsight/foresight/current HOW ARE YOU NOT SEEING THIS-sight, come from a place of what can only be described as essential goodness. He has a moral compass, unlike his rapey magic disguise-wearing bastard of a dad. A desire to see good for himself, but especially those around him. Percival finds the holy grail by following this path of righteousness, and Arthur ultimately reclaims his throne the same way. He sacrifices himself to the sword of his own misbegotten son. In doing so, Arthur sets in motion a bright future for his subjects, that he will not be able to enjoy.

Despite his faults, I felt the suffering man beneath the crown doing his level best. So, rather than criticizing his tapestry of regrets, I bowed my head alongside him.

Terry's performance gave me a different perspective on whether a character's actions have to be justified or relatable for you to still have someone worth defending.
Maybe your character doesn't hit the mark every time.

Maybe we just have to see them try.