On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 31% based on 190 reviews being positive with the critics consensus being "The magic is gone, leaving a dreary, generic action movie". On Metacritic the film has a score of 46 out of 100 based on reviews from 41 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". David Edelstein of "Slate" called the film "profoundly stupid and inept" and added, "it's an endless source of giggles once you realise that its historical revisionism has nothing to do with archeological discoveries and everything to do with the fact that no one at Disney would green-light an old-fashioned talky love triangle with a hero who dies and an adulterous heroine who ends up in a nunnery." A. O. Scott of the "New York Times" further remarked that the film was "a blunt, glowering B picture, shot in murky fog and battlefield smoke, full of silly-sounding pomposity and swollen music (courtesy of the prolifically bombastic Hans Zimmer). The combat scenes, though boisterous and brutal, are no more coherent than the story, which requires almost as much exposition as . Luckily there is an element of broad, brawny camp that prevents "King Arthur" from being a complete drag."