The Green Knight — news, coverage & facts — IJR

Plot

Gawain is awakened on Christmas morning in a brothel by his lover, a commoner woman named Essel. He returns to Camelot, following a scolding by his mother Morgan le Fay.

Gawain attends a feast at the Round Table with his uncle the Lord, who invites Gawain to his side. In a tower, le Fay performs a magic rite which summons the mysterious Green Knight who barges into the court as Merlin gives the Lord a look. He states that any knight able to land a blow on him will win his green axe, but must travel to the Green Chapel the following Christmas and receive an equal blow in return. Gawain takes up the challenge. The Knight yields and Gawain, wielding Excalibur, decapitates him. The Knight rises and lifts his severed head, reminds Gawain of the bargain and leaves.

After a year reveling, the Lord reminds Gawain to uphold his end of the challenge. Gawain departs on horseback for the Green Chapel, taking the green axe and a green girdle made by his mother, who claims that no harm will come to him so long as he wears it.

During his journey, Gawain meets a boy scavenging a battlefield littered with dead warriors. The boy directs Gawain to a stream that will lead him to the Green Chapel. He asks for payment and Gawain gives him a single coin. Shortly afterwards, the boy and two others ambush Gawain and steal the axe, girdle and horse, leaving him tied up. Gawain scrambles to his sword and uses it to cut the ropes binding his hands and pursues them.

By nightfall, Gawain arrives at an abandoned cottage and falls asleep in the bed. He is awakened by the ghost of a young woman named Saint Winifred, who asks Gawain to retrieve her head from a nearby spring. He asks what he will receive in return but is rebuffed. He reunites her skull with her skeletal remains and the next morning finds the axe has been returned to him.

Gawain befriends a red fox who accompanies him on his journey where they see some giants. He reaches a castle inhabited by a Lord who informs him that the Green Chapel is nearby, and Gawain accepts his invitation to stay.

The Lord's lady, who resembles Essel, makes seductive overtures towards Gawain. The Lord proposes they exchange what he obtains while hunting with whatever Gawain finds at the castle. The next morning, the Lady presents Gawain with the green girdle, which she claims to have made herself. Gawain accedes to her advances in exchange for it. Gawain flees and encounters the Lord in the forest. The Lord kisses Gawain in return for his Lady's actions, but Gawain does not give him the girdle. The Lord reveals that he has captured Gawain's fox and releases it.

Gawain reaches a stream where a boat is waiting. The fox speaks, imploring Gawain to abandon the quest. Gawain takes the boat to the chapel, where the Knight is seated in hibernation. Gawain waits through the night, and the Green Knight awakens on Christmas morning. As the Knight swings the axe Gawain flinches. The Knight chides him. Gawain kneels for the blow again but at the last moment scrambles away while apologizing on the way out. He finds his horse outside the chapel and rides back home.

Gawain flees back to Camelot. Gawain is knighted and becomes king after the Lord's death. In his reverie, Essel bears his son, but Gawain abandons her, taking the child and marrying a noblewoman instead. His son comes of age and dies in battle. Many years later, Gawain has become a reviled king. With his castle under siege and his wife, daughter, and mother abandoning him, he removes the green girdle, and his head falls from his shoulders.

It is revealed that all that was just a vision. The kneeling Gawain removes the girdle, telling the Knight he is ready. The Knight praises Gawain for his bravery, drags his finger across Gawain's throat and points past him, stating "Now, off with your head". He smiles kindly.

Production

It was announced in November 2018 that David Lowery would direct and write a modern retelling of the 14th-century tale Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, with A24, Ley Line Entertainment, and Bron Studios set to finance.

In March 2019, Dev Patel was announced to be in negotiations to star in the film. That month, Barry Keoghan and Ralph Ineson joined the cast. In April 2019, it was announced Alicia Vikander and Erin Kellyman had been cast.

Principal photography began in Ireland in March 2019. Ardmore Studios and Cahir Castle, County Tipperary, were used as filming locations, as was Charleville Castle in Tullamore, County Offaly.

Weta Digital created the visual effects.

Lowery was inspired by fantasy films of the 1980s such as Willow and Excalibur. Initially, while writing the script, Lowery did not intend for Morgan le Fay to be Gawain's mother, but felt that altering the story this way allowed for her to be more naturally introduced into the narrative. Lowery stated that the intercut scenes of le Fay casting the spell that summons the Green Knight were not part of the original screenplay. However, Lowery was impressed with actress Sarita Choudhury's work with the character and the scene was written and storyboarded to be included in the Round Table scene. Lowery spent well over a year editing the scene together. The decision to design le Fay's spell in the form of a handwritten letter was also due to Lowery's fondness for letter writing, found in his other works as well.

The inclusion of Saint Winifred was inspired by the mention of the Holy Head (Holywell) in the original poem.

The highway robbery is an allusion to the 1975 film Barry Lyndon, while the battlefield where Gawain first encounters the robber is inspired by the Battle of Badon. While Gawain's ultimate fate is left ambiguous at the end of the film, Lowery originally shot a more "explicit" and "definitive" ending, but felt that it would affect audiences' feelings coming away from the film.

Set designs, such as the scene at the Round Table, included hand painted matte paintings to extend the set, a technique Lowery favored from films in the '80s and '90s. Time constraints with shooting forced cinematographer Andrew Droz Palermo and production designer Jade Healy to plan how lighting would be built into the Round Table scene ahead of time.

Costume designer Malgosia Turzanska drew upon South American designs when designing the crowns worn by the Lord and Guinevere. Lowery also felt the designs reinforced the "saintly" status of Arthur and Guinevere as representations of Western Christianity. The decorative plaques on Arthur's cloak referenced the creative team's various interpretations of King Arthur, and included references to Lowery's other works, such as A Ghost Story. Turzanska also designed the golden cape worn by Gawain to represent the character's golden mantle from the original poem.

No digital visual effects were used in creating the Green Knight during the Round Table scene. Lowery preferred this in order to give the character presence on set. Actor Ralph Ineson wore wood-like prosthetics designed by Barry Gower. Scenes involving the horse alternated with a false mount that was wheeled around with a dolly, after the initial horse used for the scenes would not cooperate with Ineson. Lowery stated that the crew used practical effects to make the Green Knight appear larger, such as mounting Ineson on platforms. Digital effects were later used during the Green Knight's hibernation scene, including subtly transforming the knight's face into that of the other cast members. Speaking about the subtle humor and lightness incorporated into the otherwise dark script, Lowery stated that near the end of the film, he directed Ineson to portray the Green Knight as Santa Claus.

Another major influence on the film was Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992) by Francis Ford Coppola, according to Lowery this was one of his all-time favorite films, and the use of practical effects, dissolves and old-fashioned cinema tricks never ceased to inspire him, and he paid deliberate homage to its magic when St. Winifred first approaches Gawain in her cottage.

Critical response

On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 89% based on 331 reviews, with an average rating of 8/10. The site's critics consensus reads, "The Green Knight honors and deconstructs its source material in equal measure, producing an absorbing adventure that casts a fantastical spell." Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 85 out of 100 based on 56 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C+" on an A+ to F scale.

Writing for Vulture, Alison Willmore said that the film "is about someone who keeps waiting for external forces to turn him into the gallant, heroic figure he believes he should be", and added: "at the film's heart is a lesson that's as timeless as any legend — travel as far as you like, but you'll never be able to leave yourself behind." Brian Tallerico of RogerEbert.com gave the film a score of 4 out of 4 stars, describing the film as "one of the most memorable films of the year, a fascinating swirl of masculinity, temptation, heroism, and religion", adding: "It's a film that embeds the concept of storytelling and performance into its narrative ... while also weaving its own enchanting spell on audiences." Barry Hertz of The Globe and Mail described the film as "a beautiful, haunting and enigmatic work that reckons with the folklore's grave and tragic elements to deliver a masterpiece of blood, sex and magic", and praised Patel's performance as Gawain.

John Nugent of Empire gave the film a score of 5 out of 5 stars, describing it as "a rivetingly weird and exceptionally beautiful fantasy film that offers no easy answers but ponders the biggest questions", and wrote that the film was "Revisionist Fantasy, doing for the genre what the likes of Robert Altman or Alejandro Jodorowsky did with their Revisionist Westerns: bringing an avant-garde flair and an ambiguous morality to a previously occasionally cheesy and childlike world."

Keith Watson of Slant Magazine gave the film a score of 2.5 out of 4 stars, describing it as "a self-consciously revisionist take on Camelot lore", and wrote that the film "smooths out the enduring mysteries, opaque psychology, and narrative idiosyncrasies of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, resulting in a work that's only superficially more daring and enigmatic than its source material." Simon Abrams of TheWrap wrote that "while there's a lot of commendable chutzpah and curious longing baked into The Green Knight, the movie's never as compelling as it is unusual."

In December 2024, Collider ranked the film at number 2 on its list of the "10 Best Fantasy Movies of the 2020s," with Robert Lee III writing "David Lowery has always succeeded in this type of somber, yet undeniably large-scale filmmaking, with The Green Knight easily being the director's magnum opus." In June 2025, IndieWire ranked the film at number 45 on its list of "The 100 Best Movies of the 2020s (So Far)."

The Green Knight

Comments

The Green Knight

Trailer

Where to watch

Family guide

Cast & crew

Comments

The Green Knight across IJR

Article

Family guide

Cast & crew

Article

Plot

Cast

Production

Themes

Integrity and character

Familial relationships

Women

Nature

Release

Home media

Reception

Box office

Critical response

Trailer

Where to watch

The Green Knight across IJR