The Last Legion (2007)

King Arthur's legend had to begin somewhere, perhaps with a boy and a handful of loyal soldiers who refused to give up. Doug Lefler's "The Last Legion," produced by Dino De Laurentiis and based on Valerio Massimo Manfredi's novel, imagines the fall of Rome as the origin of King Arthur's legendary sword, Excalibur. In 476 A.D., as Gothic invaders overrun the crumbling Roman Empire, the 12-year-old emperor Romulus Augustus (Thomas Brodie-Sangster) is crowned, only to see his parents killed and the city seized on the very day of his coronation. He is imprisoned on the island of Capri, where he discovers an ancient sword once belonging to Julius Caesar. A loyal commander, Aurelius (Colin Firth), teams up with the boy's wise tutor, Ambrosinus (Ben Kingsley), a mysterious mystic from Britain, and a skilled warrior from the East, Mira (Aishwarya Rai), to rescue the young emperor. Together they flee to Britain in search of the last loyal legion, the Ninth, stationed near Hadrian's Wall. Pursued by the brutal Goth commander Wulfila (Kevin McKidd), they must also face a tyrannical warlord in Britain. It's an action-packed tale told with big battles and sweeping visuals, and the twist that connects Romulus, Ambrosinus and the sword to Camelot rewards fans of Arthurian legend.