Moody Millennial Becomes Monarch in the Middle Ages!

Rating: 6/10 (12 November 2019)

As a sometime musician, I find it interesting that while a modern musician would be loath to change a single note from any of Bach's or Mozart's compositions, today's screenwriters have no problem rewriting Shakespeare so as to not only change the play, but to make it the opposite of what Shakespeare intended.
Watching this I had mixed feelings. It is a well made production, the cast are generally good, the battle scenes are well done. The problem for me was the premise; if you want to rewrite Shakespeare you better be an extraordinary writer, or it will not work. One of the most important things for any movie is the ability for the audience to suspend disbelief and to maintain that suspension for the whole movie. It becomes a serious problem when the audience starts asking questions like "Wait, he's an anti-war millennial but out of the blue says kill all prisoners". Where did that come from? Or he's a King who just conquered France, but then gets lectured to by the French princess and he just stands there looking like a lost puppy. It just doesn't make sense.
It occurred to me that this movie isn't supposed to make sense, it's only supposed to tick the boxes for the woke millennial college student who fantasises what it would be like to be a King in the middle ages. It would be a great opportunity to show medieval neanderthals concepts like being against war and listening to princesses. The woke millennial fantasises that he can kill real warriors in single combat but he'd rather be sitting in a dark corner being moody. He looks moodily at the deplorables around him and wishes the middle ages would end already.
I don't know too much about the real King Henry V, but for me to suspend disbelief I would have to go along with the idea that a modern woke millennial can mood his way through being a King in the middle ages, to be a pacifist and sensitive guy who reluctantly kills because he's forced to. Such a King would have been regarded as a pathetic weakling and Henry's own father usurped just such a King. As I said, I don't know too much about King Henry, but I know he wasn't this guy. So my suspension of disbelief failed, which is disastrous for any movie. I think this kind of rewriting of history to suit modern sensitivities could work, but it requires writing and directing with much more skill and subtlety than shown here.