Kingdom of Heaven
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Short description
Set during the Crusades of the twelfth century, Kingdom of Heaven follows Balian, a blacksmith in France who learns that the knight Godfrey of Ibelin is his father. After personal tragedy leaves him with little to hold him to his homeland, Balian travels to Jerusalem with Godfrey's company and is knighted before his father dies of wounds. In the Holy Land he becomes a servant of the ailing King Baldwin IV and is drawn into the rivalries at court, where some factions push for war with Saladin's forces and others strive to preserve a fragile peace.
Ridley Scott directed the film, his fifteenth in chronological order, between Matchstick Men and a director's cut of this same title, from a screenplay by William Monahan; Scott also produced. Orlando Bloom plays Balian, with Eva Green as Sibylla, Jeremy Irons as Tiberias, David Thewlis as the Hospitaler, Ghassan Massoud as Saladin and Liam Neeson as Godfrey. The production involved 41 credited cast members, 220 credited crew, and four countries, and cost about 130 million US dollars, returning roughly 218 million worldwide.
On IMDb it holds 7.3/10 from 351,000 votes, and on TMDB 7.1/10 from 5,245 votes, while the critics' rating stands at 5.9/10 from 190 reviews, lower than the audience scores. The film runs 144 minutes.
What's left behind the scenes
- Specifically for the filming, Orlando Bloom gained an extra 9 kg of weight. During the work on the film, Orlando caught a cold and was ill for about a month. The unfortunate actor also suffered a serious hand injury while filming the battle scenes.
- In reality, Baldwin, the leper king, died in 1185 at the age of 24, a year before the events of the film began to unfold.
- The film's screenplay consists of 260 pages. This volume is approximately twice the average Hollywood screenplay.
- Approximately 14,000 costumes were sewn for the filming of the picture. Chainmail was produced in China, and clothing was sewn in Thailand and Turkey.
- Three siege towers were built, each weighing 17 tons. And 4 catapults were also constructed.
- Around 800 visual effects were used in the film (for comparison: the movie “Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith” (2005) had about 2200).
- With the permission of the King of Morocco – Mohammed VI – filmmakers hired approximately one and a half thousand Moroccan soldiers as extras.
- In the film, Saladin’s army attacks only one part of the wall of Jerusalem. However, in reality, Saladin’s troops first besieged the northwest and then the north side.
- All scenes featuring Edward Norton were filmed in two weeks.
- William Monahan borrowed many ideas and metaphors for "Kingdom of Heaven" from his unproduced screenplay "Tripoli".
- January 12, 2004 – official start of filming.
- Initially, Edward Norton was offered the role of René de Châtillon, but he declined, preferring to play King Baldwin. As the king wears a mask, Edward requested that his name be removed from the final credits. However, his name was still included in the final credits, but only with the film's release on video and DVD.
- For filming Kerak, slightly rebuilt Jerusalem sets were used, which saved approximately $5 million.
- From the very beginning of the project's development, the studio positioned it as a historical adventure film, not a historical epic. Therefore, when studio executives saw the initial version of the film, they considered it too long and demanded that Ridley Scott reduce the film to two hours and twenty minutes. Ultimately, the studio's calculation did not pay off: the film grossed $211 million at the box office, which was considered a failure. In 2006, a special edition of the film was released on DVD, which included the original version of the film, titled the director's cut.
- Several shots for the shipwreck scene were taken from Ridley Scott's film 'White Squall' (1996).
- The runtime of the director's cut is 189 minutes.
- During the final day of the siege of Jerusalem, a burning siege tower can be seen, which unfortunately caught fire during filming.
- Initially, Hans Zimmer was supposed to compose the music for the film, but was replaced by Harry Gregson-Williams. Notably, a couple of weeks later, Gregson-Williams was replaced by Zimmer to compose the music for "Madagascar" (2005).
- The Wilhelm scream sounds when the first catapult projectile hits the siege tower of Saladin’s army.
- The composition Vide Cor Meum – an aria set to words from Dante Alighieri's "La Vita Nuova" – plays during the scene of King Baldwin's funeral, and was written by Patrick Cassidy in collaboration with Hans Zimmer for one of Ridley Scott’s earlier films, "Hannibal" (2001).
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