The movie starts out with a really horrible painfully over-obvious voiceover thing. It’s horribly bad. But then it gets into the movie proper, and it’s slightly less horrible. It is insanely bound by genre convention, though. For instance, when the ninja knight goes to attack the evil Southern Saxon, you immediately know that the ninja knight will die. Because he’s not on the same narrative level as the main evil guy, and even though he’s been portrayed as an unstoppable ninja knight for the whole movie, narrative logic trumps skill — and narrative logic demands that a) Arthur kill the bad guy, but b) only after it’s been thoroughly established that he’s really fucking tough, by means of his killing (e.g.) a bad-ass ninja knight.

So anyway, I hope that didn’t ruin the plot for you.

Also: I have real doubts about the universal desirability of “FREEDOM!”, you know? Like, probably people at various points in history were interested in something other than motherfucking freedom, now and again. Glory? Honor? Duty? Religion? Patriotism? Ethnic hatred (okay, probably not okay for a hero)? But no, always motherfucking freedom. At least the writers of Troy had the decency to have people motivated by the desire to get a good bit about them in The Iliad.