A Medieval Action Movie With Heath Ledger Should Be Your Next Hulu Watch

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Heath Ledger is best known for playing the Joker in "The Dark Knight," and among us more romantic types he's known as the guy from "10 Things I Hate About You" and "Brokeback Mountain." But the true Ledger fans know his actual best role came in 2001 with "A Knight's Tale," a movie about a peasant squire named William Thatcher (Ledger) who lies about being of noble birth to compete in a jousting competition.

The movie was loosely based on "The Knight's Tale" from the medieval short story collection "The Canterbury Tales," although its main claim to fame is its deliberately anachronistic style. While most historical dramas will limit itself to background music that could only have been composed at the time the story was set — like how "Mad Men" would exclusively use music popular in the '60s for its closing credits — "A Knight's Tale" was constantly blasting songs from the present day. 

The soundtrack includes hits from AC/DC, Queen, Robbie Williams, David Bowie, and more. Some found it a little jarring for a movie set in the 1300s to be blasting songs from the '80s and '90s, but others found that it added a fun energetic edge to what could've been a fairly standard, old-fashioned story. 

Today the movie has a 59% positive score on Rotten Tomatoes, which is tragically 1% short of a fresh rating. As the critics' consensus on the site reads, "Once you get past the anachronism, 'A Knight's Tale' becomes a predictable, if spirited, Rocky on horseback." But although the critics didn't unanimously praise the movie, general audiences were on board with it. The movie has a 79% positive audience score on RT, and is still fairly well-loved today. It's currently streaming on Hulu, as well as available to rent on Amazon Video.

In a 2001 interview with Cinema.com, Ledger explained how director Brian Helgeland wanted the cast to become good friends, so they were basically ordered to go out and have fun together in Prague. As Ledger put it, "We just spent a month drinking together. So rehearsals were just drinking and getting to know each other. ... Brian just wanted us to get there and become friends and create something that glued us all together on screen — and we did, instantly. We all bonded and hopefully it comes over on screen." 

"A Knight's Tale" was not a major financial success, but it certainly wasn't a failure either; it earned $117.5 million at the box office against a budget of $65 million, and then earned a lot more with DVD sales. It did well enough that a direct-to-Netflix sequel was almost greenlit in the 2010s, but alas the almighty Netflix algorithm decided it wasn't worth the risk and killed the project. 

But who knows: if enough people keep watching it on streaming, maybe the algorithms will give that sequel idea a second look. It wouldn't be the same without Ledger of course, but it sounded like Helgeland had a neat idea to respectfully continue the series without him. As he explained to Inverse in 2024, the story would've focused on Thatcher's daughter:

"William had passed away during a war. However, William has a teenage daughter who wants to joust, but she's not allowed to because she's a woman. She tracks down the gang and they agree to teach her how to joust, but she has to hide who she is. They cut her hair short and she speaks with a deep voice, et cetera."