A Knight's Tale

William Thatcher, a knight's peasant apprentice, gets a chance at glory when the knight dies suddenly mid-tournament. Posing as a knight himself, William won't stop until he's crowned tournament champion—assuming matters of the heart don't get in the way.

Critics in 2001 were split on whether the film's gleeful anachronism — Queen at a medieval joust, modern rock anthems scoring tournament sequences — was inventive fun or a gimmick papering over a formulaic underdog story. Most agreed the plot hits every expected beat, but audiences warmed to it far more than critics did, and the film has only grown in popular affection over time. Paul Bettany's scene-stealing turn as Geoffrey Chaucer was one of the few things nearly everyone agreed on.