Do you think the success and popularity of Monty Python and the Holy Grail has made it more difficult to make a serious adaptation of the Arthurian Legends? How would you go about retelling the story of King Arthur in a world where the first thing audiences are likely to think of when the Lady of the Lake is mentioned is “strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government,” for example?

Not really, no. If anything I think the problem is that retellings have tried to go too serious, mounting any number of “gritty and realistic” efforts (the Guy Ritchie one sort of counts, but the 2004 Antoine Fuqua production was a real offender on that score) similar to how they’ve tried to tack with Robin Hood movies. 

Gritty realism is not what’s interesting about the Arthurian cycle: rather, I’d argue it’s the surreal, dreamlike mysticism, where monsters anf fairies and witches and wizards abound and where barely-disguised pagan deities lurk in the woods, and the hothouse melodrama of Lancelot and Guinevere, Tristram and Iseult, Gawain and Ragnelle, are what make it click. 

That’s why, IMO, John Boorman’s Excalibur is still the best film adaptation, even after 37 years.