The film is loosely based on the 1844 novel The Three Musketeers (Les Trois Mousquetaires) by Alexandre Dumas. It recounts the adventures of d'Artagnan on his quest to join the three title characters in becoming a musketeer. However, this adaptation simplifies and alters the story.
Plot
In 1625, young-but-skilled fencer d'Artagnan sets off for Paris, France in hopes to follow in his murdered father's footsteps and become a member of the musketeers: the personal guard of the King of France. He is pursued by Gérard and his brothers, accused of blemishing their sister's honor. Meanwhile, Captain Rochefort of the Cardinal's Guards disbands the musketeers per the orders of Cardinal Richelieu, the King's Minister, ostensibly to help fight in an impending war with England. Rochefort informs Richelieu that three musketeers refused to relinquish their duties: Athos, Porthos, and Aramis.
In Paris, d'Artagnan "rescues" the queen's handmaidens from their own bodyguards, and after a scolding, takes a liking to one, Constance. In the city d'Artagnan encounters each of the Three Musketeers separately, unaware of their identities or association, resulting in a separate duel arranged with each. At the arranged location, Athos, Porthos and Aramis reveal themselves as musketeers. Before they can duel, a Captain of the Cardinal's Guard arrives with four other guards to arrest the musketeers; although d'Artagnan is not sought by the guards, he allies with the musketeers during the skirmish. The Musketeers kill four guards, while d'Artagnan outduels the Captain, who falls to his death. Impressed but displeased at d'Artagnan's involvement, the musketeers leave d'Artagnan behind after encouraging him to flee and maintain his innocence. When more of the Cardinal's Guards arrive, d'Artagnan is captured.
D'Artagnan escapes his cell and eavesdrops on a conversation between Richelieu and the mysterious Milady de Winter, where the Cardinal plots to supplant the King, tasking Milady with delivering a secret treaty to England's Duke of Buckingham. D'Artagnan is caught by Rochefort without having seen Milady's face. Richelieu orders him executed for refusing to give up the musketeers' location, but he is saved by the musketeers. As they flee, d'Artagnan reveals Richelieu's plans; they decide to intercept the spy at Calais and retrieve the treaty to prove Richelieu's guilt.
During a skirmish, the party splits up; d'Artagnan rides ahead to Calais, but passes out from exhaustion and is found by Milady de Winter. He wakes in a bed stripped of his weapons and clothes as Milady tries to seduce him. d'Artagnan speaks openly of his plans, not knowing she is the spy. She attempts to kill him, but he convinces her to keep him alive. As her party boards the boat to England, they are confronted by the musketeers. Milady attempts to run away but is stopped by Athos, who is revealed to have been her first husband, but betrayed her to the authorities when he found out she was branded a murderer. The musketeers retrieve the treaty and Milady is sentenced to death for the murder of her second husband, Lord de Winter; just before she is executed, Athos begs her forgiveness. Moved, she reveals the Cardinal's plans to assassinate the king at his birthday celebration, then throws herself off a cliff to her death.
Athos, Porthos and Aramis send missives to rally the rest of the musketeers. Richelieu and Rochefort hired a sharpshooter; during the assembly, d'Artagnan interrupts the sniper's shot, which narrowly misses the king. The musketeers reveal themselves, and Richelieu blames them for the attempted assassination.
As the three face off with the Cardinal's guards, men rush to their aid and reveal themselves as musketeers. The two forces battle as Richelieu takes the king and queen hostage, shooting Aramis in the chest before fleeing to the dungeon with Athos and Porthos in pursuit. d'Artagnan duels Rochefort and is disarmed; as Rochefort gloats about having killed d'Artagnan's father, Constance retrieves and throws him his sword and d'Artagnan promptly kills Rochefort.
Athos and Porthos arrive just as Richelieu's boat leaves on an underground river, with Richelieu vowing to return. The boatman then reveals himself as Aramis, his crucifix having stopped the bullet. Aramis moves to apprehend the Cardinal, but King Louis punches Richelieu himself, knocking him into the river.
The musketeers are reinstated by the king, and d'Artagnan is offered anything he wants; he chooses to serve Louis as a musketeer. Outside the musketeer headquarters, Gérard and his brothers arrive and challenge d'Artagnan to a duel; Porthos reminds him that musketeers not only protect King and country, but also each other. Gérard and his brothers are then chased off by the entire musketeer division.
Cast
Charlie Sheen as Aramis, one of the Three Musketeers, a God-fearing man and womanizer, a former student of the Cardinal
Kiefer Sutherland as Athos, one of the Three Musketeers, a former nobleman and the de facto leader of the trio
Chris O'Donnell as D'Artagnan, a young swordsman yearning to follow in his father's footsteps to become a Musketeer
Oliver Platt as Porthos, one of the Three Musketeers, an ex-thief and pirate who travelled to various places
Tim Curry as Cardinal Richelieu, a corrupt Cardinal running the Red Guards, seeking to depose of Louis XIII and rule in his stead
Rebecca De Mornay as Milady de Winter, Athos's first wife, branded with a fleur-de-lis, a seductress employed by Richelieu to seduce the Duke of Buckingham
Bob Anderson (Uncredited) as The King's Fencing Instructor
Production
In 1992 Walt Disney Pictures, Columbia Pictures, and TriStar Pictures simultaneously began development on three separate adaptations of The Three Musketeers. Disney purchased a screenplay for the film from David Loughery for $650,000 after he had already been hired to write the screenplay of the Columbia adaptation, and Columbia producer Brad Wyman accused Disney of stealing concepts which were its intellectual property. The matter was settled out of court, and the Columbia adaptation was cancelled. The TriStar adaptation was to be written by Joel Gross and directed by Jeremiah S. Chechik, and was to be more adult-oriented and faithful to Alexandre Dumas' original novel than the Disney version.[3]
Cinergi Pictures, the film's production studio, dropped the film because its chairman Andrew G. Vajna disapproved of Disney's casting choices. Jordan Kerner and Jon Avnet were briefly involved with the film but also quit in order to focus on When a Man Loves a Woman. Disney President David Haberman hired Caravan Pictures under Joe Roth and Roger Birnbaum to produce the film. Roth and Birnbaum had previously bid against both Columbia and Disney for Loughery's script while working at 20th Century Fox.[3]
Disney decided against shooting the film on-location in Paris because much of the city's French Baroque architecture had been destroyed in World War II. After initially settling on Barrandov Studios in Prague, the production moved to Vienna after the local government offered $2 million. Principal photography began on April 26, 1993, with a budget of $30 million. The Three Musketeers was mostly shot in Perchtoldsdorf, Austria, where De Mornay attended high school and college.[3]
The film was highly anticipated after Disney announced that its September 1993 test screenings for the film showed the most positive response it had ever received from an audience. However, after its release it received highly negative reviews from both critics and fans.[3]
On Rotten Tomatoes the film finds an approval rating of 30% based on 30 reviews, with an average rating of 4.8/10. The site's critics consensus reads: "Its starry trio of do-gooders may promise to fight 'one for all, all for one,' but this Three Musketeers is a slickly unmemorable update bound to satisfy very few."[5] At Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 43 out of 100, based on 24 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[6] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A−" on an A+ to F scale.[7]
Film critic Leonard Maltin christened this version Young Swords, as it reunited Sheen and Sutherland, both of Young Guns fame. Janet Maslin of The New York Times described the movie as "Conceived frankly as a product, complete with hit-to-be theme song over the closing credits, this adventure film cares less about storytelling than about keeping the Musketeers' feathered hats on straight whenever they go galloping."[8] Michael Wilmington of the Chicago Tribune wrote that "The new Walt Disney version of The Three Musketeers-plushly mounted, but ineptly written and cast-gallops along like a gargantuan tutti-frutti wagon running amok."[9]
Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly wrote that the film "is livelier than its obvious models, the Young Guns films, but as crowd pleasers go it’s plodding and synthetic, with little of the vitality or satirical dash that marked Richard Lester’s sophisticated slapstick version (made in 1974). The director, Stephen Herek, would have been smart to take more of his cues from Platt’s performance; on the few occasions when the film slips into brattish MTV knowingness, it at least has its own cheeky flavor. But neither Platt nor Sheen — the two comedians here — gets enough to do, and the movie turns into a sketchy, no-frills retread of the musketeer myth, as joyless a retro-swashbuckler as Kevin Costner’s Robin Hood. Despite Tim Curry’s dutiful mugging as the evil Cardinal Richelieu (by now, these 'scene-stealing; villains are every bit as predictable as the heroes they’re supposed to be upstaging), the castle-intrigue stuff is bland, and the swordplay is poorly filmed, with too much chop-chop editing and too many close-ups. We get the energy of battle without the dance."[10]
The film grossed $11.5 million in its opening weekend, placing it at number 1 at the US box office.[4] It went on to gross $53.9 million in the United States and Canada[11] and $57 million internationally for a worldwide total of $111 million.[12][13]
Soundtrack
Bryan Adams co-wrote "All for Love" with Robert John "Mutt" Lange and Michael Kamen for the movie's end credits, performing it with Rod Stewart and Sting. As Janet Maslin predicted, the song was a big hit (reaching No. 1 in North America and several other territories). Kamen also composed the movie's score,[14] conducting the Greater Los Angeles All Star Orchestra.
The Three Musketeers is a French historical adventure novel written in 1844 by French author Alexandre Dumas. As with some of his other works, he wrote it in collaboration with ghostwriter Auguste Maquet. It is in the swashbuckler genre, which has heroic, chivalrous swordsmen who fight for justice.
René d'Herblay, alias Aramis, is a fictional character in the novels The Three Musketeers (1844), Twenty Years After (1845), and The Vicomte de Bragelonne (1847–1850) by Alexandre Dumas, père. He and the other two musketeers, Athos and Porthos, are friends of the novels' protagonist, d'Artagnan.
Twenty Years After is a novel by Alexandre Dumas, first serialized from January to August 1845. A book of The d'Artagnan Romances, it is a sequel to The Three Musketeers (1844) and precedes the 1847–1850 novel The Vicomte de Bragelonne.
D'Artagnan and Three Musketeers is a three-part swashbuckler musical miniseries produced in the Soviet Union and first aired in 1978. It is based on the 1844 novel The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas, père.
The Three Musketeers (also known as The Three Musketeers (The Queen's Diamonds)) is a 1973 swashbuckler film based on the 1844 novel by Alexandre Dumas. It is directed by Richard Lester from a screenplay by George MacDonald Fraser, and produced by Ilya Salkind. It stars Michael York, Oliver Reed, Frank Finlay, and Richard Chamberlain as the titular musketeers, with Raquel Welch, Geraldine Chaplin, Jean-Pierre Cassel, Charlton Heston, Faye Dunaway, Christopher Lee, Simon Ward, Georges Wilson and Spike Milligan.
The Four Musketeers (also known as The Four Musketeers (The Revenge of Milady)) is a 1974 British swashbuckler film that serves as a sequel to the 1973 film The Three Musketeers, and covers the second half of Dumas' 1844 novel The Three Musketeers.
The Return of the Musketeers is a 1989 film adaptation loosely based on the novel Twenty Years After (1845) by Alexandre Dumas. It is the third Musketeers film directed by Richard Lester, following 1973's The Three Musketeers and 1974's The Four Musketeers. Like the other two films, the screenplay was written by George MacDonald Fraser.
The Three Musketeers Anime is a Japanese animated television series based on the d'Artagnan Romances written by Alexandre Dumas, that ran from October 1987 to February 1989.
The Three Musketeers is a 1948 film directed by George Sidney, written by Robert Ardrey, and starring Gene Kelly and Lana Turner. It is a Technicolor adventure film adaptation of the classic 1844 novel The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas.
The Three Musketeers is a musical with a book by William Anthony McGuire, lyrics by Clifford Grey and P. G. Wodehouse, and music by Rudolf Friml. It is based on the classic 1844 novel by Alexandre Dumas, père. Set in France and England in 1626, it recounts the adventures of a young man named d'Artagnan after he leaves home to become a Musketeer of the Guard. The three men of the title are his friends Athos, Porthos and Aramis.
The Three Musketeers is a 1986 Australian made-for-television animated adventure film from Burbank Films Australia. It is based on Alexandre Dumas's classic 1844 French novel, The Three Musketeers, and was adapted by Keith Dewhurst. It was produced by Tim Brooke-Hunt and featured original music by Sharon Calcraft.
3 Musketiers is a Dutch musical, also known as 3 Musketiere (German), 3 Musketeers (English) and A 3 Testőr (Hungarian) written by Ferdi Bolland and Rob Bolland. The story is based on Alexandre Dumas, père's 1844 novel The Three Musketeers. It premiered in Rotterdam in 2003 starring Bastiaan Ragas as d'Artagnan and Pia Douwes as Milady de Winter.
The Three Musketeers is a 1935 film directed by Rowland V. Lee and starring Walter Abel, Heather Angel, Ian Keith, Margot Grahame, and Paul Lukas. It is the first English-language talking picture version of Alexandre Dumas's 1844 novel The Three Musketeers.
The Three Musketeers is a 2011 period action-adventure film directed by Paul W. S. Anderson, and loosely based on Alexandre Dumas's 1844 novel of the same title. It stars Matthew Macfadyen, Logan Lerman, Ray Stevenson, Milla Jovovich, Luke Evans, Mads Mikkelsen, Orlando Bloom, and Christoph Waltz. The film is a loose retelling of the novel’s first half, with the addition of clockpunk aesthetics and elements.
The Three Musketeers is a 1961 film adaptation of the 1844 novel by Alexandre Dumas, père. It was released in two parts within the same year.
The Three Musketeers is a Russian historical adventure film based on the 1844 novel The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas, père. It was produced by The Production Center of Sergei Zhigunov.
The Three Musketeers is a Japanese puppet television show produced by NHK and broadcast by NHK Educational TV from 12 October 2009 to 28 May 2010. The show is written by Kōki Mitani and the puppets are designed by Bunta Inoue.
The Three Musketeers is a 1932 French historical adventure film directed by Henri Diamant-Berger and starring Aimé Simon-Girard, Henri Rollan and Thomy Bourdelle.The film is an adaptation of Alexandre Dumas's 1844 novel The Three Musketeers, and was the first version to be as a sound film. It was shot at the Epinay Studios of Eclair in Paris. The film's sets were designed by the art director Marc Lauer.
The Three Musketeers is a 1916 American silent adventure film directed by Charles Swickard and starring Orrin Johnson, Dorothy Dalton, and Louise Glaum. It is an adaptation of Alexandre Dumas' 1844 novel The Three Musketeers. Prints survive of this film, with one existing in the George Eastman House.
The Three Musketeers is a 1966 British TV series based on the 1844 novel The Three Musketeers. It was a serial on the BBC. The series was directed by Peter Hammond and produced by William Sterling.
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