And the vampires were trying to destroy the Holy Grail, but the Knights were all like, “Fuck that noise! We need that shit to save Professor Henry Jones in the future!” That’d be awesome, right?

It’s certainly the type of middle-school nonsense that’d appeal to Timur Bekmambetov, who, before he migrated to Hollywood to curve bullets for Universal, was making ludicrous fantasy flicks like Night Watch and Day Watch back in Russia. Now that he’s impressed his studio overlords with Wanted, I guess he’s free to blow their money on un-subtitled (and very unsubtle) apocalyptic horror/adventure that looks like an Iron Maiden album cover come to life. This, I suppose, is progress.

Obviously, I’m not Bekmambetov’s biggest fan, but he’s definitely more skilled than most of the hacks who’d get assigned this crap back in the 80s. There’s room for a shameless self-promoter like Bekmambetov. And I’m going to keep writing “Bekmambetov” until I no longer have to flip back-and-forth from IMDb to correctly spell his name.

The unheralded writing duo of Adam Torchia and Justin Stanley hammered out the script for The Knights Templar. Torchia has no prior credits, but Stanley sure does. He wrote Beneath Lock Ness, which has one of the best IMDb plot summaries I’ve ever read: “The legendary Loch Ness Monster terrorizes a lake in Scotland, and Patrick Bergin comes out to kill it.” I realize Bergin probably doesn’t play himself as an Ahab-like hunter of mythical creatures, but wouldn’t the world be a better place if such movies existed?