Movies: "Elizabeth: The Golden Age"

Elizabeth the first, part two. Part one was "Elizabeth" (1998), same director, same lead actress, earlier period of time.

This time we have Clive Owen as Sir Walter Raleigh and Abbie Cornish as Elizabeth "Bess" Throckmorton.

Set in 1585, the movie has a definite pro-Protestant England and anti-Catholic Spain tilt. We have the Inquisition going full bore in Spain under Philip II. We have intrigue, Papist plots within plots, Mary, Queen of Scots, and medieval torture.

All of which is designed to give Philip an excuse to declare war on England, never mind that he has been building his Armada for years.

The battle with the Spanish Armada is given more screen time, more ships and more accuracy than I would have expected from a film which is mostly about the interior goings-on at court. The way I remembered the story of this battle was that the Spanish Armada was devastated by a fearsome storm that sank most of their ships. Given the storm was given short shrift in the movie, I had to go check and found that although there was a storm and it did destroy many of the Spanish ships, it was not the deciding issue. The fireships in the movie did play an important role in thwarting Philip's planned invasion of England.