The Fourth Musketeer (2022)

The Fourth Musketeer is a low-budget British independent production that adapts the broad shape of d'Artagnan's origin story while working within real constraints on scale, action choreography, and runtime that separate it sharply from the major studio versions covered elsewhere on this site. It's worth including here precisely because comparing a modest, resource-limited adaptation to the novel highlights just how much production scale shapes what an adaptation can actually deliver of Dumas's material.

A Framing Device Not in the Novel

The film's structure, an elderly d'Artagnan narrating his youthful adventures to a young would-be successor named Philippe, has no equivalent in Dumas's novel, which is told through a more conventional close third-person narration rather than a frame story. This retrospective structure is a common low-budget filmmaking technique, allowing exposition-heavy narration to substitute for expensive action sequences, but it does change the novel's forward-moving, present-tense urgency into something more reflective and distanced.

Minimal Swordplay, a Significant Departure in Emphasis

Multiple contemporary reviews specifically criticize the film for containing very little actual sword fighting, by some accounts only a few minutes across the entire runtime, despite dueling being central to both the novel's plot mechanics and its thematic interest in honor, skill, and reputation. The novel's own opening chapters are built around a rapid sequence of near-duels that establish the four friends' mutual respect through combat; a film adaptation that minimizes this core element is working with a significantly reduced version of what makes the source material function as adventure fiction.

The Basic Plot Skeleton Remains Recognizable

Despite its budget limitations, the film does retain the recognizable shape of the novel's opening: d'Artagnan's journey from Gascony at his father's urging, his arrival in Paris, his introduction to the three musketeers, and conflict with Cardinal Richelieu's guardsmen. It doesn't attempt the novel's fuller political intrigue involving Queen Anne, Buckingham, and the diamond studs, focusing instead on a more contained origin story limited to d'Artagnan's initial integration into the musketeers' world.

A Useful Contrast Case

Watching this film alongside the lavish 2023 French production or even the modestly budgeted 1948 MGM version makes clear how much of what audiences associate with "a good Three Musketeers adaptation" (elaborate costuming, choreographed action, a full ensemble supporting cast, real historical texture) depends on resources this particular production simply didn't have access to. That's not necessarily a moral failing of the filmmakers, but it does mean the novel's richer political intrigue and larger cast of court figures have no real equivalent here, reduced instead to a much smaller, more intimate (and, per most contemporary reviews, less successful) coming-of-age story.

An Illustration of How Cheaply the Story Can Be Told

Because The Three Musketeers exists in the public domain and has accumulated nearly two centuries of cultural familiarity, it remains an attractive property for low-budget independent productions specifically because audiences arrive already knowing the broad shape of the story, reducing the amount of narrative setup a smaller film needs to accomplish. This production is a clear example of that dynamic in practice: a recognizable premise doing much of the storytelling work that a bigger budget would otherwise need to supply through spectacle.

Read the full, considerably richer source material at The Three Musketeers.