In a recent In the interview, director Robert Eggers reflected on his experience directing his first potential blockbuster. Northernerpresent, is, he said, “literally an epic“In that it adapts an Icelandic revenge story, and in that it costs more than $70 million. This budget allowed him to enjoy cinematic luxuries: The studio built him all three villages and countless viking ships. Eggers’ last movie, Lighthousepart cost of Northernerits budget and wouldn’t lose much power if he staged it all in one room.
However, Eggers also admits that, if he had been offered another job, he could have completed a mid-sized project between the film “two boys in the lighthouse” and the viking film. his large tissue. Northerner have a budget equivalent to Morbius’ which means inevitably, the industry will be watching to see if a giant action-adventure movie without comic book heroes can make some money. On the studio side, this fact, coupled with Eggers’ previous release of having a healthy dose of tentacle masturbation in the art house, meant that the film garnered a lot of marketing hype compared to much older successes in its genre. Posters (when they were actually the name of the movie) has been embellished with “this generation Fighter“; in one New Yorkers interview, Eggers invited Brave Heart. The general feeling, he said, is that if it weren’t for either of these movies, then “we’re damned.”
The ages of these two comparisons are being revealed. Fighter, the most recent, came out 22 years ago, and both predate the current superhero franchise boom. Eggers has acknowledged the layout of the modern film setting, admitting that, as a child, he was interested in comic book characters, but the medieval world and “sea creatures and satyrs and the wild people and the devil have been astounded to shame, in my eyes.” Thus, Northerner, then, bloodier than Thor, an arcade movie that was likely to reach cult classic status before it hit the box office. It’s on track to bring in $8 million to $12 million this weekend, and while that’s not a hit, it’s on the lower end, like, Spiderman Opening weekend. It is also a pity. Eggers’ film is bold in form and rich in visuals and deserves a wide audience.
Northerner begins with a volcanic eruption. A blond boy looks out from his island kingdom, grinning. He can see his father, the king, played by Ethan Hawke, returning with his uncle Fjolnir (Claes Bang). However, the king is wounded and informs his queen (Nicole Kidman) that the time has come for young Amleth to become a man, a ritual that sees the king and his son crawl through a tunnel filled with mud into a temple cave, howling like dogs, while Willem Dafoe chased them, torches burning in his sunken eyes. Afterwards, they went for a walk in the woods, the perfect spot for Fjolnir to do a fratricidal episode. Amleth slashed the guard’s arrow and escaped, sailing to safety, while chanting “I will avenge your father; I will save your mother; I will kill you Fjolnir!”
Decades passed and Amleth was a grown man, an irrationally torn Berserker who howled at the moon and bit the throats of his enemies. Northerner based on the Viking tale of Amleth, an Icelandic folk tale; Shakespeare painted on the 13th century version recorded in History of the Danesbecause the Hamlet. But unlike the prince of Denmark, Amleth is a psychotic monster, watching his countrymen burn children alive. After hearing that the slaves they captured would be sold to his uncle, he marked himself with a branded iron, transformed himself into a human, and eloped with Olga, a witch. played by Anya Taylor-Joy.
Eggers’ style is to mix horror with history. Accuracy isn’t a must for historical films, he said, but it does provide a useful structure for the stories he wants to tell. His first film, Witch, priced at $4 million, is about a family in 17th-century New England who leave the safety of their village after a religious dispute. Their new home is, to be sure, perched on the perimeter of a grotesquely dark wooded area. According to Eggers, witches are women who do not conform to society’s expectations of them, religiously or otherwise. This rebellion turns them, in the accusers’ imagination, into child-stealing satans. The film’s clever twist is to take this transformation literally: at the end of the film, naive Thomasin, played by Taylor-Joy, has no choice but to accept being a witch, a semi-spirit his soul for survival and “taste of butter.”
