If the above trailer is anything to go by, The Northman looks like the times it portrays—tough, harsh and unforgiving, yet one bound by family bonds and purpose—even if that purpose is one fueled by vengeance. And yep, those Vikings were pretty brutal.
To watch the trailer just click the play button at the left of the feature image above.
Alexander Skarsgård plays the lead character Amleth, a Norse prince out to revenge his slain father played by Ethan Hawke. Skarsgård’s character is also out to rescue his abducted mother played by Nicole Kidman.
Director Robert Eggers has likened the films’ plot to that of Shakespeare’s Hamlet with some also alluding to Disney’s The Lion King (itself a borrower of Shakespeare).
“It is definitely Viking Hamlet. Or as one studio executive said, ‘I love this Viking version of The Lion King,’” Eggers told IGN.
Also, among the cast are Claes Bang playing bad guy Fjolnir, Anya Taylor-Joy as Olga, Björk acting as a seeress, while Willem Dafoe plays Heimer the Fool.
As evident by the trailer, Eggers, has gone for some impressive world-building while not forsaking his arthouse credentials — i.e this is the guy who directed The Witch and The Lighthouse.
For history buffs, he outlines the locations where the film takes place.
“We start the film as a lot of sagas start in the Viking diaspora, sort of like in some islands north of Scotland,” Eggers told IGN. “And then we travel east and finally spend most of the movie in Iceland.”
In his bid for authenticity, he and collaborators researched the hell out of the Viking era.
“We did a ton of research. And I was working with the finest Viking historians and archaeologists, and people who are part of the experimental archaeology and living history community, to try to figure out what this Viking world from 1,000 years ago would be like,” Eggers said.
“I think there’s a lot of things that we know about the different Vikings, like in the Celtic world, Vikings in Iceland, Vikings in Norway, Vikings in Sweden, Vikings in what’s now Ukraine.”
