The 13th Warrior

The 13^th Warrior is a movie that casts a shadow far out of proportion to its initial success. Released in 1999 after a troubled and expensive production, the film was one of the biggest flops that year and still remains one of the worst financial failures in movie history. However, it found a home on video, and an audience who still enjoy and talk about it to this day. Not a lot of movies remain relevant in any way after two decades, and even fewer that cratered so badly when they first emerged.

Originally to be called Eaters of the Dead, it was, of course, based on Micheal Crichton’s 1976 novel that mashed up the 10^th-century Ibn Fadlan manuscript with the myth of Beowulf to produce an interesting take on the legend and a rather rousing adventure story. There had been plans to film it as early as 1979, but it would be 20 years before the film reached theaters. There were even teaser trailers released still bearing the Eaters of the Dead title, though test screenings apparently put a stop to that.

The film was directed by John McTiernan, who was then riding pretty high on acclaim as an action director after starting his career with mega-hits like Predator, Die Hard, and The Hunt for Red October. On this one he went famously over-budget, spending what is variously reported as $85 million all the way up to $160 million to shoot it. The test screenings went badly, and Crichton was brought in to direct reshoots and the whole film was recut and retitled. Considering the financial disaster that ensued, we will probably never see a director’s cut, which is a shame.

As a movie, The 13^th Warrior is uneven. The storyline is pretty much straight from the book, depicting Ibn Fadlan on his long journey into Scandinavia in company with a band of Volga Rus warriors on a quest to help Hrothgar, king of the Danes, against an ancient enemy. The book and movie both posit the story of Beowulf as a mythologized struggle against a more primitive race of humanity, still existing as a remnant population. In this story, Grendel is not a monster, but the Wendol – a tribe of maybe Neanderthals living a Neolithic existence, and the dragon of the story is instead their force of torch-bearing cavalry.

The historicity of the movie is pretty bad. The armor and weapons are a slurry of anachronistic details when they are not just bad-looking, with the swords being thick and clunky, without any of the beauty of Viking-era sword designs. One character wears a Roman gladiator’s helmet, which would have been possible, but another wears 16^th-century Spanish gear, and Buliwyf’s Viking plate armor is a total fantastical invention – even if it looks totally awesome.

The movie trades heavily on action, but the fight choreography is not really very good. Most of the excitement of the battle scenes is generated by good lighting, excellent editing, and solid direction. All this serves to make the fight scenes pop more than the rather crude choreography would otherwise indicate. The cinematography is excellent, really evoking this misty, ancient world, and while Jerry Goldsmith’s score is a replacement for the rejected original by Graeme Revell, it is an almost iconic workout in operatic mood, with a heavy, memorable theme that adds a lot of drama.

What really holds the film together is the cast. Banderas is perfect as the intelligent, somewhat timid and fussy Ibn Fadlan, and the depiction of his Muslim beliefs and habits is respectful, avoids stereotypes, and does not make him the butt of jokes. The rest of the cast is not as well-known, with Tony Curran in an early role, Diane Venora doing good work as Hrothgar’s queen, and Omar Sharif lending his gravitas in the first part of the movie.

Norwegian actor Denis Storhoi plays the fun-loving, devil-may-care Herger, who becomes Ibn Fadlan’s best friend, and he lights up the screen whenever he’s on it with his good humor and fearless bravado. He has an effortless charisma that the movie is smart enough to make good use of. The actors playing the warriors all have an easy camaraderie and really seem as if they have known one another for years, working and moving like an experienced team.

It is Czech-born actor Vladimir Kulich, however, who really sticks in the mind. As the towering, magnetic Prince Buliwyf he is barbaric, iconic, and radiates the kind of charisma that makes you understand why men would follow and die for him. It is a terrible, terrible shame he was never cast as Conan, because with the right hair and the right look, the looming, 6’5” Kulich could have been a Conan for the ages.

Despite its flaws, The 13^th Warrior remains a favorite among Viking and fantasy fans. It is a very Howardian movie, with its focus on machismo, the Dark Ages, and battles against prehuman beings that dwell underground, it has shades of stories like “Worms of the Earth”, and considering how big a fan of pulp literature Crichton was, that is surely not an accident. Not a lot of movies manage to survive long in the constantly shifting mass consciousness of our media-saturated age, but The 13^th Warrior still holds its own.