Boom. The scenery was great, the photography, especially the scenes at night around the campfires, looked realistic. No, Antonio Banderas is not Arab. We are first introduced to the protagonist Ahmad, a Muslim Arabian nobleman, exiled from his homeland. All in all, I’ve had a lot of fun watching The 13th Warrior again, ten years later. The Difference Is Entirely One of Setting: Iain Banks’, Something in the Water, Something in the Air: Kaaron Warren’s “The Diesel Pool”, Never Say You Can’t Survive: Find Your Voice and Make It LOUD, “I am done being reflexively supportive” —, Reading The Wheel of Time: Long Journeys and Painful Emotions in Robert Jordan’s. Ibn Fadlan (speaking slowly in English, now passing for the protagonist’s newfound Norwegian): My mother …. Oh man. Buliwyf and his fellow 10th-century warriors – with guy on the right in 16th-century armor. I work for no one, just thought after more than 16 years this film still holds bearing and merit after what the Vikings were able to do as far as navigation, Previous post: Marriage Imperative of the Viking Age, How to Find out If You Have Viking Ancestry, In Rebus. In his travels he encounters a group of nordic traders and, amid a particularly intense pagan ritual, is involuntarily recruited to go with them on a dangerous mission against an ancient enemy. Part of the reason you should nevertheless watch The 13th Warrior, though, is that there are moments like the next sequence, which is one of my favorites in the film because it shows awareness of a very real and important element that most movies ignore: language. Even if the amazing language sequences weren’t there, the filmmakers still made a movie with some great visual moments, a good score (two of them, as it turns out), some tight battle sequences, a solid plot, and some truly enjoyable characters. What impressed me was that it “looked” very realistic, or authentic even if it wasn’t totally accurate. The Wendol, whom the Vikings finally have to oppose, seem to be a prehistoric tribe (all this based on Eaters of the Dead by Michael Chrichton). We can literally see his transformation as he sheds his traditional Arabic robes along with his preconceived notions. The biggest mistakes you never noticed in The 13th Warrior (1999). It won’t be winning any historical accuracy awards, fir a lot if reasons. Find more hidden gems and well known classics from this and other ScreenHub authors! One of the previous comments stated that this is more of a heoric tale rather than super accurate in details, and that it is. In the time of “Me Too” and “representation matters”, it is definitely worth noting the distinct lack of any meaningful female presence. This is one movie that I really do like. The Thirteenth Warrior is not meant I believe to be taken as literal or as even accurate. And then, remarkably, the movie gets worse. We get to learn with Ahmad. Despite this, should you be able to seek this film out, you will find something very special. But some folks over the course of a week of immersion really can pick up more than enough to get by.”. Melchisidek’s Greek, “ἡγεμόνα ὑμέτερον, βασιλέα ὑμέτερον,” by which he is apparently trying to say “Your chief? Ibn Fadlan: … was a pure woman … from a noble family. Medieval mic drop. We’re thrust into a confusing flashback sequence relating how Ibn Fadlan was once a court poet in Baghdad who fell in love with another man’s wife—which is a cool story for the few seconds of screen time it requires in order to serve as an overly complex reason for Ibn Fadlan to be sent away to serve as an ambassador to the land of the distant Volga Bulgars. It’s even got natural errors. Without obvious goofs it would probably become rather boring. We see a reluctant traveler forced to adapt to a completely foreign culture or die. It won’t be winning any historical accuracy awards, fir a lot if reasons. Later on, Ibn Fadlan studies the language of Vikings simply by listening to them, over a very short period of time. With the pork-prod at the end, too. However, it was rather entertaining to watch it again, taking a few notes in the process. …which is where the damn movie needed to start, because literally the only thing that we need to know about all of the preceding is that Ibn Fadlan is a Muslim ambassador to these folks. Second, the movie was based on Michael Crichton’s Eaters of the Dead, a novel that was, in turn, based on both the great Old English epic Beowulf and the very real account of Ahmad Ibn Fadlan’s embassy to the Volga Bulgars on behalf of the Caliph of Baghdad in the year 922. It is great escapism though in a rather dark vein. Crichton was heavily involved in the project, even stepping in to direct when the studio became unhappy with the credited director John McTiernan. At all events, they would rather speak Old Norse, since Norwegian, Swedish and Danish languages developed later in history. From the very beginning, the plot struggles to combine two realities: Norse Vikings and their habits as described by Ibn Fadlan in the 10th century, and the 5th century epic Scandinavians as described in Beowulf, Old English heroic poem. Though the North Men are first depicted as violent and unclean, as the film goes on they are revealed to be intelligent and sophisticated. Melchisedek tries to speak to Vikings in Greek: he repeats something like ἡγεμόνα ὑμέτερον, βασιλέα ὑμέτερον (hegemona hymeteron, basilea hymeteron), which means “your chief, your king” in the accusative case, which makes little sense without a verb. Not everyone despised the film. There are a few things about Vikings in The 13th Warrior that deserve to be mentioned. As a conceit, Crichton’s plot is a fun one. So, um …. This was not among them. ), Herger and Ibn Fadlan: “Come on, little brother.”. First, it was directed by John McTiernan.

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