This movie is so fucking funny. When Fjölnir is like “who killed my men?” and it just pans up and Amleth is just standing there trying to “lay low” while scowling with the one pose he makes the whole movie my cousin and I were losing our shit. Genuinely wish more people saw this so it would be popular enough that someone else would wanna edit that still of Amleth in the background of pictures. Sacrilegious I know but I almost wish he didn’t have another character to talk to even at the cost of no Anya Taylor Joy cause I bet that guy’s internal monologue is so funny. As far as I’m concerned he’s been thinking that whole “I will avenge you father” mantra for his whole life without a single other thought. Nicole Kidman doing whatever the fuck she was doing I thought also was extremely fun while still being genuinely intimidating in a way I’ve never seen from her.

As for the rest of this movie uh I feel like so many movies are marketed on some shit about the brutality being the point but I kinda feel like we’re at the point where if every movie is brutal then no movie is brutal? Like what does it matter that there’s more realistic violence at this point? As it stands it’s just your standard period piece dad action movie that’s slightly more violent than Gladiator. And I don’t really mind that! I think people were deluding themselves into expecting Eggers to make some showy high art piece and either over hyped this or got disappointed because of that when none of the trailers really suggested that apart from the connection to Valhalla. I will say I think the action could’ve been a lot better and there’s one issue that perhaps is the weakness of an indie guy looking to do some bigger budget more tentpole movie. You want your Viking hamlet movie sure it’s here and I guess it pays enough respect to Vikings but I think I felt as much as I was supposed to out if this and that’s totally all it needed to be. They fight naked in a volcano and that’s fun enough for what I needed out of this.