Do I need to take a moment here to restate my love for Denmark's Nicolas Winding Refn? With his Pusher films Refn is responsible for, in my mind, the greatest trilogy of crime films ever made. His Bleeder is criminally underseen, as is Fear X and Bronson has been winning much love around the globe. Refn is, quite simply, one of the most talented and distinctive voices in the film world today. And so we have been waiting in great anticipation for his viking epic Valhalla Rising - with Mads Mikkelsen in the lead - from the day we first heard of it. What would Refn do when you took him out of the urban centers that had driven his work up until now?
Well, I had the chance to see the sales reel for Valhalla in Berlin and the answer was simple: he made another brilliant piece of work one that while wildly different from what he had done before was still immediately and obviously his own. The only down side at the time was that I couldn't share any of this stuff with you, but now I can. The trailer has just arrived and you'll find it after the break.
For years, One-Eye, a mute warrior of supernatural strength, has been held prisoner by the chieftain Barde. Aided by a boy, Are, he kills his captor and together they escape, beginning a journey into the heart of darkness. On their flight from bounty hunters, One-Eye and Are board a Viking vessel, but the ship is soon engulfed by an endless fog that first disintegrates as they sight an unknown land. As the new land reveals its secrets and the Vikings meet a ghastly fate, One-Eye discovers his true self.
Do I detect some strong Aguirre influence?
The Trailer seems to have a Field Dominance Problem. That's why you have a jalousie-effect. Anyway looks interesting, although not much Viking Action to registrate.
The acting seems off somehow. I difintely got a bad feeling after seeing that trailer.
okay was it just me that find it cheesy somehow all this about, it is Directed by him and he made this and won that.. They really wanna make a big deal out of that....
Swarez, I don't mind being told in a trailer what the director has previously been involved in, but mentioning the same movies TWICE is a bit daft.
Wow, looks pretty cool.
Soooo, if he has super natural strength, then why is it that all it takes to hold him is a piece of rope?
Ok Afro that's funny shit.
English is a second language to the Danish. A very progressive people.
This looks amazing.
if it's up there with Hrafn Gunnlaugsson's viking movies I'm happy. But I didn't quite get that vibe from this trailer... still very much interested though!
@ were you also disappointed with 300 that they didn’t speak greek? Or Valkyrie because they didn’t speak German?
Yep but it's Hollywood i dont care.
Larger audience for this movie...english or Danish i think it's the same, it's just for cinephile, i dont expect see this movie in theater in my country...
I hoped a fucking hardcore Viking movie made by a Viking descendant so talented, i'm disapointed really... :(
I think this one looks amazing and I´m very happy to see Winding Refn working regularly, with "Bronson" and then this.
He´s definitely the most interesting filmmaker to have come out of Scandinavia. I´d love to see him do another "Pusher"-film sometime in the future...
With all sincerity, I can not wait for this god damn movie! (excuse the language)
Even though I understand why they chose to have the actors speak in English,I would rather see a Viking movie in any Scandinavian language before any other language.
There has been an abysmal track record for Viking movies to do well,but there are some highlights either story/production wise,as such they deserve to be mentioned.
The "13th Warrior" got censored and cut to shreds as the original version was too bloody and dark,the company demanded major reshoots to make it more public friendly,in the end it didn't help at all and it failed.But a couple of good things were featured in that movie:some spoken Norwegian language in the beginning,good cast,the Canadian locations looked great and the cinematography was nice.
The new movie "Outlander" was more of a monster movie with integrated sci-fi elements and set to the Viking era.Great cgi-effects and Canadian locations(must look pretty nice on Bluray).Cool looking monster,some nice gore and Sophia Myles as Freya was very nice to look at.
The old Hrafn Gunnlaugssons Viking trilogy were all great as everything look authentic.For me they are REAL Viking movies.
The 1958 movie called "The Vikings" with Kirk Douglas was also fun to watch,filmed on location in Norway featuring:"Three Viking ships in the film were designed using blueprints for an actual Viking ship salvaged from the water and restored by a Viking museum in Norway"(IMBD).Also great cinematography.
The 2007 movie "Pathfinder" was just a roided up,extremely gory but badly made remake of the 1987 "classic" Norwegian movie "Ofelas/Pathfinder".The remake changed the story and featured Vikings vs Native Americans set in North America.In the end all it had going for it was the massive amount of gore,nice Canadian locations and pretty lady Moon Bloodgood (awesome name).
The most insane Viking movie ever made must be the Turkish 1971 "Tarkan versus the Vikings".I highly recommend this movie just to see the color of the clothes and hair these sissy Vikings have.Funny stuff.
This new "VALHALLA RISING" seems to have One-Eye to be a Viking spin of the character "Danny the Dog" mixed with a story of men sailing to a new continent by accident and are soon hunted down by the native people .I hope for the best,but sounds like something that has been made numerous times before one way or the other.
I have high hopes for Bronson.
I always wondered how foreigners viewd Pathfinder because it utterly failed here in Iceland because of the wast amount of horribly spoken Icelandic in the film. I was in stitches half of the time because of it.
Hrafn Gunnlaugsson's first Viking film was great and I rank it probably at the top of Viking films but his followup films were horrible trash. They were more popular in the rest of Scandinavia that they were in Iceland.
Baltasar Kormakur is gearing up his take on Vikings soon. It will be interesting to see how that goes.