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The 13th Warrior (1999)

post #1 of 41
6/12/10 at 5:06pm
Thread Starter 
Saw this back in the 1999 at the dollar movies and loved it. I take out my dvd copy of it at least once a year. Despite the really troubled production (Started filming in 1997, Crichton taking over as director,) it really works.

Tons of great action and sword play. An interesting plot (cave people who terrorize a village under the guise of being bear-like creatures). A cool men on a mission flick where just about every character gets to shine.

Can't go wrong with Jerry Goldsmith's rousing score, which apparently was also something that came in late after the original score was dropped.
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post #2 of 41
6/12/10 at 5:12pm
I can't begin to describe how much I love this movie. I watched it so many times in high school I have it committed to memory and haven't had to see it in years.

Anybody know if there's been any new movement in regards to a director's cut? My guess is not bloody likely, especially as DVD sales freefall, but you never know.

Also, despite my love for it I gotta admit that it's riddled with annoying logistical flaws. For example, the exact grouping of warriors is always so loose. Characters die off-screen and are only referenced in passing (i.e. Haltaf), and if you count up the warriors you only get to twelve. There's a little kid who's with the group every once in a while but never in combat and never shown volunteering. What's his story?
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post #3 of 41
6/12/10 at 8:06pm
Its a fun film with a very different setup than most period films and I love that. I always wanted to see McTiernan's cut.
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post #4 of 41
6/12/10 at 8:09pm
Yeah, you know, I was enjoying this movie when I first watched it, until this exchange:

Ahmed Ibn Fadhlan: Do we have anything resembling a plan?
Herger the Joyous: Yes, we ride out until we find them, and kill them all.

It was like the movie reaaaally tried to hammer home the fact that this was just a movie about dudes killing dudes. I appreciated that honesty!
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post #5 of 41
6/12/10 at 8:12pm
Worth tracking down and reading "Eaters of the Dead" to get the original idea of remnant neanderthals being the source of the Grendel myth.
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post #6 of 41
6/14/10 at 6:15pm
Yeah but a bunch of "dwarfs" give the 13 warriors "magic" daggers in the book. I see what you did there, Crichton!

I love this movie. Everybody I know who sees it also loves it. We often recite the Valhalla prayer when we enter battle.
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post #7 of 41
6/14/10 at 10:17pm
I love the shit out of this film. First time I saw it was in the middle of a European backpacking trip in a cinema in Paris. As a consequence I went in with zero preconceptions and no knowledge of the films troubled journey to the screen, all I got was gigantic vikings indulging in epic badassery in an almost medieval answer to Predator. The movie is just tits, but by the end when all the survivors are facing down the final charge of the Wendol, the rain begins, and Buliwyf starts the Valhalla prayer as Goldsmiths score kicks in, the film reaches pure testosterone transcendence.
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post #8 of 41
6/15/10 at 12:21am
I a nice dark little action flick
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post #9 of 41
6/15/10 at 9:54am
I wish I had the skills for animated gifs. The introduction to the movie is by far the coolest pan out of a ship at sea I have seen.
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post #10 of 41
6/15/10 at 10:11am
I'm glad all of you love this film as much as I do.

Damn 1999 was a year for movies!! It was my junior year of high and all my buddies and I would see a movie every Friday. Even if nothing new came out we'll see something we've already seen. Hell I feel like the succes of Blade was due to us.

This was back in the day when a movie ticket was about $5.50 and gas was about $1 a gallon.
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post #11 of 41
6/15/10 at 10:20am
This movie never got much love but there's no way this comes on and I keep doing what I was doing. That's the life. Drinking mead, bedding wenches and killing cannibals.
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post #12 of 41
6/15/10 at 10:24am
It's guilty pleasure for me. It's not a great movie, but there's a lot of elements that work within the poorly edited mess that it is.

Mainly the viking posse, and most of all Buliwyf. He's so damned great he makes you forget Banderas.
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post #13 of 41
6/15/10 at 12:45pm
I love this friggin myth and this friggin movie and this friggin shot...



I'm dying to see a director's cut.
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post #14 of 41
6/15/10 at 2:31pm
Sorry, but I am afraid I have to be the dissenting voice here. I went into this with high hopes after hearing a lot of praise for it around these parts, but I came away a bit disappointed. I really wanted to like it, but I found the overall film to be pretty lacking. It's tonally inconsistent, and it never really drew me in to the world or the plight of the characters. I really hated the scene where Banderas "learns" the Viking tongue; I understand why they did it that way, and that it is meant as a sort of cinematic shorthand, but it just came off as a bit forced and kind of silly. The climax just felt like it was trying to hard to recapture the magic of the village siege in Seven Samurai, but it's reach sort of exceeded it's grasp, and the whole film just falls on its face at that point.

It's not a terrible film by any stretch of the imagination, and visually there's some really interesting stuff going on here and there. Overall, though, it just didn't work for me, and that's a shame, because I really wanted to like it. To be fair, though, my expectations may have colored my experience.
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post #15 of 41
6/15/10 at 3:05pm
I'm in love with this film. I adore the pseudohistorical but ultimately fantasy films, I love that the 'hero' is a scholar, I love that most if not all of these guys actually look nordic and badass.

The finale is aweinspiring, Buliwyf is jus one of those characters that really impress the hell out of you. I enjoyed the language learning scene, actually. Dunno. It's not the best! film! Ever! but it's just a damned good movie. I dig the equal parts mysticism and reality and yeah, from what I've heard about the director's cut from this site, I'd pay good money to see that though I enjoy what we have now. It's epic without (at least feeling) two hours long, lean and tightly paced. Well, perhaps not the best in terms of pacing, but definitely not bad.

And I do enjoy how even though some of the characters or the 13 (or 12) do get knocked off before we learn who they are, but are referenced in the course of the movie. You feel like these men actually have a past together.
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post #16 of 41
6/15/10 at 3:11pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Martin S View Post
It's guilty pleasure for me. It's not a great movie, but there's a lot of elements that work within the poorly edited mess that it is.

Mainly the viking posse, and most of all Buliwyf. He's so damned great he makes you forget Banderas.
I used to think that, but I've changed. It IS a great film. Banderas is mildly okay, and you can tell much was lost in the huge fucking debacle that was getting the film shot and released, but I haven't been watching a guilty pleasure four or five times a year for 11 years now. As much as I used to try to argue otherwise, I think it is a pretty great movie.
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post #17 of 41
6/16/10 at 12:04am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Martin S View Post
It's guilty pleasure for me. It's not a great movie, but there's a lot of elements that work within the poorly edited mess that it is.

Mainly the viking posse, and most of all Buliwyf. He's so damned great he makes you forget Banderas.
Well, when you basically tweak the plot from Seven Samurai you're working from a pretty fuckin' solid template.
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post #18 of 41
6/16/10 at 12:09am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Wayward_Woman View Post
Well, perhaps not the best in terms of pacing.......
Worst offense is after all the pretty watchable battle scenes, and the terrific Viking and Muslim prayers offered before the final battle, Buliwyf staggering out from his deathbed, you expect an all-caps EPIC final battle and what we got was a montage-ish sequence that just kinda....ends.

One thing that I really enjoyed though, was the way the camaraderie built up between Banderas and the Vikings ("Give a Viking a sword, and he makes a knife! When you die, can I give that to my daughter?")
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post #19 of 41
6/16/10 at 3:43pm
Well the cave stuff is sort of the climactic battle. It's probable that they either planned more or shot more for the rainsoaked end-game but I didn't mind that Buliwyf ended it so quickly before succumbing.
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post #20 of 41
8/10/10 at 11:06pm
I brought this up in the Hollywood Whitewashing thread, and I'll bring it up here. I know Banderas is basically a white guy playing a middle eastern guy, but I think the difference between this and Prince of Persia or other comparable films is that they don't shy away from depicting him as a Middle Eastern Muslim dude. We see both cultures getting along and being respectful of the differences, we see even-handed depiction (and as a history buff, I love that they depict the Arabian culture as superior - western audiences rarely see that sort of thing outside a Harryhausen Sinbad flick...especially when they were so advanced and just bloody brilliant).

They even go so far as to have Ibhn be fairly religious. Tell me if there is any other film from western cinema that not only has a Arabian character as a protagonist, but has him praying and talking about "There is only one God, and Mohammad is his prophet."

Thank you ballsy viking film, for being a ballsy action flick.
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post #21 of 41
8/10/10 at 11:21pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Nardo View Post
Worth tracking down and reading "Eaters of the Dead" to get the original idea of remnant neanderthals being the source of the Grendel myth.
I read it a couple of times back in the day. It's pretty good, but I like the movie better, which is rare for me when it comes to movies based on books.
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post #22 of 41
8/10/10 at 11:27pm
Can't believe no one has brought up the best part of this movie which is...

I LEESINED!
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post #23 of 41
8/11/10 at 3:29pm
Wayward Woman... the problem with what you're saying re: whitewashing is that Antonio Banderas is Spanish. Like from Spain? They were conquered by Arabs and Moors (Muslims) and there likely was some amount of interbreeding. Banderas looks enough like an Arab to make it work anyway, but it's likely he has Arabic blood.

The point is, he isn't "a white guy" playing an Arab.
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post #24 of 41
8/11/10 at 7:23pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Scott View Post
Can't believe no one has brought up the best part of this movie which is...

I LEESINED!


Funny, but it can't top the line, " Keep your teeth together and get back to work. " One of the best cinematic putdowns of all time.
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post #25 of 41
8/11/10 at 11:24pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Xion View Post
Wayward Woman... the problem with what you're saying re: whitewashing is that Antonio Banderas is Spanish. Like from Spain? They were conquered by Arabs and Moors (Muslims) and there likely was some amount of interbreeding. Banderas looks enough like an Arab to make it work anyway, but it's likely he has Arabic blood.

The point is, he isn't "a white guy" playing an Arab.
As far as I understand it, during the Reconquista pretty much every single Muslim and Jew in the Iberian peninsula was driven out at the point of a sword.
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post #26 of 41
8/12/10 at 2:33pm
Sure, but not before they could interbreed a bit. Don't they still say that "Black Irish" are descended from Spaniards that survived the sinking of the Armada? Aren't 1 out of 100 people direct descendants of Genghis Khan?

I know I'm speculating about Banderas, all I'm saying is he's hardly a "white guy" even if he doesn't have Arabic ancestry.
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post #27 of 41
8/12/10 at 8:11pm
Oh Xion is totally correct. Its the reason the Spanish look so different from all their European neighbors. Lots of Spaniards also have fairly dark skin.
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post #28 of 41
8/12/10 at 8:40pm
Frankly I'm surprised at all the positive thoughts on this movie. Years ago I was a huge Crichton apologist and, although I loved the book at the time, never bothered to see the film version on account of hearing a lot of negative buzz on it. I dunno why that stopped me, come to think of it. I was raised on bad films.


Guess I'll give it a shot next time I get the chance.
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post #29 of 41
8/12/10 at 9:14pm
The sad thing with this film is that we'll never see the director's cut. Scenes were shot which gives the movie more depth, especially dealing with the settlement's Prince discourse with the king and the Bulwfirl's group, but according to the director due to studio politics it's never going to be seen.
There's supposed to be a link somewhere about this but I can't find it anywhere anymore.
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post #30 of 41
8/12/10 at 9:51pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Wayward_Woman View Post
I brought this up in the Hollywood Whitewashing thread, and I'll bring it up here. I know Banderas is basically a white guy playing a middle eastern guy, but I think the difference between this and Prince of Persia or other comparable films is that they don't shy away from depicting him as a Middle Eastern Muslim dude. We see both cultures getting along and being respectful of the differences, we see even-handed depiction (and as a history buff, I love that they depict the Arabian culture as superior - western audiences rarely see that sort of thing outside a Harryhausen Sinbad flick...especially when they were so advanced and just bloody brilliant).

They even go so far as to have Ibhn be fairly religious. Tell me if there is any other film from western cinema that not only has a Arabian character as a protagonist, but has him praying and talking about "There is only one God, and Mohammad is his prophet."

Thank you ballsy viking film, for being a ballsy action flick.
As for Prince of Persia, Persians look way more Caucasian than Arabs. Not that the Gyllenhall casting was good, but still...
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post #31 of 41
8/12/10 at 10:30pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Nabster View Post
Oh Xion is totally correct. Its the reason the Spanish look so different from all their European neighbors. Lots of Spaniards also have fairly dark skin.
I also recall hearing/reading somewhere that the Basque people are thought to be the descendants of Cro-Magnon man. Though they're on the North coast of Spain.
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post #32 of 41
8/12/10 at 10:46pm

Re: The 13th Warrior (1999)

It's been a while since I've watched this; where exactly in the "Moorish lands" was hits character supposed to hail from?
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post #33 of 41
8/13/10 at 12:05pm
I'm pretty sure he's straight from Baghdad. There's a map at the beginning and I seem to remember it showing Baghdad before delving into his backstory.
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post #34 of 41
8/13/10 at 12:14pm
I've never done the research, but I'm pretty sure this is the only case where the author of a book on which a film is based was hired to direct the film's reshoots.
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post #35 of 41
8/13/10 at 12:19pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mercury318 View Post
It's been a while since I've watched this; where exactly in the "Moorish lands" was hits character supposed to hail from?
The Moors were a loose tribe in North Africa, just south of Spain... who then conquered Iberia (Spain). Makes sense for Antonio.
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post #36 of 41
8/13/10 at 1:11pm
The Moors were pretty cosmopolitan but I think most people identify them as black-skinned because of Othello and Morgan Freeman's character from Robin Hood.
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post #37 of 41
8/13/10 at 2:40pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Xion View Post
The Moors were pretty cosmopolitan but I think most people identify them as black-skinned because of Othello and Morgan Freeman's character from Robin Hood.
you forgot True Romance
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post #38 of 41
8/13/10 at 2:48pm
That was for Sicilians.
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post #39 of 41
8/13/10 at 7:39pm
Martin S... WINS! FACTUALITY.
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post #40 of 41
8/14/10 at 12:25am

Re: The 13th Warrior (1999)

Yeah I was going to say, if it's not specific where in the Arabic empire he's from then portraying him as Moor totally works. I mean the Berbers and Moors were dominating Spain at the time.

Also I'm pretty sure I'm misusing the word Moor, so feel free to correct me.
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post #41 of 41
8/14/10 at 12:59pm
Yeah, this film was fun. I remember thinking Crichton must've played 1st ed. D&D back in the day 'cause the ranger used two weapons.

This flick shows what a solid director McTiernan was. Fun time.
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