Be Prepared For A Spectacular ‘Lion King’ Remake

_{The Northman (2022)}

Focus Features/rated R/142 minutes

Directed by Robert Eggers, written _{by Robert Eggers and Sjón}

_{Starring Alexander Skarsgård, Nicole Kidman, Claes Bang, Anya Taylor-Joy, Ethan Hawke, Björk and Willem Dafoe}

_{Cinematography by Jarin Blaschke, editing by Louise Ford and score by Robin Carolan Sebastian Gainsborough}

_{Opens theatrically on April 22}

By all rights, The Northman shouldn’t exist. The Regency/Focus Features film is an entirely original (in terms of not being explicitly based on anything), R-rated, star-free (talent aside, Alexander Skarsgård and Anya-Taylor Joy are not butts-in-seats draws), 142-minute, $90 million Viking actioner. Spending $90 million on a movie like this was madness 11 years ago when Jason Momoa starred in a Conan the Barbarian reboot, and that had an IP and existed during a time when folks went to the movies on the regular. Heck, $65 million, the initial budget prior to Covid-related overruns, was itself absurd. The box office pundit in me is aghast that this film exists in its current form. But the film critic in me will happily chow down on its cinematic pleasures knowing that they are in short supply.

The Northman shares more than a few similarities with Walt Disney’s The Lion King, to the point where it’s more of a “rip-off, don’t remake” riff on that Disney toon than Hamlet. We get a young man idolizing his royal father followed by a family betrayal that leaves the king (Ethan Hawke) dead, the queen (Nicole Kidman) in captivity and our would-be heir in exile. Robert Eggers (The Lighthouse and The Witch) almost at once switches things up just a little. We quickly discover that the treacherous uncle (Claes Bang) lost his ill-gotten throne and has become the head of a far quainter village. Our now-grown “hero” (a ripped-to-the-gills Skarsgård) has aligned himself with Viking hordes committing the very same sort of horrors visited upon him as a boy. Survival is the name of the game.

The stunning series of one-take sequences (they look like one-ers to me, and I’m not the edit police) highlighting the Viking horde plundering makes a point not to show Amleth partaking in any rape or baby murder. However, these new friends have a quite different definition of “Hakuna Matata.” Upon seeing a chance to enact his long-sought-after revenge, Amleth cuts his hair and sneaks onto a slave ship in the guise of a common slave. That whole “long hair, ripped bod” look that’s been central to the marketing campaign applies to one single scene. The rest of the movie is mostly our anti-hero making trouble for his sworn enemy while (James Bond-style) concurrently gaining his trust. Meanwhile, Olga (Taylor-Joy) claims to be a sorcerer but does not do much sorcery beyond feminine whiles.

The film dives headfirst into the “macho men being stupid for the sake of masculine pride” thing, complete with a king who really wishes to die amid battle and a “hero” who is torn between (to quote a refrain) “kindness to your kin or hatred for your enemy.” The shifting morality and implicit subversion of its genre tropes will have you periodically “rooting against action.” The Northman is less a deconstruction and more an example of itself sans the comforting heroic myths that have allowed such tales to become pop culture dogma. That even applies to the deluge of third-act false endings, which seem to go out of their way to snatch away conventional resolutions. Even if the message sometimes interferes with the medium, the 142-minute flick is rarely less than in-the-moment engrossing.

Even with that $90 million budget, there is a certain frugal discipline. There exists a certain “do what you can with what you’ve got” mentality that occasionally makes it feel almost more impressive than if it were the beneficiary of a bottomless piggy bank. Nothing about this film looks accidental. In terms of its subject matter, it seems like a spear thrown directly into the heart of the “You can’t make this movie today because of political correctness” discourse, as The Northman, even with its heart in the right place, is filled with allegedly “problematic” content. Warts and all, The Northman (with stark, oppressive cinematography courtesy of Jarin Blaschke and razor-sharp editing by Louise Ford) is worth that PLF upcharge. It’s a relic from when studios would expect audiences to show up in theaters and buy the DVD.