It wasn’t quite as good as The Lighthouse but still a very enjoyable historical action film. The cinematography was amazing, every frame looked like a metal album cover. They also didn’t sugar coat the Vikings, showing rather vividly the fucked up shit they’d do, cw: there’s a scene I’m fairly sure is inspired by “Come and See” and it’s not fun to watch.
Weirdly I feel like I would have enjoyed the film better if instead of setting it in a historical setting they had just gone pure fantasy. The movie plays pretty lose with realism and honestly at times felt more like an art house adaptation of Conan the Barbarian, which I feel like I would have enjoyed even more.
Yeah I'm not going to be surprised when fash glob onto this, I think Eggers himself admitted this was going to be a problem.
spoiler
Which sucks cuz a big part of the main characters arc is him realizing how fucked up this all is, and that he himself is a byproduct of sexual slavery, he was just too broken and detached before to realize it all, which I think is part of his decision in the end to sacrifice himself.
Pretty sure he said that he wanted to make a movie that would reclaim some of this from white supremacists but indeed white supremacists are just stupid as hell so doubt they'll get the message.