John McTiernan’s “The 13th Warrior” (1999) is the Michael Crichton adaptation that, unlike “Jurassic Park” (1993), you might have passed on.
Chances are, you’re like me and heard some terrible things long before the film hit theaters. Based on Crichton’s 1976 novel, “Eaters of the Dead,” which was a re-telling of “Beowulf” but with Vikings, the film was set to be released during the summer of 1997.
I can recall a paperback edition with the Coming Soon label that didn’t make good on its promise for years.
The rumor spreading was that no one was happy with McTiernan’s rough cut, so Crichton stepped in and reshot a great deal of it. When the film finally arrived, late into the summer of 1999, it was like a last gasp.
The uninspired promotional campaign showcased a poster with a close-up of an eye and a Viking ship. The tagline declared it was from the director of “Die Hard” but, if the powers that be at Disney had really understood what they had, and how to sell it, they would have mentioned a far different McTiernan film that is a stronger comparison.
More on that later.
Antonio Banderas stars as Ahmad ibn Fadlan, an Arab poet who is recruited by the Vikings as the 13th man on their mission to take down a mountaintop of warriors who wear animal skins and, yes, eat their prey.
For most of the first act, the film doesn’t work and is presumably where most of the cutting and recutting took place during the years-long restructuring and post-production process. By the time the opening credits have finished, so much exposition and quick cuts have occurred, with scenes quickly fading into another scene and yet another, one might be lost by the time McTiernan’s name turns up.
Despite the word that Crichton reshot a lot of it, McTiernan still gets sole directorial credit, though he and Crichton share producer credit.
Clearly everyone involved has seen “Braveheart” (1995), as a colorful army of burly dudes makes up the supporting cast of mighty, fearless, powerful and testosterone-fueled Viking warriors. Still, despite ample time spent getting to know these characters (who sport names like Herger, Skeld and King Hrothgar), none are truly developed and provide anything more than an action figure likeness.
The 13th Warrior – We love #Vikings at the Salty Nerd #Podcast. How about you? What is your quick thought on this film? Do you have a favorite Viking film? pic.twitter.com/MM7u3zy7ET
— The Salty Nerd Podcast (@salty_nerd) August 12, 2023
For example, my favorite of the Vikings is played by Vladimir Kulich, who looks an awful lot like Viggo the Carpathian. What can I tell you about him? He seems cool wielding a sword. Ditto just about everyone else.
Banderas is miscast as a befuddled, out-of-his-league, put-upon everyman who must stand up and fight. Unlike McTiernan protagonists Jack Ryan (“I’m just an analyst!”) and John McClane (“Welcome to the party, pal!”), whose casting of Alec Baldwin and Bruce Willis sold the characterizations, Banderas is obviously too strong and capable to be a fall guy for long.
If McTiernan had instructed Banderas to play the role while wearing coke bottle glasses with a piece of tape in the middle, he still wouldn’t come across as not manly enough to hang out with actors who look like they just clocked out of their Medieval Times shift.
Two extraordinary contrivances work in Banderas’ favor: the first is a montage where Fadlan learns to speak the Viking language just by observation and listening to them chat during a nightly campfire- a few dissolves (over what appears to be two meals) and voila! Everyone in the movie can understand each other and is now speaking English!
McTiernan got away with this before: remember the cool fade-in/fade-out in “The Hunt For Red October” (1990), a canny bit of filmmaking that instructed the audience that, despite the Russian and American characters, we the audience will now only hear Sean Connery and everyone else speak English.
That movie got away with it. Here, it’s a huge stretch but hey, we need to move the story along, so fine, our lead can decipher languages by listening to people speak.
The 13th Warrior, directed by John McTiernan from a screenplay by William Wisher, Jr. and Warren Lewis and starring Antonio Banderas, Diane Venora, Vladimir Kulich, Dennis Storhøi, Omar Sharif, Anders T. Andersen and Tony Curran, was released on this day in 1999 (USA) 🎬 pic.twitter.com/hpl8GiyvWe
— Horror31 🎃 (@Horror31) August 27, 2021
The other jaw-dropping bit of movie contrivance that “The 13th Warrior” gets away with is yet another montage: Fadlan decides to join the Vikings in battle, but he can barely lift a sword: after a very-brief montage, he not only customizes his weapon but can chop off the tops of a spear. He even has Indigo Montoya moves at his disposal.
Whatever.
Because Fadlan is played by Banderas, he always looks cool in action and holds his own in the big set pieces, but the element of suspense intended at the screenplay level (can someone raised to be peaceful hold his own among savages?) is not there.
Omar Sheriff is in the film’s painfully clunky first act and vanishes soon after. Diane Venora, playing the wife of one of the Vikings, has almost no dialogue but has an unforgettable moment: when villains invade camp, she turns to a young handmaiden protecting a room of children, hands her multiple knives and instructs her that, if the villains come near the children, “you know what to do.”
Whoa. Thankfully, we never get the “13th Warrior” equivalent of the offscreen Youngling slaughter from “Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith” (2005).
For a while, it doesn’t seem like the film will ever connect…then we get to the film’s final hour, which is comprised of three gigantic action sequences, that are so sensational that everything that wasn’t working in the early going vanishes from memory.
A nighttime battle with the Wendol, who are illuminated by torches in a glowing mist, is simply awesome. So is the invasion of their mountain lair, in which we meet the Wendol Queen, a truly scary sequence.
She’s played by Susan Willis who, amazingly also played Mrs. Guttman in “What About Bob?” (1991), where she yelled the immortal line, “Burn in hell, Dr. Marvin!” Her one scene in this is unforgettable.
Born on this day: Michael Crichton (1942-2008).
Here’s the 1977 Bantam edition of Eaters of the Dead, with cover and interior illustrations by the unmistakeable Ian Miller.#BOTD pic.twitter.com/3g1t5YY2lk
— Michael Sellars | Horror Writer | 🇵🇸 (@HorrorPaperback) October 23, 2021
The conclusion is a burly battle by swords in rain and mud, with huge splashes of blood with every swing; it’s played in semi-slow motion and, like the two fantastic set pieces before it, is breathtaking in its staging and imagery.
Did Crichton really direct the majority of “The 13th Warrior”? I doubt it. Much of the imagery is right out of McTiernan’s body of work: the blinding light shining through the doors during the first Wendol attack is reminiscent of McTiernan’s “Nomads” (1986), the assault on the Wendol headquarters (more like a death cave of monsters) creates claustrophobia and coherent geography the way McTiernan’s “Die Hard” does (“Now I know what a TV dinner feels like!”).
Most of all, despite the touting on the film’s poster, the McTiernan film this resembles the most, and I can’t give a bigger compliment, is “Predator” (1987). The portrayal of warriors who must face an enemy they initially don’t understand, are fearful of and must learn how to fight, as well as the setting, waterfall and woods terrain and the final confrontation between warrior and unholy creature of destruction, are all a clear reflection of “Predator.”
Watch the two back-to-back and, well…you’ll either cry out “Valhalla!” or grow hair on your chest.
I knew nothing about “Eaters of the Dead” until I saw it on a book store shelf. I got hooked with the title and the fact it was written by Creighton so I picked it up. It dawned on me about half-way thru that it was based on Beowulf and I became a fan for life. I seemed to be in the vein of there is a germ of truth in each fable or myth, and this is an imagining of a real event that informed the writer of the Beowulf story.
Time goes by and I saw the ads for “13th Warrior” and didn’t see that it was based on EOTD until opening night. I went to see it and thoroughly enjoyed it! Was it just like the book or the story of Beowulf? No, but I loved it for it’s sense of high adventure and fantasy. Loved the cast, costuming, score, sense of dread, action, cinematography.
My 2 cents on Banderas? I thought he did a fine job in that role. He played an educated elitist, who while intelligent, was also a “pretty boy”, which got him his pick of the ladies. Not a warrior, not a sailor, not an adventurer, just a spoiled court official addicted to a life of ease and the ladies. To his credit, he rises to the occasion, puts his brains to use, learns to care for more than just his own selfish needs, becomes a valuable part of the team, and learns to at least hold his own in the fights.
Is “!3th Warrior” a perfect movie? Hell, no, but it doesn’t have to be. All it has to do is entertain, which I believe it does. I own a dvd copy, and will also watch it no matter which point in the movie when I stumble across it on TV. I know more than a few people who enjoyed the movie, sought out the book to read, which in turn led them to read Beowulf for the first time. A movie than inspires a modern audience to seek out the stories from our past to read, learn and enjoy, has done it’s job and then some.
I love the book, I’ve read it at least three times. I had no idea there was a movie based on it, which I will watch if I can get it. Perhaps I’ll be disappointed, as is often the case when one has already devoured the book it’s based on. I’m glad of the good reviews by the hoi polloi here!
So very many moons ago, I was the boom operator on The 13th Warrior. Briefly (well, sort of, anyway)… the project was never going to be much more than a sideways take on Beowulf but McT’s take was a much more focused and tighter picture than what was ultimately released. Crichton was a decidedly unpleasant (and tall!) fellow and John eventually had enough and essentially ordered him off the set (and out of Canada). After that happened, Antonio re-injured his back (he’d initially hurt it on Zorro) so McT rewrote and refocused on Dennis Storhøi as the lead until we nearly drowned Dennis and John had to do some more quick thinking (and more rewrites).
Meanwhile, Crichton was flexing his muscles back at Disney and pitching the idea that perhaps McT’s final cut stipulation wasn’t quite as “valuable” as possible future work with himself. Thus, when we reassembled at Point Dume and the old derelict Marineland site after returning from Canada, both Crichton and McT were calling the (alternating) shots. McT’s view of the project was purposely much less bloody (a major bone of contention with Crichton) so I suppose it wasn’t surprising that we ended up doing a couple weeks of stage work featuring a whole lot of chopped limbs, squirting blood and decapitations courtesy of “director” Mike. As John had to be on set (being the director of credit), it was pretty wild hearing him (loudly) sarcastically exclaim “Oh, THAT’S a great f-ing shot! We certainly couldn’t have lived without THAT!” after nearly every one of Crichton’s gems.
Strange stuff. I don’t think Disney ever did a cast and crew screening but I did manage to see The 13th Warrior in a theater, at some point. I seem to recall that it went on forever.
Most of us would gladly have worked with McT again in a second… Crichton, not so much.
That’s all I know. Honest!
I liked this movie a lot and enjoy re-watching it when I run across it.
Does the critic not know it was a true story and the written account of the diplomat is the only written source, today, of what viking life was like? The village scenes, learning the language was as described by the diplomat.
FWIW – this middle aged woman enjoyed the film along with my husband. It’s one of our favorites. For crying out loud – seeing what Hollywood produces nowadays: sequel after sequel, woke adaption of good movies, etc. This is a great movie.
I rarely trust the critics or worry about the statistics of a movie before watching.
I had no idea that the movie was considered bad when I watched it. The whole “learning a language by observation thing” was an obvious contrivance, but even that was done in a convincing way, with the Vikings expressing just as much disbelief at his feat as the audience would “How did you learn our language?” “I listened” Banderas’ character replied. Mic Drop.
I thoroughly enjoyed the movie when I first watched it and bought the DVD so it’s in my collection as we speak. Sometimes I just don’t understand what the expectations were when a movie I considered quite enjoyable is panned as “bad”…and that’s why I don’t worry about what the critics say about a movie. Some of my favorites were flops at the box office and panned by critics. The Blood of Heroes with Rutger Hauer and Outland with Sean Connery are two examples that I enjoy immensely.
I also love this film, and I’ve watched it again many times over the years. Don’t agree at all with this critique.
I mean Barry Wurst’s critique, not yours (poster Sailorcurt).
I agree with your assessment but I have to say this is one of my guilty pleasure.