Thanks to Marvel, Thor now has a massive cinematic presence. He is one of the great heroes. He is an Avenger! Well, someone out there must really hate Thor. So much so that they decided to make a film where he was the villain instead of the hero. That film is Vikingdom.
Evil Thor (Conan Stevens) is on a quest to obtain a handful of enchanted items that will help him take over earth and put it under his vicious rule. Apparently there is only one man who can stop Thor, Eirick the Bloodletter (Dominic Purcell). He was once killed and brought back to life by the goddess who loves him, making him undead. Being undead allows him to enter Helheim to get the only thing powerful enough to stop Thor: a horn.
Yeah, so that’s the story of Vikingdom, it’s about as silly as the film’s title. But sometimes a silly story can be overlooked if it’s a well produced film with good action sequences and some decent acting. Sadly, this film doesn’t have any of those things either.
The acting isn’t painfully bad, but it’s not good. The dialog is so wordy at times you can see the actors struggling to get all the lines out. About 90% of the film is CGI, and it’s mediocre at best. Half the time I kept thinking that maybe this film would have worked better as a video game rather than a film. Then there is the costumes, which look like something that could be bought at a Halloween shop.
All of these things prevent any of the action scenes from ever reaching the level of excitement that they should. Which is a shame, because some of the people in this have some obvious fighting skill, it just isn’t utilized very well, especially Jon Foo.
In fact the whole film has a very sterile, cold and distant, over produced feel to it. Often times I couldn’t help but be reminded of The Phantom Menace and not in a good way. Also in ways a dare not reveal here, as they would be huge spoilers.
Vikingdom is rife with the illogical problems. They always talk about the long distances they need to travel then seem to arrive at that place rather quickly. It doesn’t need to be The Hobbit, a small showing of the passage of time might have helped.
The characters never really seem to make their decisions with much thoughts. The story needs this and that to happen so it happens. None of it happens organically. One guy (Foo) doesn’t one to join the group. Bloodletter says, “Come with us, we’ll give you food.” And without a second thought he smiles and joins them. Later, when raiding a town ridden with snow, the woman of the team (Natassia Malthe) runs around in not much more than a bra. At least she has pants on.
Then on top of all of that, the film is nearly two hours long, which is easily thirty minutes longer than it needed to be. Much of the rambling dialog could have been trimmed. Several characters seem to repeat the same ideas multiple times.
The only reason I can think that Vikingdom got made is that the writer must really hate Thor and wrote this whole script about how evil he is. I can see him sitting there at his computer writing the script thinking, “I’ll show them! I’ll show them all!”
The film is presented in a widescreen format. The sound is in 5.1 surround sound. This is a pretty bad looking film, CGI wise. It’s flat and lifeless. I will say the the score isn’t too bad, so it has that going for it.
For extras you get Making Of Vikingdom (25 min.) These seem like a nice group of people. I’m sad I disliked the film as much as I did. Also a Music Video (3 min.) and a couple trailers.
At one point Bloodletter says, “I have to blow this horn in the face of Thor? Tell me what I should do.” Perhaps the answer should have been, “I don’t know, blow the horn in the face of Thor?” But alas, that would have made too much sense for this film.
Epic presents Vikingdom. Written by James Coyne. Directed by Yusry Kru. Starring: Dominic Purcell, Conan Stevens and Craig Fairbrass. Running time: 112 minutes. Rating: Not Rated. Released on DVD: January 21, 2014.
