10 Behind-The-Scenes Facts About The Northman | Screen Rant
The Northman has just hit theatres and it has received outstanding critical acclaim with a massive 89% on Rotten Tomatoes. Its critical reception is largely down to how epic the movie is and how there are so few films like it that a greenlit anymore.
Critics and audiences are calling the film the best epic movie since Gladiator, but for a movie that's that ambitious and grand in scope, it isn't without its production setbacks and revealing stories. Between shooting on location and keeping digital effects to a minimum, the revenge movie faced some uphill battles, but what is computer-generated comes as a huge surprise.
Bjork arguably has the best batting average of any actor ever, but that's only because she's starred in one movie. That movie was 2000's Dancer In the Dark, director Lars von Trier's best film, and it even won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. The 2000 movie was so good that she retired from acting until 22 years later that is.
The Icelandic singer returned to the big screen for The Northman as the prophet Seeress, and it didn't take much convincing. Eggers didn't write The Northman by himself, and his co-writer, Sjon, has close ties with Bjork. The director thinks she was down to do it because of the "familial environment."
The movie's climax is an epic two-man battle between Amleth and Fjolnir on a volcano, or as they call it, the gates of hell. The finale sees them jumping over streams of lava and swinging swords at each other, and they just so happen to be completely naked.
Though they're extremely difficult to see behind all the smoke and fire unless viewers are looking for them, the characters' genitals are on show too, but those genitals are completely digital. While digital effects are used to create incredible-looking CGI creatures and monsters, the best use of them is when it's completely seamless and unnoticeable, and that's part of what makes The Northman so great.
While every single shot of The Northman looks incredible and beautiful, it also looks like the actors went through hell to deliver exactly what Eggers was looking for. Part of the reason why it looks so good is that, instead of being shot on a soundstage or in front of a studio, it was shot on location in Iceland, but that comes with its trials and tribulations.
Anya Taylor-Joy, who plays Olga in the epic movie, goes into detail about how challenging the shoot was. Though the actor prefaces her description of the shoot with the fact that she never complains, Taylor-Joy changed her tune when she was standing barefoot in mud that had frozen over. She explains that she "essentially squeaked out a 'Please can we roll?'" which was the closest she came to ever complaining.
Iceland is known for its hot springs, which are pools of water heated naturally by the Earth. However, while Taylor-Joy can be seen in a valley of water in the movie, it mustn't have been the spa-like springs. Taylor-Joy might have complained about having her feet stuck in frozen mud for hours on end, but she has expressed how much fun she had on set for the very same reason.
The actor details how much she enjoyed being in the water and nature even more than the stunt performers, explaining that "The stunt guys would say, 'Can we get out of the water now?' And I was like, 'This is amazing. Nature! We’re outside!'"
Alexander Skarsgard comes from an extremely talented family, as his father, Stellan Skarsgard, is an incredible actor, and his brother, Bill Skarsgard, gave the best portrayal of Pennywise in It and It: Chapter 2. And now, Alex has an iconic role of his own, Amleth.
But the character wouldn't be anything without his jaw-dropping build and brawn, and it'd take anybody else years to reach such a physique. Skarsgard admits that he had help from the studio, and he makes getting into that kind of shape sound easy. The actor explains, "The studio will get you the best trainer and the best nutritionist and the best plan. They organize everything. So you don't have to do much."
Taylor-Joy has been cast as the titular character in the upcoming Mad Max: Fury Road spin-off, Furiosa. Director George Miller is known for his strenuous and exhausting shoots and filming up to 500 hours of footage in rough climates, but the Taylor-Joy thinks that after shooting The Northman, she's more than prepared.
But compared to making a movie in the Mad Max series, making The Northman sounds like a piece of cake. Between filming in the heat of the Australian desert and the tensions between cast members, so many things went wrong on set of Fury Road, and Taylor-Joy has that to look forward to with Furiosa.
Skarsgard was quite literally dragged through the mud, as not only was he playing a character that was mentally and physically challenging and demanding. And is if that task wasn't hard enough, he did it just days after wrapping up Succession.
In the TV series, Skarsgard plays a tech billionaire who lives in a huge villa and owns several yachts and helicopters, so the characters couldn't have been more different. And it must have felt that much worse when he was crawling through freezing mud after he was living like a billionaire. Skarsgard called it a "waking-up moment and a humbling experience."
After three beloved and visually unique movies, Eggers is now being crowned a cinematic auteur. Along with The Northman, the filmmaker directed the psychological horror The Lighthouse and the fantasy horror The Witch. The latter movie also stars Taylor-Joy, but whilst promoting The Northman, Eggers expressed his disliking of the movie.
Eggers' directorial debut is a fantastic and thrilling movie full of genuine scares, but the director thinks he wasn't a good enough director at the time. The filmmaker "honestly can't stand watching The Witch now" because he believes he couldn't get what was in his brain onto the screen. As Quentin Tarantino wants to remake Reservoir Dogs, maybe Eggers will do the same with the 2015 film.
With almost no CGI and being shot on location, so many things could have gone wrong while shooting The Northman. And though it could have been a lot worse, according to Skarsgard, a lot of scenes had to be reshot because of horses moving around in the background.
The actor talks about how meticulous of a director Eggers is, but that's both a blessing and a curse. Skarsgard details how, because there are so many tracking shots in the movie, he'd get through an exhausting four-minute take, but "then a horse deep in the background looks the wrong way and you have to do it all again."
Eggers has been trying to get his Nosferatu remake off the ground for years, as it was even going to be his follow-up to The Witch. It sounds like an incredible movie and, at one point, Harry Styles was attached to star in it, but it was put on hold when the One Direction singer pulled out.
Unfortunately, the film looks like it'll be stuck in development for the foreseeable future. But it isn't all bad news for fans of the director who wanted to see it. Another, albeit extremely different, Dracula movie is in production. Renfield, starring Nicolas Cage as Dracula, will hit theatres in 2023.