Awfully underated

Agree. Very underrated film. I was surprised at how enjoyable it was when I watched it, given the rating on here.

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(Spoiler warning)

And you need to get your head out of your arse and stop telling people to formulate their opinion based on what you think is good.

I absolutely did not think this movie was good. It was hilariously awful. Apart from the obvious bad acting, there were many other issues with it. The randomly forced love aspect was hilarious. 15 minutes in and BAM, we have a love scene between two strangers at which after the love making they both confess their love for each other. The sudden and unexpected romance doesn't allow me to share the emotions with the characters and thus the entire plot of the story becomes paper thin. They botched up the primary plot, this love between our hero and the Icelandic queen, by not laying enough foundation. The emotional aspect of the movie suffers greatly because of this.

Another issue is the dialogue. Some of those lines were just downright laughable. I was literally cracking up at how ridiculous they were. Of course, the sub-par acting made the lines even funnier.

There were also some very unnecessary scenes. But one stands out the most because it wasn't just a scene but an entire sequence. What was the point of having the curse sequence? That entire sequence could've been omitted and it wouldn't have changed the film one bit. Greed would be the cause of a couple characters' demise and arrogance the main character's demise, two common negative characteristics of human beings and a suitable aspect to plot a character's demise. But what's even more amusing was that one curse wasn't enough, so lets add another one. So, that's two completely useless curses. It would've worked if they emphasized a little more on the curses and had the characters do things that they obviously wouldn't normally do. But there was no emphasis at all.


And now some technical nitpicking...
If it wasn't natural lighting, the lighting was flat and boring. There was no depth or character to the lighting. It was as if the gaffer was like, "lets just light them..." and so they did. Yup, they were lit alright...

The editing was also very sub-par. A few times I felt as though they edited the film for people with short-term memory loss. "Lets do a flashback to a previous scene to remind the audience..." You insult your audience when you do that.
And then the flash fowards at the beginning of the film... why? That is overused and cliche.

The colour grading was pretty bad in some scenes. Some scenes were just way, way too contrasty and didn't match the scenes prior and after.

And the audio was very inconsistent. The levels would constantly raise and lower. I'd have my speakers set to an optimum decibel but then suddenly I get yelled at to turn it down. When turned down the dialogue suddenly becomes inaudible. It was a hassle constantly raising and lowering the volume, that doesn't contribute to a quality movie-watching experience.


The most consistent problem with this movie is the lack of foundation. It lacked foundation to not just the primary plot but also the subplots. If they focused a little more on setting up the story and building up our emotions for the characters and their relationships then technical issues such as lighting, and colour, and editing could be easily overlooked. Bad acting is still bad acting, though... but at least there would've been a good story. But alas...


All in all, I enjoyed it, but not quite for the right reasons to enjoy a good movie. It was comedic in a lot of its ridiculousness. I had many hearty guffaws.

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[deleted]

I generally agree with you. I do not call it a great movie but I call it a very good movie. 8/10.

Kirk out.

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by borislav_mitev » Sun Jun 21 2009 08:57:28
IMDb member since August 2004
This movie was great, and for those that disagree you need to get your heads out of your arses, wash your eyes from all the crap and watch it again - then you might be able to apreciated it for what it was made - an unforgetable story about love, passion, honor, betrayal, greed, jealousy.

So the movie wasn't "historically"- or "legend"-wise accurate. First of all, it can't be historically acurate as it is based on a legend, any movie that tells a story about a dragon CAN NOT be historically acurate, period. So any discussion - about whether the castles, clothes, cultures, etc. looked this way or the that way, or the saxons or some other ethnic group existed or not at the time of the story - is a waste of forum space regardless of how many history books you have written. Second, the story of the movie was based on several legends the main one being that about Sigfrield. And even that one had many different variants, the earliest known dated back to the 5th century, the latest from the 13th.

You have no clue as to what you're talking about.

The male lead is a poor actor in the worst way. I'm surprised he got the role, unless the producers wanted to torpedo the film from the get go.

Any good competent actor could have done a better job than the joker they eventually cast.

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i’d like to see this.

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