Warrior Queen

I watched this 2003 movie recently (September 2014).  It tells the tale of Boudica, the Queen of the Iceni tribe in the 1st Century AD.  King Prasutagus of the Iceni chose to ally with the Romans, a decision that his wife, Boudica (Alex Kingston), doesn't approve.  After the king died, the Romans opted to take control of the Iceni territory.  Boudica was not too keen on the idea.  The Romans punished her challenge by beating her and raping her two daughters.  The Romans did not kill her, which proved to be an error.  She assembled an alliance to battle the Romans, sacking cities, including London.  The Romans had retreated until they could coalesce a sufficient army to trounce Boudica's forces, which they did.  There you have a basic history.

The movie follows this but often does stupid stuff.  During one attack, the Iceni managed to burrow under a statue and make it sink into the ground.  Really?  In that same battle, a bunch of children crawl between the legs of Roman soldiers - who are lined up for battle - and behead the political leader who is standing just behind the line of Roman soldiers.  Seriously?  Rome plays a big role and we meet both Claudius and Nero.  Claudius is a soft hand in diplomacy.  The actor did a good job of showing him as a wise frail fellow afflicted with stuttering.  Nero is just a nut and there is no subtlety in his portrayal.  When Boudica rebels, Nero asks Suetonius what should be done.  "Abandon Britain."  Yeah, that's the general I'm going to send to save it.

Suetonius does go to Britain and, though he shows constant and unending sorrow and guilt that he must fight the fully-justified Britons, he soundly trounces them despite being heavily out-numbered.  If he showed any more sympathy, he would have joined her rebellion.

On several points, the story compresses history.  Per the movie, it seems that King Prasutagus made his treaty with Rome and then died a few months later.  No, he actually ruled for around 20 years after the treaty.  Also, the Druids use actual magic, not distraction and confusion type magic.  The Druid makes one of Boudica's daughters invisible!  Really?  Is this a historical epic or a fantasy movie?

The movie is noteworthy for being Emily Blunt's first.  She portrayed one of the raped daughters who supposedly survives to birth future kings, blah, blah, blah.  Or maybe she was immortal.

Noggin and the Ice Dragon

Our story opens in a great hall where a man tells the tale of Noggin.  He begins his story with the great green bird, Graculus, flying near the mountains.  Graculus is a talking bird and chief advisor to Noggin, King of the Nogs.  Graculus flying near the castle one morning when he spots something moving about and dives, expecting to catch a tasty rabbit.  Instead, he finds a diminutive man who claims to be from the Hot Water Valley.  He has traveled far to meet with Noggin.  Graculus takes the little man to Noggin.  The little man declares that an Ice Dragon is terrorizing the Hot Water Valley and he asks that Noggin slay the dragon.  Noggin, who is something of a noble bumpkin, agrees and brings Thor Nogson with him.  So it is that Noggin, Thor Nogson, Graculus, and the little man set out on a dogsled to reach the distant Hot Water Valley.  A party more unsuited for the task at hand would be hard to assemble.  However, they overcome each obstacle and manage to return peace to the Hot Water Valley.

 

The story is told in 4 parts, each ending with a new cliffhanger.  Of note, there is never any fighting since it is targeted at children.  The story is told with very basic animation and only a couple of voice actors provide all the voices and narration.  Troubles are resolved with the tools at hand, be it large birds to get over a mountain, geysers to thaw from being frozen, ice to disable a cannon, and so forth.

 

The Saga of Noggin of the Nogs is a long-running British series that began in the late 50s but has been revived a couple of times since.  It is only vaguely Viking.  The main villain seems to be Noggin’s uncle, the aptly named Nogbad the Bad.

 

I like the idea of the show more than the actual show.  A hobbit comes to ask a distant king for aid against a rampaging Ice Dragon sounds like a good story hook.  The magic forest where the trees move and thus erase any path or road is a cool location.  Also, the Glass Mountains that are nigh-impossible to scale because they are smooth as glass is good stuff.  Great intelligent green birds – that might be friend or foe and can, when working in concert, carry a man aloft – make for an interesting encounter.  That it turns out the dragon was driven from his cave by the true villain provides an opportunity for hasty characters to fight the dragon rather than assist it.  This is a really good adventure that has sapped of its dangers to appeal to a young audience.

 

The Last Unicorn

The story opens in a lovely forest with two mounted hunters.  They soon realize this is a special wood, noting that it doesn’t snow here in winter and is likely the preserve of the last unicorn.  The unicorn overhears the pair and wonders at this notion of being last.  Soon thereafter a daft butterfly arrives and sings mostly gibberish but likewise indicates that she is the last unicorn.  Determined to know the truth, the unicorn sets out into the world.

 

On her journey, she discovers that she is the last and that unicorns are mostly viewed as a myth.  When people see her, they are blind to her horn and think she is just a white mare, which she takes as a great insult.  She further learns that a fiery red bull (no relation to the energy drink) had chased all the unicorns to the realm of King Haggard.  Shmendrick the Magician, who is able to see her for what she is, offers to lead her there in search of the missing unicorns.  But disaster strikes.  The red bull appears and chases the unicorn!  Shmendrick, who is a mediocre magician, nonetheless summons the power to polymorph the unicorn into a human woman.  Confused, the red bull departs.

 

It was interesting to watch how the polymorph played out.  Now called Lady Amalthea, she slowly loses her memory of being a unicorn.  As her memory fades, she falls in love with Prince Lir and dreams of a life with him.  Shmendrick cannot restore her until they determine how to protect her from the red bull.  The solution is somewhat disappointing.

 

Unicorns are quite powerful in this setting.  The unicorn has considerable though not explicitly explained powers regarding the woods in which she lives.  Unicorns are immortal, so becoming human was a shock since she was suddenly dying and felt cloistered by the mortal body.  She was able to negate a witch’s magic with the touch of her horn.  Later, she was able to raise the dead.

 

The movie is fun though there are some failings.  The animation is okay.  The voice cast is impressive: Jeff Bridges, Christopher Lee, Alan Arkin, Angela Lansbury, and Mia Farrow as the Unicorn.  The pacing is uneven, with some parts dragging and others are rushed.  The bandit incident comes and goes in a flash.  There are also some bizarre anachronisms.  The babbling butterfly sings a medley of modern songs while another character mentions barbed wire (invented in the 19^th century).  King Haggard commands the red bull but it is never explained how or what exactly the red bull is.  Would the captive unicorns have been released when King Haggard eventually died of old age?  Might everything have resolved itself in a few more years or would the red bull have stood eternal vigil over the unicorns?

 

Though the unicorn’s quest is a success, it isn’t really a happy ending.  That is refreshing.  Prince Lir has lost the love of his life and the Unicorn is an outcast among her kind because she had experienced a mortal life and now knows love and regret.

Saga: The Shadow Conspiracy

The Saga opens with a cloaked and masked figure aiming a ballista at a dragon that is being ridden by an orc.  The figure fires the ballista, killing the dragon.  By the time the figure arrives where the dragon crashed to the ground, the rider is gone but a trail of viscous blood and footprints in the sand make tracking easy.  When the two clash, it comes as no surprise that the cloaked and masked figure is a woman; she is also an elf.  After an overlong fight, Nemyt (Danielle Chuchran) the elf bounty hunter kills the orc but is cursed in the process; the mark of the shadow appears on her wrist.

 

Meanwhlie, Keltus the Wanderer, a cleric in the service of the Prophetess, has tracked down a dwarf, who is armed with an arquebus or two.  After subduing the dwarf, Keltus demands information on the growing shadow threat.  The dwarf is hardly helpful but Keltus leaves with one of the dwarf’s arms; it has the mark of the shadow on the wrist.

 

Elsewhere, Kullimon the Orc berates the horde for attacking a human settlement which will trigger reprisals.  The horde doesn’t care.  They have been seduced by the shadow and Kullimon is deposed and left to die.

 

Arriving in a frontier town, Nemyt seeks to get her bounty for the orc head and also reveals the marking she got while taking him down.  She is immediately arrested – with some resistance – and tossed in a dungeon.  Keltus arrives moments later and demands that the elf be released to his custody.  It is not a happy alliance.  En route to investigate a lead concerning the shadow, the pair discovers Kullimon the Black crucified among a litter of corpses (the orcs who were loyal to him).  Kullimon reveals the treachery of his horde and that they are allied with the shadow.  It is an even less happy alliance that follows when Keltus releases Kullimon.

 

The acting is surprisingly good for a B-movie, especially being fantasy.  The characters aren’t quite what one expects from the races.  Nemyt the elf has a habit of spitting and her personality is all edges and hostility.  It turns out that she is a survivor of an elf clan that was slaughtered by orcs when she was a child and thus she has no family.  Also, she didn’t have a bow.  What kind of elf doesn’t have a bow?  And what about that ballista from the beginning?  She lugged that thing into position then just left it?  She wields a peculiar saber/scimitar thing.  Keltus is a cleric to a barely explained goddess.  She seems to be lawful neutral since he is blindly obedient and yet is willing to sacrifice allies for the quest.  I did like the cinematic way his communing was done; he would find himself in a desert landscape with the goddess standing before him, wearing a ridiculously long scarf-like thing that swirled in the wind.  When she spoke, her mouth did not move.  Yeah, that was really well done.  On the other hand, for a cleric, he didn’t seem to have much in the way of magic.  After a fight where he was wounded, he washed and bandaged his wound but didn’t use a healing spell.  In fact, his only spell seemed to be Commune with Deity.  Kullimon reminded me of a Klingon in the Next Generation.  You see, orcs are noble warriors, not murderers and raiders.  Oh, right.  Kullimon was wise and loyal and immune to the charms of the shadow.  Kullimon never had any of the inner turmoil that Nemyt and Keltus suffer.  He is a rock, an orc of high moral standing and clear convictions.  Not at all what you expect from an orc.

 

For a low budget film, the production is quite good.  The make-up is first rate.  The orcs were almost on par with Lord of the Rings.  There was some minotaur-ogre thing that was cheesy but the rest was quite good.  The battles were a bit too choreographed and lasted longer than they should.  In her opening fight, Nemyt must have been kicked, punched, or bludgeoned in the face 5 times.

 

The plot is boilerplate stuff.  There is a scheme to bring the god of death back to the world and thus sweep all before him with legions of undead.  Blah blah blah.  To bring back Goth Azul (the God of Death), one had to recover the ashes of this fellow, get the blood from this place under a full moon, and sacrifice so many virgins, and so forth.  Those who have succumbed to the shadow are essentially undead and are difficult to kill.  The greatest failing was the epic conclusion.  In order to prevent the ceremony that will bring back Goth Azul, they send Nemyt – since she has the mark of the shadow – to infiltrate the milling horde and steal one of the required ingredients.  Meanwhile, Keltus and Kullimon will attack – 2 against a hundred – to provide a distraction.  Well, Kullimon almost immediately encounters the orc who stole the horde from him, so the two of them engage in a one-on-one duel.  That means that Keltus is fighting everyone else.  Through much of this fight, we see orcs just milling around, seemingly paying more attention to the ceremony – that would be the one where Nemyt is trying to ruin it – or cheering against Kullimon.  The whole thing was just badly done.  However, presuming Keltus, Nemyt, and Kullimon are mid to high level and the orcs are just 1 HD, this might be just fine in a gaming sense.

 

The movie was made by Arrowstorm Entertainment, based in Provo, UT.  It is hardly surprising then that Monument Valley made an appearance in the film.  The cinematography is quite good.  With a more coherent script, this could really have been great.  Even so, I enjoyed it and look forward to other Arrowstorm movies.

JourneyQuest - Animated

JourneyQuest is one of the great web series, offering great comedy in a D&D setting.  A classic scene is when two orcs relate an incident to a bard, with some artistic license.  Though the live action is good, this animated version is pure genius.  I'd almost suggest that it be spliced into the episode.

 

Jack the Giant Slayer

The movie opens with a farmer telling his son Jack the story of King Eric and the Giants.  Elsewhere, at that same moment, the queen is telling her daughter the same tale, so we switch from one to the other.  The tale tells of some monks who sought to visit god by creating a beanstalk that would allow them to climb to heaven.  Instead, they found a land of giants who descended upon the lands of men, bringing destruction.  King Eric had a crown forged from the black heart of a giant and was able to control the giants with it.  He sent them back to their abode and had the beanstalk cut down.  Such is now the stuff of legend.

 

Years later, Jack (Nicholas Hoult) is sent by his uncle to sell a horse and cart.  He gets distracted by a performance of King Eric and seeks to protect a lady from ruffians.  The lady proves to be Princess Isabelle (Eleanor Tomlinson) who was watching the play incognito.  By the time Jack gets back to the horse and cart, he finds the cart is gone.  Still trying to sell the horse, he gets beans from a monk who assures him the abbot will pay dearly for them.  However, don’t get them wet!  His uncle is less than pleased, scattering the useless beans across the floor, one of which falls between the floorboards.  He storms off to sell something else, leaving Jack to mope.

 

Coincidence of coincidences, Princess Isabelle arrives at the humble farmhouse in the middle of a storm that very night.  She is fleeing home because she doesn’t want to marry Roderick (Stanley Tucci).  Her banter with Jack is cut short when a beanstalk lifts the house.  Jack falls but Isabelle is carried upward.

 

Though his generals counsel that he cut down the beanstalk, the King (Ian McShane) sends a rescue party to recover his daughter.  Elmont (Ewan McGregor) leads a party of 10 men as well as Jack and Roderick.  Sure enough, they encounter giants and are easily overcome.  All except Jack.  For no apparent reason, Jack is a sneaky fellow who manages to be in the right place at the right time.

 

There are some bits that are goofy.  Elmont managed to escape the land of the giants by riding the freshly cut beanstalk all the way down, jumping off just as he was lined up with the castle moat.  Likewise, Jack and Isabelle were on the beanstalk and swung from a vine to land on a haystack; well done, Jack.  Elmont is a much more interesting character.  He has some great lines and is sort of a happy-go-lucky soldier who grins a lot.

 

Inevitably, the princess ends up with Jack, which was weird.  Sure, it was a foregone conclusion but he’s a peasant and she’s a princess.  His great claim is that he used King Eric’s crown of Giant Control to once again send the giants home.

 

The end is rather peculiar since it shows the crown being made fancier until it becomes the British crown, held in the Tower of London.  Oh, this is all English history?  I did not realize.

The Norseman

The Norseman opens in 1006 AD on a Viking long ship in the midst of a storm.  Prince Thorvald (Lee Majors) has sailed across the Atlantic in search of his missing father, King Eurich.  Ragnar (Cornell Wilde) is second in command and master of the ship.  The Wizard (Jack Elam) provides mostly useless omens from beneath his dark hood.  Prince Eric (played by the director’s son) is along for no apparent reason though he is the narrator.  Speaking of the narration, Eric is offering it years later so an older man’s voice introduces many of the characters.  However, if we are going to narrate from one character’s point of view, that character should be in every scene; he isn’t.  He is twelve and it is baffling why he is even on the ship.  Is Thorvald risking the whole family on this expedition?

 

Only three natives are worthy of note.  There is Kiwonga, the chief.  He is all hostility and has no problem tossing wave after wave of his men into the metal blades of the Norsemen.  In a flashback, it is shown that his hostility began when Winetta – the sexy Indian – showed too much interest in Rolf, one of King Eurich’s men.  Kiwonga is all screams and shouts, bellicose in every scene.  Next there is the old woman, who is likewise mostly angry and hostile but more thoughtful than Kiwonga.  Lastly, there is Winetta, the only member of the tribe who has any sympathy for the Norsemen.  In fact, she sides against her tribe to assist in the rescue of King Eurich and his men.  Also of note, she has a sexy formfitting mini-dress whereas every other woman wears off-the-rack skins that do nothing for their figures.  Among the rest of the natives, it is funny to see how white some were.  The call for extras had some loose standards.  Moreover, some were rather portly; we have a well-fed band of natives.

 

Thorvald has come to this distant land with approximately 20 men, a rather paltry force for a supposed Prince on a mission to rescue the King.  In flashbacks, we see the King celebrating with the natives and see that he has fewer than 10 men.  Oddly, the natives captured and blinded the King and his band; I am unaware of blinding practiced by Native Americans.  The blinded Norsemen are housed in a cave some distance from the village and they are forced to grind grain into meal.  So, there is this daily march to and from the cave.  Why bother?  They are blind so running away isn’t much of a threat.  No, it just shows how wicked and mean the Indians are.

 

The battles are a disaster.  A score of Vikings with shields and armor should be devastating to a Stone Age tribe that charges into battle virtually naked and with relatively primitive weapons.  Instead, it is the other way around.  The one mass battle between Viking and Indian is declared a loss for the Vikings though during the battle it seemed as if the Vikings were cleaning up.  But after they run away, Ragnar names it a failure that cost too many lives.  Granted, the Vikings have only one crew vs. a tribe.  Also, the Norsemen did break formation and allow a random melee to ensue which really diminishes their technological advantages.  Though they began with a shield wall, it shattered almost immediately under the native charge.

 

The Vikings are ridiculously equipped.  First, they have horned helmets; this is a common misconception but even the most cursory look at history would have nixed the horns.  Second, they are wearing breastplates; a Viking who wore chainmail was a wealthy man and breastplates were not available; the typical Viking would have had shield and helmet.  Third, their shields are metal; the Viking shield was wooden with either leather or iron rim; also, it was fairly large whereas the ones in the movie are little more than bucklers.  Fourth, they have non-Viking swords and axes.  The axes were particularly jarring, looking like something from a fantasy movie rather than an historical epic.  Fifth, they have crossbows.  Crossbows were not used in warfare until the Battle of Hastings (1066), 60 years in the future.  Apparently, the film maker used Hagar the Horrible for historical research!

 

The natives aren’t any better.  The Vikings landed on the east coast of what is now Canada, not known to be balmy, and yet the locals are running around in loincloths.  The movie was filmed in Florida, which is rather balmy.  Florida is very like Medieval Canada, which is certainly why the location was chosen.  You know, palmetto trees and such were all over Canada back in the day.  Or perhaps this movie presumes that this particular band of Norsemen really did land in Florida.

 

Of particular note, one of the Norsemen is Deacon Jones, Hall of Fame Football Defensive Lineman; it should be noted that Deacon is black.  A brief narration at the beginning of the movie explains that he was captured during a raid in Africa.  Why that makes him a Norseman is unclear.  He is called Thrall, which is the Norse word for slave.  He is the slave of Olaf, a berserker whose tongue he cut out.  Thrall wears Olaf’s tongue around his neck.  Huh?

 

Speaking of Olaf, he is the butt kicker of the outfit.  He is routinely the rearguard and is seen as the lead berserker.  At one point, he drowns two natives simultaneously.  However, he is terrible at throwing his axe and looks less than menacing in his tan skirt and fuzzy horned helmet.

 

Lee Majors is wooden as can be.  His delivery sounds like that of an Indian in a 1950s Cowboy movie – slow and stilled, as if English isn’t his first language.  Even though his dialogue is admittedly bad, he manages to imbue it with all the emotion of a potato.   He also has some odd pronunciations.  He says ‘Norzman’ rather than Norseman.  Then there was the first Norseman who died, Bjorn.  Amazingly, both he and Cornell Wilde pronounced it Bee-John.  Really?  Hadn’t you guys ever heard of Bjorn Borg?  He was a famous tennis player in 1978.  These guys must have sailed from the Fjords (Fee-Johds) of Norway.

 

After the initial encounter on the beach where Bjorn is killed, the Norsemen row up river for a couple of days.  When Thorvald takes the berserkers to rescue his father, he tells Ragnar to meet him at the beach by day’s end.  Fine, it is a river and raising the anchor should get you moving.  No, actually, it seems to be a pond.  There is absolutely no flow.  The ship must be rowed to move and comes to a stop when the rowing halts.  Yes, that is probably useful for filming but somewhat irksome when it figures in the plot.

 

Why is it that every Norseman shot in the long ship must tumble over the gunwale and splash into the river?  None of you could fall inside the boat?  Well, that would be less cinematic and this is an epic.  Sigh.

 

I saw the Norseman in the theaters lo those many years ago and thought it was a great movie.  Seeing it again, it is one long disappointment.  One wonders how such films get funding.