Hello all, this isn't major news, but I wanted to pass along that my local Target got a stack of the DVD's for "The 13th Warrior" in the last few days. This movie has been very hard to find on DVD. I've looked for it at every Barnes and Noble, Walmart, Target, music store, etc, for the past couple years without finding it. I have a feeling Target stores are probably stocked similarly, so now that mine has it a Target near you may as well.

As a reminder about the movie, it's with Antonio Banderas, who plays an Arab that is "hired" by some Vikins to go and kill an evil monster. It's a version of the Beowulf story. It was sort of a sleeper, but one of my favorite of the Viking era action movies. Just thought I'd pass it along in case someone else has been wanting to add it to their collection and having a hard time like me.

13th Warrior is one of my all time favorite movies. Never had a problem finding it when I wanted to buy a copy a few years ago. Of course, like most hollywood movies, the weapons and armour are bollocks but it is great fun to watch.

The weapons, armor and fighting might be nonsense (they make the viking swords weigh so much Banderas can barely lift one), but the fatalistic attitude of the vikings is rather nicely portrayed, if I remember correctly.

I agree, it's one of my favorite viking movies by a wide margin. If anyone wants context on the film, it's based on Michael Crichton's "Eaters of the Dead", which is a sort of mashup between Beowulf and an Arab's account of an embassy to the Rus, which included a description of vikings he met on the Volga, with a first-hand account of a ship burial. Considering the somewhat odd history of the story, it's a very nice movie.

Eaters of the Dead is a great old tale, I re-read it every few years or so. The movie wasn't as good, the second half was much improved after Chrichton was employed to sort out the mess.
Phil

i have/had both books, eaters of the dead and "13th warrior" i got them cause someone borrowed my eaters and ruined it so returned it with the 13th warrior version. was there any difference in the books or just the titles?

I picked that up a few months ago at my local Wal Mart. I absolutely love that movie. Easily my favorite movie. I don't care how many times i have seen it I just don't get tired of it.
Darn, now I want to watch it again! :D

I read the book when it was first published, around 1978 I think. The movie was good but, as has been pointed out in this post and others, not authentic when it comes to weapons and armor. As far as availability of the DVD version, it can be found easily on Amazon.com.

the 13th worrier is one of those movies that after you've seen a little bit of it, you don't really care about the props being accurate for the time portrayed. the plot and story are good enough in themselves. first time i saw the movie was for extra credit for my eng lit class in high school - i was expecting a more beowulf type story though.

i'm waiting for someone to make a hollywood movie based on the nibelungenlied one day . . .

I'm a big fan of 13th Warrior also.

Have you seen the sci fi movie Dark Kindom? It is based on the Nibelungenlied. I have not seen it for a long time, but remember thinking it was entertaining.

Daniel Wallace wrote:

the 13th worrier is one of those movies that after you've seen a little bit of it, you don't really care about the props being accurate for the time portrayed. the plot and story are good enough in themselves. first time i saw the movie was for extra credit for my eng lit class in high school - i was expecting a more beowulf type story though. i'm waiting for someone to make a hollywood movie based on the nibelungenlied one day . . .

I didn't really like it

Eaters of the Dead is one of the few books I have ever read cover to cover twice in a row without getting up.

Hello
I never read the book,but this thread has me wanting, to check it out. How close to the book, are the characters, from the movie? It was the characters, that made the movie for me. And the one liners

"No boy...this is no day to be close to land"

"If they dont follow us...its too far to swim"

The 13th warrior in my DVD collection. One of the very first DVDs I got really.
I love it, but it's got some really awful fails that I always have to force myself to overlook.

Armours are excellent quality, far suerpior to other contemporary movies of this type pre-WETA and Norton armouries.
But most of it hardly authentic to the time the movie depicts which is a horrible and needless oversight by the prop department and/or producers since they simply ordered what you see instead of what they could have had for the same money from the same armourer had they just asked for it. What could have been one of the best historical-ish viking movies is reduced to a fantasy blend similar to what we see in WOW today. Why?? For the love of...
The swords are complete crap. But it's fun to see Banderas making a curved blade from stock removal. Having learnt a lot more about curved blades from this very forum in recent years, this makes me think though. Were arabs even using curved blades at the time?

My favorite scenes are when he learns their language, the woodland scene with the bowman just before when they find the raided cottage and the one when Banderas finds out they're not supernatural creatures and he regains his courage. Some of this is probably Banderas best work of his entire career and has some great acting all round.

The duel scene and the explanation for it is pretty cool too. Restricting the number of shields like that makes me think they meant i to be a holmgång, but I don't remember them calling it that or following other rules regarding it.

Actually, I'll probably pop it in the DVD tonight...

I like the 13th Warrior but so much of the final battle seems like a rip off of the 7 Samurai which is a better movie.

i know that within the time period of the first crusade the middle east was using a straight bladed sword, i don't know exactly when the curved sword was adopted. there were pictures posted around here a while back that i don't have on this hard drive, but they look similar to western swords of the time. i never put the movie in a particular time frame, i just thought it was some time during the end of the migration era.

it's got so may good lines in it, that are not just action movie catch lines that you expect.

since this does bring up the subject of beowulf spin offs, what did some of you think about the 3d beowulf made a few years back? a real nice look in progress of cg animation, only thing i remember like it was the original final fantasy movie made years ago. the guy that did the voice of beowulf, i've seen the actor in other movies but he truly gave the character an animal like quality.

A friend of mine worked at Valentine at the time this movie was made. My recollection of his story is that the props guys basically showed up and purchased every piece of armour in the shop, regardless of period, because they needed it immediately.

It's been a long time since I saw this movie. I recall liking the early bits, like the funeral scene and the language learning bit, but contrary to the mainstream here, I really disliked the rest of it. I had a hard time reconciling the terrible array of armour with the other accurate details, especially when they made a point of zooming in on the viking raising the visor on his Roman gladiator helmet, or the other guy knocking on his steel breastplate and exclaiming its virtues.

I probably also had a strange disposition going in, since I knew that my friend had made a great deal of the armour, and I was really disappointed by what they had done with it.