The 2021 film year will stretch well into 2022 -- that happens with late Oscar ceremonies -- but we finally have a title we're really excited about to look forward to the month after the Oscars. Robert Eggers' viking drama The Northman starring Alexander Skarsgård hits theaters on April 22nd. Let's discuss the trailer with our Yes No Maybe So™ system...
YES
• "Now Behold"... this is a well structure trailer! It immediately demands your attention verbally, and then rewards you in split seconds with a new wig drop from Nicole Kidman. Her expression is ambiguous but will surely read thrilling in context.
• The cast is beyond stellar. From Nicole and her wig we move to Willem Dafoe doing candle-lit scary face "your fate is set and you cannot escape it". Our collective fate is one impossibly charismatic actor after another: Kidman, Dafoe, Hawke, Skarsgárd, Taylor-Joy, and, finally, Claes Bang (The Square, Dracula) following in the great Shakespearean tradition of your evil uncle who kills your father. What's more that's not even all of them. Less famous but compelling actors in this include both Kate Dickie and Ralph Ineson (Anya's parents in The Witch), rising Swedish actor Gustav Lindh (Queen of Hearts), "The Mountain" himself Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson (Game of Thrones), and one of the greatest Icelandic actors ever Ingvar Sigurdsson as "The Sorcerer"
• Robert Eggers and his team are so good at atmosphere (see also The Witch and The Lighthouse) and the gang is all back together: Louise Ford on editing, Jarin Blachske as DP, Craig Lathrop on production design. Linda Muir on costumes.
• The image of Anya Taylor Joy speaking of "cunning" with her hands outstretched. Skarsgård growling wearing a wolf's fur. Volcanic eruption as scenic design for climactic battles. So many starkly imposing images that look so intriguing in quick succession.
• Björk! She hasn't acted since Dancer in the Dark. Even if this is only a witchy-prophecy cameo we thank Robert Eggers for coaxing her out of her post-VonTrier silver screen retirement
NO
• Not so sure about Anya Taylor Joy's accent (or the accents in general)
• I will probably have to watch the battle sequences with my hands over my face. Gore used to be fairly rare and now it's so common that it's in every crime show on tv. I started noticing this change in the Aughts but it really took hold in the 2010s. American Horror Story, for example, was far gorier on television than the kinds of movies that were slapped with "R" and required adult supervision when I was a kid. I suppose we're never going back to which I can only sigh because somehow the new permissiveness in the arts ONLY applied to violence but sex, which is an infinitely healthier act and thankfully still more likely to be a part of most moviegoers lives, became forbidden.
MAYBE SO
I will avenge you father,
I will save you mother
• The trailer keeps repeating this and on the one hand you could argue that it's dumbed down tagline for dumbed down audiences who only go for franchises and since this is new IP it has to get super familiar, elemental even with the oldest of tropes. On the other it will probably feel like an ancient religious or mythological mantra here, given the craft of this particular filmmaking team.
Firmly a yes for me. Are you a yes, no, or maybe so?