outlander, wherein an alien bounty hunter recruits eighth century vikings to help him kill a ‘dragon’.
i’m shocked that this isn’t a scifi original, that it has a budget and a decent name cast. and looks good! like pitch black good. a nice little scifi action piece.
not sure about jim caveziel as the lead, don’t know him that well. and frankly, while i can get behind vikings all being white people, because, hey, you know, vikings. still. would it have killed them to include even a single woman in the main cast? or any other ethnicity?
i mean, why not cast a black man as the alien? or better yet, a black woman. that’d play nicely against expectations. they could call her a valkyrie and grudgingly accept her aid after she’d kicked the ass of their biggest and best warrior.
denzel is past that phase of his career (virtuosity), sam jackson or will smith would have overwhelmed the material. vin diesel or antonio banderas would have fit nicely.
or michelle yeoh. or angela bassett. or gina torres.
anyways. that it exists at all is still pretty great. looks like a mashup of brotherhood of the wolf (the big bad monster, traps, hunters), the 13th warrior (lone outsider joins a band of medievial warriors against an unspeakable evil), and army of darkness (monsters show up in the middle of internecine conflict, both sides must band together in the end to defeat the mutual enemy).
ron perlman is in this, i’m guessing the bald viking in the woods in the trailer. i’m calling it right now, without even researching this, he’s eric the red from army of darkness. he’s the leader of the ‘enemy’ viking group from the one our alien hero lands in, and they have to get his help by the end to defeat the monster.
First, He’s not a bounty hunter, and the alien monster was on his ship when he crash landed… and there are women main characters, the first trailer just didn’t show them. Sophia Myles plays a viking warrior princess. I kind of like your “black alien” idea though.
July 16th, 2008 at 11:09 pm
indeed. as i said, i hadn’t done any research, just going off the trailer.
although i’d posit that if they didn’t show the girls in the first trailer that’s not promising for their importance to the plot. then again, they didn’t show ron perlman, and i’d have expected that, since he’s kind of in a big movie right now.
yeah. if we accept that the alien is a humanoid, there’s no inherent reason for him to be anglosaxon unless he’s a shapeshifter and he’s adapted to his environs. not that he needs to be green or blue, although a very deep olive-green or reddish-brown would be interesting to see. just off enough to look distinct without being overtly martian.
still, having read a bit more, i like cavezial now, so bring it on.
July 17th, 2008 at 12:32 pm