One must give credit to Michael Crichton, the man who created works of fiction that asked questions such as “what if Disneyland had dinosaurs” and “what if apes were jerks” and “what if Beowulf was boring and also laced with my historical fanfic.” Then of course, John McTiernan popped up to ask in turn “what if I did your book no favors by directing it without a sense of desperately-needed visual flair.” As you may have inferred, Leigh, Brendan, and Chris are tackling the 1999 would-be historical epic The 13th Warrior, a mostly-forgotten flop that was the financial equivalent of loading $160 million on a boat and setting it on fire so that it may ascend to Valhalla. Join us as we discuss the Beowulfness of it all, the lack of almost any compelling characters, and how almost every action sequence feels like it’s desperately trying to wrap itself up as soon as it starts. Naturally, we also made a hot Norwegian-inspired cocktail to accompany all this Nordic drollery, so at least we had that going for us.
