So You Think That Was Good Do You?

Hello and welcome to So You Think That Was Good Do You, a podcast where we take a look
back at the films from your childhood and question the absurdity of their universes.
My name is Evan, and this week marks the fleeting return of my original co-host Sam and Carl
Boys, how are you doing? I'm doing great. Thanks so much for having us back on. We know
you're in the big leagues now. You're collaborating, you've moved on. Wait, return? Have you been
doing these without us? You're not listening! That explains why our viewers have dropped
out from 1 to 0. Well, with the return of the original Recipe Boys, I was feeling sentimental
and have allowed Carl to pick the movie, and so we watched The 13th Warrior from 1999 starring
Antonio Banderares, who plays an ethnicity of which he is not. Carl, just prelude all
this for us. Why this movie? I mean, I like to disappoint week on week. I have fond memories
of this movie. To catch up with the shit choices. And once again, genuinely thought the boys
are like this. And I was wrong, but I think- I'm not going to give away my opinions on
it too much at this point, but yeah, interesting choice. Oh, are you not? So the messages beforehand,
they don't. They don't count. No one else can read those, Carl. That's exterior. No
one knows. Maintain the allure, the mystery of the part. My heart knows. Well, let's get
started with a quick plot synop, and Carl, you provided this for me, so why don't you
explain what this is before I attempt to read it? Fuckin' blaming me for everything today,
Carl. Oh yeah, I got ChatGPT to write a plot synop for this, and now Evan's going to read
it out. That's all you need to know. And what style is it in, Carl? You've got to give more
context than that. It may or may not be in the style of- I think it's meant to be pronounced
Dr. Zoys, but we'll say Dr. Seuss, because that's what everyone assumes. What an outrageous
way to pronounce that so early on in the plot. People are going to be angry about that. I'll
get messages from people. That's a curveball within a curveball. All the messages are going
to be- actually it's pronounced Dr. Seuss, and they're all going to be written, so they're
all going to be identical. Well, let's get started with this, and bear with me, because
I have not practiced the cadence whatsoever. Also, how do you pronounce this character's
name? Zoys. Ahmed? Fuck off. Ahmed? You pronounce it however you like. He pronounces it Ahmed,
but I don't think that's correct. But that's how he says it, so let's go with that. Okay.
Enter Ahmed, a stranger so bold. He joins the Vikings, both brave and so cold. Thirteen
they are, on a quest so grand, to save the tribe from the evil at hand. They journey
through forests, rivers and hills, fighting off foes with swords and their skills. They
come across a tribe who teach them to fight, and soon they are ready with all of their
might. The enemies camp, they sneak through the night. They fight and they win, what a
glorious sight. But Ahmed, he knows, the enemy's boss. He chases him down, at a great cost.
A hero he is, but now he must leave. His journey is done, he's ready to grieve. He leaves with
the Vikings, with tears in his eyes, but he knows that he helped, and that's no surprise.
This is shit. So what's the story of the 13th warrior, a tale of bravery, with no need
to hurry. A story of friendship, and of fighting for right, of heroes who stood, and who won
the fight. Fuck me. Okay, I just want to take a moment to appreciate that it wasn't that...
I mean, the average plot synopsis that Edwin reads, I've seen him stumble over single syllable
words, and take three or four runs at a couple sentences. He just went through a full Dr.
Sue's poem, with virtually no stumbles. You've come a long way.
It's pronounced... Thank you. Well, I have no idea if that's too long to know whether
or not that encapsulates the plot. There is some notes in there, I guess. I can tell you
now, I mean, apart from there's a dude possibly called Ahmed, and there are Vikings. No, none
of that happened in that way. It was a camp, I think I remember, and a bit of night, but
yeah, other than that. I think they were quite cold at times.
Well, thank you for that, Carl, and thank you for now starting the movie.
Okay, so we start out on a big old Viking ship. We're out at sea in a storm, and we
zoom in on a definitely Arabic man, and he's huddled on board this ship, and in the voiceover
he says that, I am Ahmed ibn Fahalan, ibn al-Abbas, ibn Rashid, ibn Hamad, and things
were not always thus. We learn that he was a poet in the greatest city in the world,
but he's been exiled to this horrible, disgusting wasteland known as Europe, to be an ambassador
to the people there, because he did the nasty with some other men's wife.
I mean, did he actually do anything with the guy's wife, or did he just make eyes at her?
He definitely looked at her. Oh no, yeah, he did the dirty.
That's what it looked like. And this woman's 70-year-old husband was not happy about it.
Yeah, you'd think this is his kind of, this is the exposition, is that he made eyes at
a fit woman, and maybe had sex with her, and then got banished to the north. Spoiler alert,
what does he do when he gets there? Oh yeah.
Finds the nearest woman, sleeps with her, fucks off, gets on a boat, leaves. But we'll
get to that. You've made that sound really succinct, Carl,
but that takes fucking ages to get through. That opening, the monologue, it's all exposition,
and it takes so fucking long. And we didn't need to know any of it for the movie to happen.
We build up, to some extent, two places where we do not stay.
No, not at all. Because after this, we get into Europe, the
absolutely horrific hellscape that is, apparently, that he hates, filled it up with all the dangerous
people there, and then we just leave. Yeah, there's so much build-up, there's
so much exposition about the Tartars attacking. Yeah, the Tartars.
And they've got a whole group of people, Tartars, whatever, they attack, and they have to run
away, and all this stuff. Forget that. That's gone. We've moved on.
Also, he's with a group of, like, 20 guys. Forget them.
There's just one guy who we need to remember that's with him, and then even he disappears
in the next five minutes. He's also gone.
Well, we'll get to him now. Let's move on.
So we're in the absolute shithole that is Europe. He's been banished there with Melchisedec,
I've definitely pronounced that wrong, who is played by Omar Sharif.
Crazy that you know these people's names. And he and his caravan, they're going through
somewhere and they're going to be attacked by the Tartars. They flee and they end up
coming across this Viking ship, and for whatever reason, the Tartars are scared off by this.
And so Ahmed, Ibn Fahalan, Ibn al-Abbas, Ibn Rashid, Ibn Hamad, he's not familiar with
who the Vikings are, so he asked one of his party if these guys are dangerous or not,
and he's told it depends. Maybe they'll let us go, or maybe they'll kill us, but that's
true of him.
Yeah, that's a yes.
In other words, the other guy didn't know either.
Which is it then?
I mean, yeah, clearly no one's got any idea who they are, because even Omar Sharif's
character, whatever his name is, tries to speak to them in what we have to assume is
English.
Yeah.
Oh, I don't know.
Because he then says, oh, try Greek.
Try Greek.
Yeah.
You have no idea who these people are.
He tries Greek, and then the guy just responds, apparently understands, but then responds
in Latin. The whole thing makes no sense to me. So, along with his companion, Ahmed,
Ibn Fahalan, Ibn al-Abbas, Ibn Rashid, Ibn Hamad.
For fuck's sake.
He meets the Vikings and finds out that they're actually at the funeral for their king, and
they get to witness one of the old Viking funerals as the king's body and his possessions
and a live woman are put on a ship and burned. And before that happens, the woman delivers
an ancient Viking prayer, which goes, I've written it down. Have you missed me, Ibn?
Lo there do I see my father, lo there do I see my mother, and my sisters and my brothers,
lo there do I see the line of my people back to the beginning. Lo, they do call to me,
they bid me take my place among them in the halls of Valhalla, where the brave may live
forever.
Ibn included that.
Not quite as fluent as I have.
Because that exact same prayer is also in Thor Ragnarok, spoken by Thor after Odin dies.
And it's also spoken by Atreus in God of War Ragnarok. And it actually dates all the way
back to the year 1999, when this movie was released.
Oh, what a fucking pause that was. That was amazing.
That was superb. But are you saying that they wrote this and it managed to get carried into
this point?
Yeah, for some reason, this movie inspired a lot of the Viking culture that is included
in other movies. So yeah, The Thirteenth Warrior, the absolute bomb that was. It just has little
bits of it just spread out across the next 20 odd years, I guess.
This is like the lesser known Wilhelm screen. It's in everything. You just don't realise.
Long there goes Dad.
Not only one of my favourite bits of trivia from you there, Carl, but the way you delivered
that. Excellent. I will forever remember that pause between 19 and 99.
Also what deducts from the kind of meaningfulness of this bit is that a man is lifting the woman
into the air, just up and down, like he's tugging it on a fucking bell.
Lifts her for each line, and brings her back down.
Just keep her up. He's got to give his arms little rests between the lines.
The next morning comes and we're back in The Tenth. And we're just in time for the Vikings
like morning wash routine, which is just one of the grimmest things ever put on screen.
They pass around the same bowl of water and one by one drink and swill out their mouths
from it, wash their faces in it and then blow their noses into this bowl of water and the
next person will get it and do that. Just horrible.
Can we point out that they're next to a river?
Let me point out that you can blow your nose anywhere, it didn't need to go into the bowl.
That would be disgusting of them. It doesn't go in the water bowl. That's unhygienic.
That's the quickest way to get freshers flu.
In the night, another ship has arrived and there's a young boy stood out on the bow of
it like a statue and they ask this Viking that they've been communicating with, who's
now just going to be called Budget Captain Jack Sparrow, because that's all he reminds
me of. And he says the boy is giving them time to decide if he's real. Apparently the
ship arrived in the mist and they associate the mist with an ancient evil. Eventually
the boy is brought before the leader Buliwyf, Buliwyf, I'm not...
Close enough.
I mean, you've already led with all that or whatever you said, so just say whatever you
want from here on out.
The boy arriving in the mist stuff, that is one of many examples of just random, what
I assume is trivia, but it's really confusing. Exposition doesn't quite get far enough to
make any sense. You're just left sitting there like, hold on, what? You think he's a ghost?
I assume, yeah. I assume it's so that much later on there can be some sort of call back.
You think?
So the boy comes in, meets Buliwyf, and he comes from a village to the north, which is being
attacked by an ancient evil, which comes from the mist. So if you've got a good enough memory,
you might remember that earlier on something like that was referenced, where Buliwyf calls
on some oracle woman that they just have with them, who's either absolutely ancient or that's
just how you're going to look if you're the only woman on a ship with 50 Vikings. Some
haggard old woman. She is brought forward as an oracle and reads a big bag of bones
and she says that 13 men have to go and help this boy's village.
Yeah, pause though, because she says 13 men after the 13 months in the year. And I had
to pause the movie and count the months in the year. We have 12, right? Was this just
Evanland?
Yes.
Do we used to have 13?
No, I've got the same.
Okay, you've got the same calculation.
I've got the same thing written down. She says 13, the number of months in a year.
First of all, cool, thanks. I know what 13 means. Also, I've done a bit of like a bit
of Googling. I don't want to call it research. I've done a bit of Googling. I can't find
any good sources for a 13 month, either Arabic or Norse Viking, whatever calendar.
This is from a group of people who later on go, I've heard you can draw sounds.
Yeah, fair do. I know what writing is.
Oh, okay. Wait, so you guys have built ships and traveled the world, but don't know writing
yet, apparently.
Yeah, or how many months there are.
Buliwyf volunteers as the first man, and then slowly the next 11 places are taken by
the other Northmen. And when it gets to the 13th bone, Sam?
Quick correction. Well, sorry, like you said, they go through 12 supposedly Northmen, although
realistically it's 11 Scandinavians and the most Irish man in the world.
No one is who they're pretending to be in this movie. I know that's the point of acting,
but you're pretty far off the mark in this one.
He's still doing an Irish accent. And that's not even touching on the Spanish guy. Sorry,
continue.
So we get to the 13th bone, and the Oracle says that the 13th bone will be no Northmen.
And we know that the 13th bone represents Antonia Banderas, because just like him, it's
been painted darker for the movie.
Nice.
It has. Also, they need a warrior for this group, right? Did they forget that there's
still like 20 other guys outside the tent that they were travelling with? One of them's
got to be able to fight. The poet cannot be your best choice.
The bones only apply to those in the tent, Sam.
Sure, okay.
They went around and did the maybe they'll let us live or maybe they'll kill us. And
these are the only two that I guess survived the 50-50 coin flip. And they can't take the
60-year-old man.
So the young boy who arrived by boat to get his warriors to help his villages, they've
been selected. And so the young boy who came by boat can now go back home. So obviously
they all set off on horseback.
That's a good point. It's not with them.
I guess he heads home on his boat. He'll be there two weeks and they're like, yeah, yeah,
we'll come help. We'll see you in 15 to 18 months of hiking, I guess.
Also a year then.
It's like when you say goodbye to a friend and you both walk off in the same direction.
It's so awkward.
Walking next to him for like six weeks.
Okay, so before they set off, Captain Jack Pidgeon asks Antonio Banderas his name and
he replies,
My name is Ahmed Ibn Fahalan, Ibn al-Abbas, Ibn Rashid, Ibn Hamad. But the Viking misunderstands
and thinks his name's Ibn. So he has to correct him and say, no, no, my name is Ahmed.
He's going to take the best one and copy paste it through.
That's a lot of grandads to have to name every time you have to introduce yourself.
Because we learn that Ibn means son of. People might not know this, but Evan actually introduces
us in the same way at the start of every episode, going back as far back in our male lineage
as we know.
The buck stops here, boys.
My name is Evan. This is Sam and Carl.
So during that 15 month hike, in what has got to be one of the best and also most ridiculous
scenes ever put on screen. Ahmed Ibn Fahalan, he learns the Norse language by listening
to the Vikings around the campfire every night, somehow.
From what I can tell, it's one night. He spends a single night looking at their map.
It's definitely at least two nights because it's raining one of them. There's a rainy
night and there's a non-rainy night.
Or it just stops raining on that one night.
It just starts and stops raining again.
No, no, because his makeup wasn't leaking on the second night.
It's not his makeup bro, that's his skin colour.
Two nights, even then, the breadth of language he uses through the rest of the film, they
must have said every word that he uses for the rest of the film at least once during
these two nights. So I assume they just sit around reading out of the dictionary.
It's the only thing that makes sense.
I don't mean to point out the obvious here, but you can hear every word in another language
and that doesn't mean you know how to speak that language. You've just memorised every
word they have. You don't know what they fucking mean. You've got no reference for your language
that you speak. You're just parroting words back to them.
He's like the little boy with spoons in Mimic.
He's definitely said something to them. I don't know if it'll offend.
He finally speaks when one of them insults his mother, replying that his mother was a
pure woman and at least he knows who his father is.
And for anyone who doesn't know, his father is Fahalan, who is the son of Alibes.
Right we all know who your father is. You've told us so many times.
Ibn.
And then I'm sure, sorry if you're about to say this, but he then calls the guy a pig-eating
son of a whore, which as an ambassador is a great first thing to say to the new culture
that you're meeting.
The best icebreaker I've ever heard.
Bit more hiking. Vikings mock him for his tiny horse and then we're back on the boat
from the beginning of the movie and we arrive in the north.
Well the Vikings take the piss out of his horse saying only an Arab would bring a dog
to war or something, calling his horse a dog. So he proves that it's not a dog by running
in circles and jumping over stuff. You know, like crafts.
Also I just, just because it'll annoy me that we'll have glazed blasted, great alternative
name for this movie, Hiking Vikings. There you go.
Nice.
Very good. That would have been so much better. But you said he gets to the north and they're
met by some of the locals I guess. But I want to point out the first thing that the locals
say when they reach the shore is they say they can smell perfume. And how fucking strong
must his perfume be to be smelled outdoors from about a hundred meters away after weeks
at sea, over all the smell of sweat and seawater, this man must be absolutely drenched in it.
It wasn't raining earlier. He was just pouring perfume on himself.
When you're a group of people who literally wash in your own snot, you're probably going
to notice a bit of perfume in there. Turns out they have perfumes. They've invented perfume.
So they care about how they smell, but still washing their own spit and snot.
Yeah.
But just before they get to shore, they arrive in, they're on the ship in the mist and they're
firing like fire arrows into the mist so that they can tell if they're near land. So the
arrow will hiss if it hits water and the arrow will thud if it hits land. And they're saying
they have to be quiet so they can hear the arrow. And all the time that's happening,
Bolvai's just on the front of the ship, just shouting Odin over and over again. I have
no fucking clue why.
This is Imagine More mythology they've invented for this movie. I also have no idea why. Also,
if you have to listen for the arrow, why are you lighting it on fire? One or the other?
See, we've met our perfumed men and he brings them to King Hrothgar, who is a completely
normal old man. Pulls completely normal facial expressions. Definitely never sounds like
he's doing a bad Jamaican accent for some reason.
This guy is, this guy saw, even though his movie came out beforehand, saw Denethor eating
the tomato and thought, I want to play a king too, but I'll pretend to be eating the tomato
the entire time.
That is, yeah. Absolutely mad.
The only man I've ever seen who smiles like he has no teeth but has teeth. It's all very
strange. He tells them that other villages further to the north have been completely
destroyed by this ancient evil that's been terrorizing them from the mountains. And they're
not sure whether they believe him, whether this ancient evil is real. But they head out
and they see a small naked boy running through a field towards the village covered in blood.
And they're led to his home, which is a small farmstead. And inside his family have been
killed and beheaded and their bodies have been chewed on. And this confirms that is
this ancient evil, they're called the Vendel. And they know this because they've left behind
their calling card, which is a little stone statue of Lizzo, which is known as the mother
of the Vendel.
Why Lizzo, you're coming in hot coal.
Brutal. I want to put, I mean, a couple of things here. First of all, I'm not sure the
little boy absolutely had to be naked. I don't know if we needed to get a little flash of
bollocks for this film to be the masterpiece.
There's the second title that could have been a little flash of bollocks.
I mean, plot wise, why was the boy naked? At what point was he running away? The only
logical place was he was literally getting changed when they attacked and then therefore
had to run.
I mean, I'm sure there's some justification, but we don't get it. It's purely in the director's
head. But the other thing, they get to this hut and they see that these baddies have been
eating the residents there. And they say, you know, these are inhuman, these are disgusting.
Like you're getting pretty judgy for someone who pointlessly burned a woman like three
days ago.
Like, I don't know, take it easy. And washed in your own mucus. Yeah. These people are
disgusting.
As we've heard, they are eating people. I probably shouldn't be trying to find the middle
ground on this.
Well, they never explicitly say that they're eating people. They say chewing on, which
is a little bit better in my books. They gave it a nibble. That is better. And also, even
if they are eating people, that still is better than burning a woman. Yeah. Or mix the two.
That's still better than burning a woman for no reason. I mean, yeah. Well, cook her either.
There it is. Also, make sure the little boy's naked. Now it's a film.
And when you wrap him up and pick him up and he's aiming towards camera, make sure the
only thing you don't cover is his bollocks for some reason.
Well, so we can confirm he's naked. It's not a trick of the camera. He's not really wearing
a little cover up or anything. This is real stuff. This is a real movie. This is cinema.
The number of takes they had to do to flick that little cloth up. Do it again. Wardrobes
coming in and stapling the cloth so it never covers it when he's pulled over. They've got
a fan blowing at a hundred miles an hour.
The only CGI in this whole film was the kid was wearing pants and his CG made a dick in.
So, so we head back to the village, preparing for the next attack that's going to be missed
that night. But first they meet the king's son, who's some weasel-y dude called Wigliffe.
He was apparently killed off all his brothers so that he's next in line to the throne. And
then we meet some one-eyed old man who claims to have been at the last village to be completely
wiped out. But this man is 100% the biggest bullshitter in the world, right?
Well the way that he describes the, what are they called, the Vendel? Vendel, yeah. Yeah.
The way that he describes them. Teeth like a lion, head like a bear, huge claws, walks
on both two and four legs. Right, okay, so a bear.
You know he's a fucking liar anyway, because where's this guy seen a lion? He lives in
Scandinavia in the year two. True. This man is just embellishing for his story. He also
claims that he's seen the fire worm and saying it was slithering and spitting fire. So if
later on it turns out that that just happens to be cavalry carrying torches, might want
to have a word with him. Okay, I didn't know what the worm was the entire time. I guess
I missed the bit where the camera was pointing at all the cavalry charging like that for
me to recognise that, but I was seriously annoyed there wasn't a big worm shooting
fire everywhere. Okay. I assumed at the very least it was like a volcano or something,
but when it was just like 200 guys with torches, I was like, man what the fuck are you talking
about? You've never seen a torch? Hasn't seen a torch, but has seen a lion.
So 200 guys who live, spoiler alert, in a cave, where are they keeping 200 horses?
That's a good point. And another cave?
Also, they're living in a cave because they think that they're bears. Fuckers, bears don't
ride horses. Is that what he meant when he said that they're sometimes on four legs?
Is that they're just on a horse? Oh my god, if it is this guy. That naked boy's running
on four legs, somebody kill him! I'm sure that it takes like an understanding of farming
to keep 200, nevermind, doesn't matter. This guy was a farmer, surely he should know what
horses are. Yeah, but he had an eyepatch. That just means you only see 100 of the horses,
you just don't see the 100 of them. I don't think that's how eyepatches work.
With all of this, with all the cave and the bears and the horses and all this shit, it's
not like they are miles away in a mythological race. They're up the hill, they're a short
walk away. Probably the nearest cave.
So our 13 warriors take up guard in the Great Hall, and Antonio Banderas is woken by sound
outside and you think that everyone's asleep, you can hear snoring. But then as the camera
moves from face to face, you see that they're all on guard alert, just laying there pretending
to be asleep. Great scene. It was very good. And then the creatures burst in with their
bear-like teeth and their bear-like heads and their bear-like claws. And a fight ensues,
heads get ripped from necks. And in the aftermath, there are just no creatures' bodies at all.
Only their own dead. And they've all been decapitated and all the heads have been taken.
These guys, I mean, I don't know how they didn't notice all of the bear people dragging
the other bear people out. But they didn't. They were preoccupied, I guess, swilling their
faces out with water. That is the only reason we need the mist in
order for these things to be seemingly mythological, is that that covers any possible dragging
away of your friends. Otherwise, the mist serves absolutely no purpose in this.
Makes torches look like a worm, I guess. So the next day, they're beginning to build
defences for this town. Not the next day quite yet. Because, okay,
I do have one thing to say. During this scene, Antonio Banderas, whatever his name, Ahmad's
first fight. Who?
He manages to kill one of them, but he gets... Who's his dad?
Don't even. I don't have that written down. But he gets, he has his first fight. He kills
one of the guys, but he gets clawed across the face. And then his next conquest, his
next imminent banishment, woman comes in to treat his wounds with boiled cow's piss.
So now he's smothered in boiled piss and drenched in perfume. This guy absolutely reeks by now.
So yeah, then the next day, they start to build defences for the town. But Antonio Banderas
is, he can't wield this big sword they've given him. So he obviously has to go to the
grindstone and turn it into a scimitar.
After he... They're all stood pretty close together. And he asks if there's a metal
working nearby to one of the other Viking dudes.
It's a good job they said that word on the trip.
Ten meters away. Yeah, yeah. Well, I suppose that's why they don't say blacksmith, which
is what everybody else would have said in that moment. But he's ten meters away from
this gun. And he doesn't notice. And then I have a massive bone to pick with him turning
a what is a normal sword into a scimitar. I can't even fathom how that works.
I don't know how long he was at that grindstone.
So he's made his sword. But while building these defences, his next conquest, Olga.
Well now that he has made the sword, by the way, this guy who's never fought and is demonstrably
not a warrior, gets his little scimitar and he's flipping it all around, flipping it over
his hands. He's now an expert fighter, cleaving through the logs with a single swipe.
Where did this come from?
What the movie is implying is that all Arabs know how to use scimitars. I'm absolutely
not implying that. The movie is. Watch the movie and you'll see that it is.
I thought it was just implying that everything European is shit and he just improves it by
doing whatever he chooses to do.
Yeah, so Olga.
I'm sure anyone could have done that. You hand us a sword like that.
Oh yeah.
We'll have mad skills. Although we're European, so we are shit. Anyway, continue.
She tells him that Wygliffe has been telling the king that Buliwyf wants the throne. So he
takes this information to Buliwyf and along with Captain Jack Mallard, they hatch a plan
to make an example of one of Wygliffe's men. So this won't stop now. And so what happens
is Captain Jack Chicken aggravates Wygliffe's men by repeatedly throwing mud on him as they
build the defenses until they end up competing in a sword fight where the rules seem to be
you get three shields. And if you lose all three of your shields and the other person
gets to kill you, I think.
Something like that. The rules aren't very clear. But first of all, the guy that he fights,
the guy that he picks to fight and throw mud on is a very nice guy. He's quite patient
with it.
Oh yeah.
Until he really, you know, aggravates him. Secondly, this guy's a sick fighter. He's
really good. And with how much trouble they have in the fight before and after this.
They could have picked anyone else.
I think they make the same point that it was a stupid thing to do, but they apparently
had to do it to set an example. Yeah. But yeah, so they have this fight. Round one,
Wygliffe's man wins the round, but Captain Jack hardly seems like he's had his feathers
ruffled. Round two, he loses again.
And then round three, no one can keep him down. Carry on. Nice. And in round three,
he loses his final shield and Wygliffe tells his man to kill him. And just when you think
his goose is cooked, Captain Jack dodges the final strike and kills his opponent.
I think what you meant to say is Captain Jack snipes the win. For anyone who doesn't know,
Jack snipers a bird. Haven't you missed us? Oh, yeah. I think the professionals are back
next week. I'm just waiting for Captain Jack Duck. Something, something, murder of crows.
I'm in my element here. Bird puns, mother. Osprey of blood goes up. Oh, okay, pause the
episode. We're doing this from now on. So, he tells Antonio Banderas that he could
have won at any time in this fight, but it was about sending a message to Wygliffe about
like having to measure the things you can't see. That's why they fought his biggest guy
because it's about more than just strength. Oh, I thought it was that he was pretending
to lose the entire time and then won at the end. And that was the thing they can't see.
So he was pretending to be weak. So he was saying that what you see is never what you
get with us. I think you've both just described the same thing. I just took less time to say
it. Thanks for coming on, boys. The little weird politics subplot that's going on. It's
quite interesting and it'd be interesting to see what Wygliffe's response will be. Because
it wouldn't just be nothing and we wouldn't just never see him again from this point onwards,
right? Good times. So we fast forward again and another generic Viking warrior, one of
the 13, he's keeping watch in one of the watchtowers when Antonio Banderas thinks that there's
going to be fog or mist because he can hear thunder. But he's told that this is actually
the water in the mountains that somehow sometimes sounds like thunder, which isn't that interesting,
but is relevant later on. But as they're there talking. I forgot that he said that. So that's
scene later on was very confusing for me. They are so far apart and it's not mentioned
again. And also it's not important. They could have just written it so there was a tiny gap
in the rock at the end. They all swum under. Oh, I'm jumping ahead. Let's power through
to that. They need to do more foreshadowing and payoff within two minutes of each other.
That's my level. Like the little boy in his mist monster. Exactly. That's the level I'm
working at.
And as they're having this discussion, the fire worm, fire verm as they all call it emerges
from the mountain and they run back to town. But then Ahmed notices child in field number
two of the movie just running along. Dressed. This one is dressed. So what's the point?
He has to head down to rescue this kid. And as he gets there, he sees the fire worm up
close and it's actually a shitload of cavalry carrying torches. So that old man is the
biggest bullshitter in the fucking world. Yeah, absolutely. But they attack and at one
point he manages to fight one, kill it and removes its big bear head. And it turns out
it's just a dude wearing a bear. So as soon as there's 200 of them, I assume bears are
now extinct in this part of the world. There's 200 people are wearing bear heads.
There goes one of my other notes.
They're breeding bears and horses in their cave.
Okay, so there are three caves. The man cave, the horse cave and the bear cave.
He realises they're human and so now he's Zorro now. He's not scared anymore and he
just starts killing one after the other, wiping them all out. And then as these horses are
charging through the town, all the warriors, what's left of our 13, they get pikes, manage
to stop the charging cavalry and our creatures slash mountain men retreat.
And they run away. They do a lot of running away at seemingly random times.
We'll just be off so you can prepare, do better next time.
So the plot can continue.
Yeah.
So the plot can happen.
Also, all of Anto, Ahmad, he has not been trained in any way. Everything is in the moment.
He's on the job training as it happens. He's given one of those big pikes, which is just
a big stick with a bit of a sharpened end. And then it's just said, pop it in the ground,
point it up there and stick your foot in it. Cheers. Yeah, we're from here. But yeah,
they run away, which is why that's successful.
He's now been in Europe for four days. So the first thing he does is just get smashed
on mead and fuck some local girl in a cow shed.
I was just in my laptop because it got really loud. Edit this back in if it's worth saying.
But the start of that fight, I don't know if you two noticed, it's about early afternoon
when he sees that girl running. Then he grabs her, heads back, and it's like midnight. It
progresses like six hours in the space of a minute. And the same thing happens later
in one of the later battles. And it's so baffling how they didn't notice that that was going
on.
Well, it's because it wasn't just one child. There's actually a fourth cave that's filled
with children, and they slowly all run out down towards the village. And he's just picking
them all up. And then it's six hours later.
He's going back and forth on his dog. Grabbing them one by one. Anyway, that bugs me.
The mead bit as well. I loved how the way he accepts that he's allowed to drink it,
because he says that he can't drink things that are fermented from grape or from wheat.
And the fucking Captain Jack bird guy says it's actually fermented from honey. It's just
a guy who must be stood out of every AA meeting. Like, oh no, this is an alcohol or drugs.
This I made in my bathtub. It's just everything mixed together. That's $10. You get to keep
your chip.
So our creature, bear creatures flee. And the remaining warriors...
They're just men.
They're just a man. They're just a man. Just men. They flee. And our remaining warriors
have a gathering, a meeting, and they decide that what they should do is go and attack
the creatures where they are. And then they go see another oracle who tells them they
should go attack the creatures where they are.
Cheers.
They go and see another oracle who is described by... I can't remember who. I think it's
her. One of the adult women in this film describes her as, she was old when my grandmother was
a child. Then they go and meet her. And she's a woman maybe in her 60s.
She's probably a woman in her 40s with makeup on to make her look like she's in her 60s.
Yeah, exactly. So I don't know how quick the generations are going, but Jesus.
People die quickly here. There's a bear full of caves, if you... Oh, a cave full of bears.
Oh Lord.
There's a bear full of caves. Oh Jesus.
They've got the cave of bears, the cave of people, the cave of horses, and a big bear
of caves.
A massive bear of caves. And a bear child.
This very lazy woman who won't even sit up to greet them just lays on her side the entire
time for some reason. That's how you live forever.
Because she's so old.
Just never move.
She's so old that she's just sideways.
If she stands up, she's done.
Well she says three sentences and then goes to sleep. That's all she's got in her.
She's old in the same way as like Charlene the Chocolate Factory's grandparents are old.
Just in that bed.
Just old because they lie down all the time.
So when this movie was first being made, I don't know if you noticed in the opening credits
that you boys love to stare at, there's a lot of director's name slash Michael Crichton
in it all. And it's because this movie was made and was quote deemed unwatchable during
initial viewings by test audiences. At which point Michael Crichton who wrote the book
came in.
Stepped in and said put her sideways. What's that boy doing with his clothes on?
And he had to fix the movie basically. And I assume this scene was added later because
I think the scene in the cave was the actual final scene in the movie.
That would make a lot of sense.
But it's pretty anticlimactic which is why this woman goes you need to kill the mother
and then 10 second pause. Oh also you also need to kill the leader so there's another
fight scene at the end of this.
Our warriors head into the mountains to go looking for the bears. The people who think
they're bears. She says they're in the earth. They live in the earth. They don't know what
this means.
The earth is inside of a bear and inside that there's a cave and inside that cave there
are several other bears. We all heard the speech call.
You have to kill the mother and that'll kill them off. Which means that these people operate
under the same rules as the water striders in tuxedo. Just kill off the queen and they're
all dead.
And so they're heading into the mountains. Antonio Banderas realises these people think
they're bears and is like oh when she says they live in the earth she means they live
in a cave.
Yeah we know.
Within a bear.
This social structure with mothers and leaders. They're bears. None of this applies. They're
not fucking ants. They're not bees. If they're all dressed like bees that would be fine.
But their scout goes ahead and says I've spotted fires in the glen ahead. And Bolvoi shouts
back is there a cave? If he'd said no would they have gone oh it won't be them then let's
go look elsewhere for...
Those fires could be anything. Like a big worm.
Yeah it's in the glen ahead.
I'm sure it wasn't a worm.
Those are probably people who think they're beavers or something if there's no cave. Fucking
ridiculous.
Also if they are there they've heard you now.
But yeah they sneak to this cave. Somehow dressed as bears at one point. And you see
a couple of these people on guard and they look weird. Like cavemen weird.
Sure yeah yeah yeah.
But in the book that this is based on by Michael Crichton.
Who also wrote Jurassic Park just for anyone else who doesn't know who that is.
These turn out to be descendants of Neanderthals.
Oh okay.
So I'm not sure based on how these people look does that still apply? It's never really
said or nothing about them being different is ever said but some of them as they go through
this cave definitely look a bit like cavemen and some of them look like normal humans and
the leader looks like some model that they painted black and red.
They all look like bears to me mate.
And I mean they're kind of inhumanly strong and seem pretty thick so I guess it's vaguely
implied but not really?
I think ultimately it doesn't matter because we start this movie thinking they're mythical
beings and for them turning out to be humans or Neanderthals is the same level of disappointment
so fuck them.
I guess it depends how you go into the movie because the story is based on Beowulf. I
guess it's trying to give a semi-realistic way in which that story could have happened
and then became the mythology that we all heard much later with actual monsters and
creatures but it does disappoint you when the fireworm is a bunch of dudes on horses
and the big bear men are dudes cosplaying in a cave somewhere.
Yeah most of it was just caves.
Apparently only part-time because the rest of the time they've got to go care for the
horses in the field and farm their grains I guess.
And the bears in the cave.
And the cave and the bears.
So they sneak in, they've got to take off all their armour so they remain silent and
there's a bit of sneaking about and spelunking down a waterfall in order to get to the mother
of the Vendel who we've seen a model of her, we know what she must look like because if
she didn't look like this fat woman model that they've made she'd be really pissed off
that that's what they're modelling when they see her. She's just some normal, very skinny
woman and there's a dude in a cave carving this big fat thing and going I've done a thing
of you.
She used to look like that but it made her quite self-conscious. She's in her little
hidden room with one other guy which is presumably a meeting that she's having about why are
you still producing these models, they're wildly out there.
People aren't going to know who I am when I go out there.
If anything you're wasting stone.
Where Buliwyf goes into her little cave and she's got all the decapitated heads just hanging
from roots within her little cave, within her cave, fucking hell, within her, yeah within
her cave.
Let me figure out how far down the cave hole we are here. So we're in the bear, in its
cave, there are bears in there but within that there is a cave and this, we're not in
the woman, we're in her cave. Okay so we're about four caves down.
We've already said the beaver cave was back up there.
Yeah and there are heads in this one. Also the heads, those are like the fresh heads
yeah but does that mean that every week they bring in fresh heads for her because there's
another room with skulls in which is I imagine where they end up.
She only eats the heads.
Does she though, or does she just like to use them for decoration?
Yeah they're like flowers.
Yeah.
Maybe.
That heads off, take it out, bring me a fresh one. Put that in the bin.
They've alerted the cave men who are now attacking them but Buliwyf goes into her cave, fights
her, he manages to decapitate her but she scratches him with a poisoned claw.
Yeah there's tension built up in this scene, he goes in with a massive sword, he kills
the first guy very easily and she has this tiny little hooked bone and she dips it in,
well looks like blood but it's obviously poison or some shit and he doesn't for some reason
just chop her head off at a distance.
This man neverland thrust apparently.
She has a tiny claw, she has a woman's arms reach, he could definitely just hold his sword
at arm's length and run at her probably.
In his defence, he has been washing in snot water his entire life, his immune system is
made of steel, that poison's doing nothing.
The snot just finally got him, that's why he dies in about ten minutes.
That was what got him.
Clot of snot finally pushed it's way through his heart and into his brain.
Disgusting.
So yeah, now they think that they are stuck at the bottom of the cave where the mother
lives but then it turns out there's a lot more cave below the cave so they head, luckily
there's more cave so they start heading further down.
They say it's a hard fight to get clear of here and then the Irish guy's like no it's
not there's a shortcut to the entrance, this is a video game.
Luckily there's another cave is another great alternative title for this movie.
They head further down following this stream that's in the cave and they get to what they
think is a dead end and they think they're going to have to somehow fight their way out
and then they hear thunder and Ahmed realises that they're actually at the thunder cliffs
and if they can get in the stream out through the big hole in the wall they can swim their
way to safety and emerge in a lake and get out.
Which they do.
As I just said they do that.
All that things that he thought that they could do they do do.
And they head back to the town and because test audiences hated this movie we need another
fight and so they have to prepare for the creatures to attack again because although
they killed the mother they did not kill the leader.
You've got to wonder why they killed the mother at this point but sure.
There's apparently one female in this entire group.
Just wait.
Yeah wait out now.
They can't do anything now.
But then like you say we're now leading into the final battle which I want to point out
again.
They get home and it's bright blue sky, lovely clear day, they're chatting then they go oh
the bad guys are coming, pissing it down with rain, two minutes later.
I get that I'm just complaining about consistency at this point.
You're mainly complaining about weather as far as I can tell.
And languages.
The creatures attack, Buliwyf emerges from the great hall, he can barely pick up his sword,
the poison's starting to take effect.
It's not.
And I won't do it again but they speak the ancient viking prayer again, the ancient viking
prayer of 1999 again.
Which Ahmad joins in with this time.
He didn't speak the language when they said it before.
He's a fucking rain man, he remembered a poem when he didn't speak the language.
I mean to be fair he stood nowhere near them, he might just be saying it half a second afterwards
just pretending he knows the words.
We've all been there.
So yeah our creatures attack, Buliwyf is drunkenly trying to fight them while being smacked around
the head a few times.
It's all in slow motion I guess because they didn't have the budget to do a long fight
so they just did a short fight slowly and he manages to attack the leader, kill him
within about 20 seconds of this fight starting, all the bear creatures run away and go back
to the life of farming they had before I guess.
Yeah.
For like the third or fourth time they ran away.
Buliwyf doing all the work despite being on death's door, everyone else standing around
still reading their poem.
And then in what is a great image I think he then steps onto like this palisade defence
and sits himself down almost like he's in a throne thrusting, he's learned to thrust
now thrust his sword into the ground and dies.
It's awesome yeah.
Look it's a great looking scene just him in there in the rain, looks better in the rain
because you're a bit rained eh Sam?
Yeah.
And?
Convenient, also a convenient time for him to die if he'd held on for like a couple of
minutes it would have been so anti-climactic, sitting there holding the sword like hold
on.
He probably knows this is the best time to die so he's pretending.
He's holding his breath.
He should have laid himself down on his side and he never would have done.
The end pretty much, there's a few goodbyes, the Ahmed's like he's fucked someone else
so he has to leave again.
He's probably banished yeah.
He's like or he's looking around going well this whole place has to be rebuilt and you
guys are washing in your own spit and snot so I'm going to go back to my life of exile
that I hated because even that is better than staying here with you and her.
Yeah where's he going, oh yeah I didn't even think about that, what are his fucking plans?
I suppose he's got to pick up his mate.
I mean all of the vikings presumably have to, all that group of vikings, the ones that
are alive anyway.
Going the same way.
They're all like should we all head back, although knowing them they all probably head
back separately.
The boat, the guys are like we got this boat we're going to go pick up that kid do you
want a lift?
No.
Don't worry about it mate, we'll take the horses.
And then he just becomes as big a bullshitter as the one-eyed man where he's like I had
to go back across seas of monsters and dragons.
Well there was some mist.
The end.
Thank god.
That was a film.
That was a film.
Right then Sam, you promised us a little bit of bad reviews, sorely mist.
Right then Sam.
A couple, I got a couple here.
Yeah I thought for the triumphant return of the OG crowd I should put the effort in.
So I got, okay I got a one-star here from, oh shit what is that name, R40F, pretty sure
he was in the film, and he gives it one star, says, oh he didn't say it, he gives it one
star, he says this is so completely thoroughly full of shit, it's like you took a septic
tank and dragged a sack through it.
You filled that up all the way, tied it off, then put that sack on the screen.
It's such a bag of shit, it's kind of amazing that it exists.
This is honestly one of those times when I can say I've actually wasted almost two hours
of my time.
How does that make you feel Carl?
I love the image of the sack of septic.
That was directed at Carl.
The other one that I've got here is a five-star, so both ends of the spectrum, from Dean Harms,
also no dad, written at least, he might have a dad, he says, this film is one of my guilty
pleasures and one of the few movies that both me and my wife enjoy watching together.
This film isn't a masterpiece or a piece of cinematic art, but is is fun and has enough
thrills, perfect when one wants to kick back and relax with a bowl of popcorn.
But there is a trigger warning, if you are one of the I am so offended by everything
crowd, the main character is and Arab, and he is played by Antonio Banderas, who is Spanish.
So if something like that gets your panties in a knot, give it a pass.
And fuck Bud Light.
There were so many reviews on this that were like, fuck the woke crowd, I'm anti-woke.
It's not that special.
Are people still dropping reviews on this now?
I think people actively, oh yes, they absolutely are, yeah, this is a couple of years ago.
Yeah, people are obsessed with the fact that, like, they love it just because the casting
was weird.
Because in their head, someone is offended that Antonio Banderas is playing an Arab man.
That's enough for them to like this film.
Exactly.
Yeah.
I mean, it's odd, but it's not offence.
Well, I suppose it's not me that it would be offensive to, but it's just something
it's like, why is he doing this?
But it was a time when they were doing it, wasn't it?
Everyone was doing shit like this.
I don't think anyone's that heartbroken about it.
I think the one thing that people were pretty angry about with this film, that came up in
quite a few reviews, is a lot of people were complaining about Omar Sharif retiring after
doing this film, retiring from acting.
And they're saying, these were so shit that it made him retire from acting.
By the way, he was in four films in the two years following this, so it wasn't that much
of a retirement.
If we want to be technical about it, then every actor retires immediately after finishing
a film.
Excellent.
Thank you for that, Sam.
And also, fucking amazing quote work whilst you were doing that second review, the way
you hit those fingers.
Amazing.
I wish people could have seen, but you can't, so it's just for us.
And now...
No video podcasts yet.
We bring back a little old game from the past, where you boys guessed the budget of a movie.
Because this one is worth talking about.
It's been a long time.
Oh, I mean, yeah, it's mad we haven't spoken about that.
Wasn't the budget something like, I mean, gonna take a shot and say it was 160 million?
Oh, that's quite, quite high for the time.
999?
Well, I'll give you some context, it's 1999, so it's the same year that The Matrix came
out, which came out on a budget of 63 million dollars.
Okay, that feels like a...
So if it was 160 million, that would be fucking insane.
120?
It was 160 million dollars.
Fuck.
Okay, yeah, I'd half read some trivia, and like people had said it in reviews and stuff.
That's why I...
It was in there somewhere.
I just wasn't 100% sure.
But yeah, it was like, it's, I think, adjusted for inflation.
It's the biggest box office bust in history.
It's one of, yeah, it made back 60 million dollars.
Not shocking.
Which probably not great.
It's not good.
No.
We can discuss why we think that.
But now the anti-woke crowd are gonna bring it back in the 2020s, so it's fine.
It's gonna make its money back now.
Oh yeah, they absolutely are.
Carl, since you picked this, you will be the subject of the question.
So you think that was good, do you?
Yeah.
Maybe because I saw it, fucking hell, maybe 20 years ago.
Carl's very anti-woke.
But if the woke me- no.
It makes me somewhat happy, aside from the fact that Antonio Banderas plays an Arab man,
which I guess I didn't pick up on at 10 years old, but the Captain Jack sparrow-like guy,
still a joy.
I found him to be funny when I was younger and I think he's a good little- I'm still
convinced that Johnny Depp must have based some of Captain Jack on him a couple of years
later.
He was a good character.
But I think as someone who was forced to read Beowulf at one point in their lives, I quite
enjoyed this idea of taking that sort of Norse myth and giving it a realistic-ish grounding,
which I think was Michael Crichton's aim with the book that this is based on, to make it
interesting.
And I think he did, and I think it's not a bad film.
It's fun, people get killed, it's gory, and there are bear monsters in the mountains.
And mountains and the bear monsters, apparently.
After you, Sam.
Beautifully said.
I think I agree.
I think it's a heavily flawed film.
There was clearly some- like you said, Michael Crichton was brought on to try and patch something
together that would be more watchable.
It feels like there was one guy on the writing team who was really trying to make things
interesting.
It was like, oh, okay, you know, the main character is going to be a poet and he doesn't
know how to fight.
And then someone else went, yeah, he learns, he can fight now.
And they're like, okay, fine.
But he can't speak the language of the people that, no, no, no, he's like, he can do that.
It's like, okay, well, you know, all the bear people, they're going to come for a big battle
now.
I was like, no, no, they're going to run away.
Three times.
They'll run away for no reason.
It just feels like someone wanted it to be interesting.
But they lost every battle trying to get it.
Yeah, they lost all the fights doing that.
But I was just going to say, but I agree with what Carl said.
I really liked the way that it would have been so easy for them to make this a film
about bear monsters and glowworm things, but they kind of took, they showed the way that
myths get made by having this sort of absurd, but realistic threat that gets built up into
a myth.
And I really liked that.
And on the main character, he is based on a real person, which I thought was quite interesting.
There actually was an Arabic man who went to Scandinavia at some point, who then wrote
this story, how much of it actually happened, who knows, or he wrote a story like it.
And that's what the book was based on that then led to the film.
That's a film based on a film based on a book based on a book.
Film based on a book based on a book.
Found in a cave.
Found in a cave.
Inside a bear.
With also a bear wolf thrown in there somewhere.
Obviously.
There's always a bear.
In a bear.
In a child.
Yeah, I liked this movie.
I struggled to write anything down because I was just kind of enjoying it.
Some fuckers have changed their tune since we started this episode.
I never said it was a bad bloody movie.
I'm looking at my notes now.
They take up less than half a page, less than I've ever had.
Somehow we've struggled through this.
I'm sure you'll listen back and find that I have said absolutely nothing, but yeah,
I enjoyed this.
Nice to see Antonio Banderas in something other than Spy Kids, I suppose.
I don't think I enjoyed the changing back to humans and seeing how myths are made.
I wish it had just been monsters and that, but I like those kinds of movies.
So I like where it led to us.
I remember when I was a kid, I found that really disappointing.
Where it wasn't a dragon and there weren't bear men.
But now I can appreciate it a little more.
There were bear men though.
Have you got any thoughts to round us off, boys?
I have no thoughts left.
Me and Sam are going to be going back on strike now for a while.
We've been away picketing.
Oh yeah.
Yeah, it's got nothing to do with the, it's got to do with the fucking nine hour time
difference between us that makes it incredibly awkward to record.
We've been requesting better working conditions, a slightly quieter hello and welcome and look
what he fucking did.
Well boys, thank you very much for joining me.
It's been such a fucking pleasure having you both back and thank you all for listening.
Don't forget to leave us a five star review and follow us over on Twitter and Instagram
at SoYouThinkPod.
And say join us again next week with a name of a movie that we're doing, but I haven't
chosen it yet.
So join me again next week without knowing what that will be.
It will be good because it is the 50th episode and I do want to do something a little special.
In the last episode I did mention it will be babe, but I couldn't count correctly then
so it will not be babe.
That will be 51.
It was an excellently succinct goodbye, Evan, goodbye audience.
Goodbye.
Goodbye and I'll see you in an indeterminate amount of time.