The 13th Warrior: Difference between revisions

''The 13th Warrior'' is an adventure story that inserts the [[Real Life]] Arabic traveler Ahmad ibn Fadlan into a tale of [[Horny Vikings|Nordic saga]]. Ahmad ibn Fadlan is an educated Arab courtier who is [[Put Onon a Bus]] to foreign lands as punishment for a courtly indiscretion. He is recruited to serve as the thirteenth member of a group of Norse warriors who answer a call for help from a far-away Nordic king. The kingdom is under attack from the Wendol. [[Badass Bookworm|The bookish]] Ahmad ibn Fadlan narrates his adventure and his growing respect for the barbarians around him.

The story is a reworking of the classical tale of ''[[Beowulf (Literature)|Beowulf]]''. Buliwyf is an [[Expy]] for the hero Beowulf and the remaining warriors form his band. The classic battles are all reworked to replace the monsters with the cannibalistic Wendol. Rather than Grendel bursting into a mead hall, a group of cannibals attack. Rather than attacking Grendel's aquatic mother, the band sneaks into the Wendol's den through water. Rather than a dragon, the Wendol look like a "glow wyrm".

[[Michael Crichton]] wrote the original novel, called ''Eaters Of The Dead'', and it was something of a departure from his usual science-fiction fare. He supposedly wrote the novel on a dare from a student who demanded he "find a way to make ''Beowulf'' boring." As Crichton was aware of the notoriously dry, bland Ahmad ibn Fadlan and his ability to make any miraculous new wonder sound prosaic and dull, he put the two together [[Demythtification|as if it were Ahmad giving an actual historical account]]. The {{spoiler|[[All Cavemen Were Neanderthals|Neanderthals]]}} serving as the film's villains are an expected flourish of science fiction.

* [[Adaptation Distillation]]: Of ''Beowulf''.

* [[Anachronism Stew]]: Some armor worn in the movie wouldn't be made for centuries. Others were out-of-date centuries earlier.

{{quote| Lo, there do I see [[Thicker Than Water|my father]]<br />

Lo, there do I see [[Thicker Than Water|my mother and my sisters and my brothers]]<br />

Lo, there do I see [[Thicker Than Water|the line of my people]], back to the beginning<br />

Lo, they do call to me<br />

They bid me take my place among them<br />

[[Warrior Heaven|In the halls of Valhalla]]<br />

Where the brave <br />

May live<br />

* [[Barbarian Tribe]]: The Wendol, who in the book {{spoiler|are said to be Neanderthals.}}

* [[Doing inIn Thethe Wizard]]: Partly. Some mystical elements are taken out, but the seers are pretty accurate.

* [[Everything's Worse Withwith Bears]]

* [[Literary Agent Hypothesis]]: The book was claimed to be based on real sources. The movie merely specifies that it is the tales of Ibn Fahdlan without specifying if it is based on a real account or not. Like several other Crichton books, it contains a fake bibliography, which includes "''Necronomicon'' [ed. [[HPH.P. Lovecraft]]]." The book was in fact inspired by the travels of a real Ibn Fahdlan, but spiced up to include the notion that Fahdlan was a real life first-hand witness of the "true story" of Beowulf, because Crichton wanted a [[Framing Device]] to [[Retool]] the story of ''[[Beowulf (Literature)|Beowulf]]''. The real ibn Fahdlan never made it to Sweden.

* [[Took a Level Inin Badass]]: Ahmad between the book and the movie. Actually it's more like Took A Level In Movie Hero. While the Ahmad in the book was banished for fooling around with another man's wife (in a random, loveless encounter), has no particular skills, and barely manages to keep himself alive in fights, the Ahmad in the movie was banished for his (implied to be unconsummated) love of a woman forced to marry another against her will, is a talented equestrian and swordsman and capable of learning language just by staring and listening, and probably racks up as many kills as the battle-hardened vikings he accompanies.

* [[Translation Convention]]: In the beginning of the film, Ahmad ibn Fadlan speaks Arabic, which the movie-goers hear as English. He travels with Norsemen, who speak only Norse. Over a montage, he makes a dedicated effort to learn their language. The dialogue changes slowly but surely from Norse to English, showing that Banderas's character has learned the language. In the book, his character spends most of the story slowly learning the language and having most things translated into Latin by bilingual Norsemen (usually Herger).

* [[Wendigo]]: the fictional legend of the ''Wendol'' which the troll-like {{spoiler|Neanderthals}} are mistaken for, on which [[Beowulf (Literature)|Grendel]] is supposedly based [[External Retcon|in this version]].

* [[What Could Have Been]]: The film was ''heavily'' cut after poor reactions to test screenings and this shows up ''badly'' in the theatrical version - it's very clear entire sections of the film have been left on the cutting room floor in an attempt to make the film more appealing to a popular audience. In a pre ''[[Harry Potter (Filmfilm)|Harry Potter]]'' and ''[[The Lord of the Rings (Filmfilm)|The Lord of the Rings]]'' era, which proved audiences were perfectly happy to sit through long fantasy themed films, it's obvious the studio panicked at the poor test screening results and butchered the film. Ironically the cut down version received poor reviews and performed badly at the box office whereas who's to say how the originally envisaged version might have been received?

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