SPOILERS below
i watched the first half over the weekend, found it a bit much, but i was pretty tired/hungover, so maybe not the best time to watch it. finished it last night and actually really enjoyed it. something about the intensity seemed to click second time around.
kinda wish I'd seen it in the cinema, which is the same feeling i had with dune.
on my limited knowledge (watching the videos william kent posted a while back, by neil price, and subsequently reading price's book) it does all seem pretty on point in terms of historical accuracy. specifically about the reliance on slavery and also the funeral scene of thorir - all that stuff with the slave girl looking over a parapet and reporting what she sees, all that is pretty much word for word out of the only extant contemporary source on the funeral practices, the ibn fadlan report, quoted by pretty much everyone. Still not read it.
just checked actually and it turns out price was a consultant on the film
i think they went wrong a bit with including the supernatural elements, cos while i see what they were doing there, making those spirits etc come alive and be in the sapce with them, it pushes it a bit far imo.
also the general ridiculous plot starts to become a little far-fetched for me - like how he manages single-handedly to kill all those people etc. and the clubbing game felt a bit over the top.
but that is down to the directing lack of experience i think, it could have just been done a little better. similarly the very last pivotal scene, it just looked very ropey to me, the head falling off.
nicole kidman was good but also a bit too much? It really reminded me of her performance in dogville tbh. she is a bit annoying i find, like she has this knowingness which somehow undercuts the surprise of the revelation, which i thought was really good as it goes.
But, otherwise thought it was pretty good, not sure what all the fuss is about with the white supremacy angle tbh... some of the violence is very over the top and bloody i guess. the bit where he puts his sword through the guy who has no nose's head reminded me a bit of the cartoonish violence in tarantino's 'once upon a time in hollywood'.
it was making me think a little about why they (vikings) seem to be popular right now, why i'm interested in them, for one. i suppose there's just this unexplored angle, about the magic and other world, and it's also just a very visual thing.