Valhalla Rising—An Obscure Norse Mythology

At the beginning, only man and nature; when people who carry the cross coming, they evicted the infidels.

When the Viking warriors lose their original faith, then, everything changed.

For years, One-Eye, a mute warrior of supernatural strength, is forced as a prisoner to be pitted against other criminals and mercilessly fight to the death. One-Eye continues to survive each fight, ruthlessly slaughtering his enemies by the numbers. While imprisoned, a young boy named Are tends to him regularly, bringing him food and water. On their flight, One Eye and Are board a Viking vessel, but the ship is soon engulfed by an endless fog that clears only as the crew sights an unknown land. As the new world reveals its secrets and the Vikings confront their terrible and bloody fate, One Eye discovers his true self.

Finally, the real status of One-Eye became known, he is the embodiment of the Nordic Lord God Odin. After being spurned by Christian, he can only be reduced to servant of humanity. Eventually, he found an original mainland with only human and natural, he returned to be a god. In the end of this film, the scene of this warrior throw away weapons, moved towards to indigenous warriors calmly and prepare to sacrifice himself is that God Odin sacrificed himself to himself (the Norse Mythology record this story), get rid of the body and back to throne.

The whole movie is a mythical fable, about god Odin, loss of faith of human, lose power and memory gradually, become mortal and eventually find the original to return. The spirit of anti-war and environment fill this film(Christian Northern Europe, devastation everywhere; gloomy and silence suppression; once the glory of the Viking warriors become the greedy evils to plunder and destroy the world), and the figure of anti-Christian. (the Crusades is indeed a war of aggression)

It’s a good film (at least I feel good, one man's meat is another man's poison ) contains a lot of flavor, also affords for thought, but could not be the public's taste. In fact, the Box Office is really not so satisfied.