Review of the series "Vikings: Valhalla" - a moderately brutal spin-off of the saga about warriors with axes
A historical thriller about how the Vikings conquered England.
Beginning of the 11th century. The Vikings live in relative peace with the Anglo-Saxons, after the son of the legendary jarl Ragnar Lothbrok (the protagonist of the original series) Hvitserk was baptized by the English king. Suddenly, the inhabitants of Foggy Albion decide to betray and destroy the Viking settlement. King Ethelred II of England the Foolish (Bosco Hogan) organizes a massacre on St. Bryce's Day. Only a representative of the noble family Harald (Leo Suter) survives. A year later, together with his brother Olaf (Johannes Høikur Johannesson), he arrives in the Norwegian Kattegat, one of the richest cities in Scandinavia. The ambitious king of Denmark Canute the Great (Bradley Frigard) wants to create a great northern empire, and first take London, and the brothers join his campaign. At this time, the old English king dies, leaving behind a teenage son and a second wife, Emma of Normandy (Laura Berlin). Knud has a good chance of taking the throne, although there are enough rivals. Another important participant in the campaign against London is the experienced navigator and brave fighter Leif (Sam Corlett). His sister Freydis (Frida Gustavsson) does not lag behind her brother and wants to prove to everyone that she also knows how to handle a sword.
Vikings aired for 6 seasons and ended 2 years ago. Valhalla is set 100 years after the events of the original series, during the twilight of the era of the militant Scandinavians. People are torn apart by internal contradictions. For the sake of common goals, they are ready to act together, but in the future, the union of pagans and Christians is shaky.
Many of the characters in the series have real prototypes. Among them are King Harald III of Norway the Severe, King Knud the Great of Denmark, and Leif Eriksson, an explorer who visited America five centuries before Columbus. But do not expect from Valhalla an accurate reconstruction of historical events. The authors were only inspired by the characters of important figures of the Early Middle Ages.
Valhalla is trying to replicate the success of the original series. Again, political-religious confrontations come to the fore, but it is easy to get confused in the multitude of characters and their motivations, and several love lines and erotic scenes are designed to dilute the lengthy and bombastic talk about power and rare fights. Even from a visual point of view, the Netflix project copies its predecessor: both in color scheme and in the manner of shooting action.
Die Hard writer Jeb Stewart is the series' showrunner. For more than 30 years in the industry, it has been mainly celebrated by action films (The Fugitive and Just Cause), which today look old-school. “Valhalla” also seemed to be 10 years late, as if there weren’t a couple of dozen ordinary historical series before it. The first episode was directed by Dane Nils Arden Oplev, director of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo starring Numi Rapace, as well as the mini-series Millennium (also based on the books by Stieg Larsson).
It takes a special talent to turn an interesting and controversial historical era into a dreary narrative. Unfortunately, there are no bright and charismatic heroes in Valhalla. Perhaps this is due to the fact that there are no stars in the lead roles. The original Vikings starred Travis Fimmel, Katheryn Winnick, Gustaf Skarsgård and Alexander Ludwig, whose career is only going up today. It was they who gave the series the energy and drive that the spin-off terribly lacks. It is unlikely that filming in Valhalla will be a big springboard for anyone, except that in the future they may be offered roles in other Netflix projects (and there are still many of them).
One of the few bright spots of the series are the battle scenes, sometimes large-scale ones. The camera flies for several seconds over the Viking ships (there are several hundred, if not thousands of them) that have sailed to the British shores. And the first battle between the Normans and the English (in the middle of the season) remains the most expressive in terms of passions. The budget of the creators is limited, and therefore even one-on-one collisions are issued in a dosed manner - no more than once per episode. But those are not easy to wait.
Fans of Vikings, who weren't enough for 6 seasons, can be satisfied with Valhalla - everything is better than nothing. But the series frankly has nothing to surprise fans of the historical genre. Which, however, did not stop Netflix from extending it for 2 seasons at once. The slow pace of the story may be partly justified by the fact that the creators have many more episodes ahead of them. But will the audience have enough strength and patience for "Valhalla" when the stream of series does not even think of stopping?
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