“Shakespeare based his Hamlet on Saxo Grammaticus’ Prince Amleth from the 12th century.

“It’s a very old saga,” Skarsgård explains when we bring up the root origins of his film’s tale. It’s foreboding and stimulating… and it feels like part of a shared past. It’s the basic plot of, yes, Hamlet and The Lion King, but as presented by Eggers, it takes on a primal, bestial form in which hellish vistas like an erupting volcano play host to the sight of two naked men trying to hack each other to death. Working from a screenplay he co-wrote with the Icelandic poet Sjón, Eggers retrods a deeply classic saga in which a son ( Alexander Skarsgård) avenges the murder of his kingly father (Ethan Hawke) by slaughtering the uncle who is to blame (Claes Bang).

Indeed, there is something primordial about the storytelling in Eggers’ film. “So therefore I can really indulge in the world-building without confusing people.” “I felt if I’m doing Hamlet or The Lion King, I have a story that the audience knows already,” The Northman director Robert Eggers told Den of Geek Magazine. And whether viewers are familiar with the Bard’s tragedy or not, that connection to Elsinore pervades throughout this weekend’s bare-chested epic. Nevertheless, the character has much in common with William Shakespeare’s Danish prince, who famously uttered the above quote during a soliloquy in Act Three of Hamlet. It’s the same thing as last week: a bloodthirsty Viking.

He knows exactly what he’ll be next week. “To be or not to be.” That is a question which never occurs to Alexander Skarsgård’s Amleth in The Northman. This article contains The Northman spoilers.

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