WHAT WENT WRONG - The 13th Warrior

Episode Date: June 22, 2026

In 1999, Touchstone thought they had a surefire hit in the works. They had source material by the author of ‘Jurassic Park’ and the director of ‘Die Hard’ behind the camera! But soon things fell apart so spectacularly that ‘The 13th Warrior’ would become one of the year’s biggest box office bombs. This week, Chris and Lizzie unpack how a power struggle between author Michael Crichton and director John McTiernan doomed the film from the start. Find out why making this movie was a battle worthy of Beowulf himself, full of injuries, near death experiences, and pure unadulterated treachery. Don’t worry, Antonio Banderas still comes out looking great! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

That Warriors, it's the 13th Warrior. Lizzie, did you ever see Warriors? No. No. Okay, that joke's going to work for about 10% of our audience. Welcome back to What Went Wrong, your favorite podcast, full stop that just so happens to be about movies and how it's nearly impossible to make them, let alone a good one, let alone a friggin' awesome one.

As always, I am one of your host, Chris Winterbauer, joined by Lizzie Bassett, who has selected for us a movie that I think we've talked about doing since we literally intercepted this podcast. And in fact, Lizzie, I was meeting with a producer friend this morning to discuss something completely unrelated. And when I said, I was going to record, he said, what are you recording? I said the 13th Warrior. And he said, I love that movie. So I'm sorry to have stolen the announcement from you, but please, take it away. Well, Chris, I think we're all dying to know what was your experience with the 13th Warrior prior to today? Had you seen this before? Did you see this in theaters? This came out in 1999, so we were about 10 years old.

Yeah. So in theory, we could have seen this in theaters. I definitely did not see it in a theater. No one did. I remember watching it on VHS a lot. It was one of a number of VHS films that we just wore to a nubbin just over time. Just the cardboard jacket has fallen apart like an original Honus Wagner baseball card. It was, I mean, I remember Danny Naylor.

Danny Naylor. We watched this movie all the time together. I thought this was one of the best movies ever made as a kid. You know when we talked about Braveheart before and how we thought like Braveheart, oh my God. Like this is the peak of sophistication. This I think maybe holds up in some ways a little bit better. I don't know. They're similar. They're very similar. They are very similar. I think Braveheart is the better movie. Yes, I agree. I think the 13th warrior is better than people have said it is or critics said it was. And Braveheart, I don't think is quite as good as critics said it or, the academy said it was at the time. Anyway, this movie is a blast. Is it good? I don't know. Really? That's the correct answer. It is insane. It's got great production value. The production

design is outstanding. Yes. The costumes are great. I mean, they basically said, look, let's do seven samurai, add six more samurai and remove all character development. And that's this movie. And if you can just kind of meet it on those terms, it's a lot of fun. It's a very fun movie. I texted Lizzie because I knew this movie had problems but I didn't know what they were and I don't know the answer to this Lizzie's convinced this is not the case

but I am like the woman who is the queen the first time we see her as we like pan past her I am convinced that as a completely different woman than the actress that plays for the rest of the movie no no so Chris did he was like this is a different woman and I was like it's not Chris and he was like look at the hair

the hair is curly and then it's straight and I was like Christopher there are curling irons and he was like no you can't do that there. No, no, no, no, no. To be fair, I did admit there are curly irons. I didn't fight you on that point. But it is a good point. And I will acknowledge, I thought the same thing when I was watching it. They do look different enough. But that I think is a big tell that the styling of her was so different across two different scenes. Yes. It might be a little clue that perhaps the same person was not at the helm for all of the shoots. Well, especially, it was like her eyebrows looked so much thicker, for example, in the first shot. Anyway, but the point is, this movie, I was like, I can't pay this close attention as I'm watching. You got a lot of watch over me. Yeah, that's right. Like a bowl full of Vikings not.

And it's really fun. It is. And I mean, look, it falls very short on character development. I really couldn't tell one Viking from another, aside from our, there are the two blondies, big blonde and little blonde, I'll call them. Like, I'll be by. And the other one played by Dennis Storeway, I literally can't remember the name. Happy guy.

Happy guy. Also, Tony Curran, because he's just Scottish, is like, recognizable. But it also, it doesn't really matter. Antonio Banderas is a movie star. It's fine. He said, Alec Guinness, hold my beer. I'm going to play an Arab in this movie. Well, we're going to talk about that.

I don't think we can't equate it quite to Alec Guinness, but we will get there. No, I agree. You can't. It's a little nuanced. But my point is, it's a really fun movie. It's a really silly movie. But that's a very serious movie. But also has some great elements and some really great set pieces.

I thought, for example, the whole cave sequence was. Yeah, it's great. Like very cinematic and really shows a lot of scope. The waterfall looked amazing. when they're falling off the waterfall, it really visually holds up, in my opinion, almost, what, 27 years later that we're watching it now. So five severed Viking heads to the 13th Warrior. Amazing. How about you, Lizzie? Well, first of all, I just want to say that this episode is a bit of a gift to a dear friend of mine, Nick Nacazono. This is one of his favorite movies. He is...

Is this the Nick whose basements you were watching movies in all the time? No, no, no. There was no Nick there. This is Nick who is the drummer in the band I was in for a while, who is an extremely talented drummer and also a super fan of the 13th Warrior. So this is for you, Nick, and I'm... The 13th Warrior! Yeah, great. Write that song. Yeah. So when this movie came up, I was like, I completely forgot about that movie, but I had the same experience that you did. I did not say this in theaters. We owned the VHS and the DVD eventually of this, and I watched it so many times. It's super watchable. It's so watchable. But, between the ages of probably like 11 and 15 or something,

I must have watched this movie probably at least 10 times. Yeah. And yet, I really didn't remember it very well. Didn't remember the story. Certain moments, shots. Beowulf, whatever the version of his name is. Bulvai. Bulvai.

Like him's like sitting on like his like pseudo-throat at the end in the rain. Yeah. I will remember that as much as Rutger Hauer in the rain at the end of like Blade Runner, you know, certain moments. You know, the scene that I remember the most clearly, which I know some people think is goofy, but I actually think is really cool and very well done, is the language learning scene. Yeah, I know. I think it's fun. I think it's excellent.

It is fun. Like, I understand that it takes a leap of faith to go along with the fact that, like, he's learning this completely foreign language this quickly. But they're doing so many things at once. They're showing a passage of time. They're showing the way that he's hearing repeated phrases over. I just, I think the way that they do it is really smart. And it also lifts the, you know, it takes the pressure off of them to deal with accents or foreign languages, like, from that point forward, because they've established, okay, now he can understand. And also him having an accent at that point actually makes sense because they're all speaking their native language and he's not.

So I think it worked really well. That his accent is from Malaga, Spain. Maybe it doesn't make as much sense. But that's fine. No, I agree. I like that scene. there's always movie mumbo-jumbo that we need to do to figure out certain logistical shortcuts and whatnot. And that, to me, is a great example of good creativity. And I like it.

I agree. He did it fast and he did it, I think, very effectively. All to say, I'm with you. I think the visuals in this movie are great. The production design is insane as we are going to get into, more so than I think you can even recognize when watching it on the screen. And yet, it feels like there is something just under the surface here that could have been. truly remarkable. And it just didn't quite get there because, to your point, there is so little character development. And there's so little time spent on really anyone other than Antonio Van deris, and even his character is paper thin. It just feels like we're moving from lopped head to lopped head and we got to keep lopping to get to the end of this. By the time he turns

toward Mecca at the sunset, I was like, what? He has skipped his prayers this entire movie. He sure has. He sure has. Yeah. It was like they've remembered on the last day of shooting, oh shit. Yeah. Yes. All right. Well, there's a lot to get through here.

So I do want to get into it. So, Chris, as we enter into today's battle, this mono-a-mano behind the scenes, let us recite the completely made-up Viking prayer. Lo, there do I see my father. Lo, there do I see my mother and my sisters and my brothers. Lo, there do I see the line of my people back to the beginning. Lo, they do call to me.

They bid me take my place among them in the halls of violence. I'll holla where the brave may live forever. Great. Now we got that out of the way. How about a real Viking proverb that maybe sheds a little more light on today's story? Praise not the day until evening has come. A woman until she is burnt. A sword until it is tried. A maiden until she is married.

Ice until it has been crossed. Beer until it has been drunk. Nor a film until it has been made, released, and then re-released on home video. Might we just rewind to a woman until she is burnt? Was that the one? Yes. You didn't bat an eye. I just want to mention.

Lizzie was like, yep, checks out. Just keep going. Yeah, it's fine. All right. Well, they do burn them on the funeral pyres with some frequency across this movie. They liked it, Chris. They liked it. At the end when Bulvae dies, I thought they were going to throw Antonio's girlfriend into the pyre with him.

So did David, and he was so mad. Yeah. No, at the beginning they explained, that's the old ways you won't see that. Again, very convenient. Now, the details, as always. Thirteenth Warrior is directed by John McTiernan. It's written by William Wisher Jr. and Warren Lewis based on Eaters of the Dead. That's the shortened version of the title by Michael Crichton. It was released on August 27, 1999, and it starred Antonio Bandaris, Vladimir Coolich, Dennis Storhoi, Omar Sharif, coming back, and many, many more, Tony Curran, as you mentioned. Now, our main sources for today include a ton of interviews,

articles, a making of documentary from 2011 that was re-released on French Blu-ray, which you will hear a couple clips from, they are in English. And Michael Crichton's a factual note on Eaters of the Dead, which was an essay added to the eater's paperback at the end of the book later on. All right, Chris, how familiar are you with the legend of Beowulf? Very lightly. Isn't, I mean, it's Beowulf hero guy, goes to the aid of a king. Much like this movie. They're being attacked by Grendel. Huh? I'm just going to tell you what it is. So let's get some background on Beowulf first. It's Friday to 13th, though, because it's really Grendel's mother. It's really Mrs. Vohy's. That's what I'm going to get to. Yes, it is. It is. It's always Grendel's mother.

Yes. Okay. So Beowulf is an epic poem that's thought to be written between 500 and 1,000 CE or AD. Most likely written in Anglo-Saxon England, even though it takes place in Viking Scandinavia. It is basically considered the hottest shit ever written in Old English, which is no. notable for a few reasons. One, it's really old. And two, it is one of the earliest languages that normal everyday, you know, dirty pores in Europe actually spoke, not Latin, which, for example, was reserved for really a pretty small percentage of the people. Dirty rich. Dirty rich. Everybody was dirty like that. Technically correct, yeah. So we're talking minimum three to 400 years prior to something like the Canterbury Tales. I think when people think,

oh, old English, they think something like that. Nope, that was Middle English. And you can barely even read that if you try to read it without a translation. I did try to read it in college. Yeah. Got about middle of the way through. Yeah. So no one knows who wrote Beowulf. They don't even know if it was told orally for decades or centuries prior to it being written down, which means they don't know if it was the work of one person or many, though there are arguments to be made for both cases. They do know that even though there doesn't seem to be any record of a real person named Beowulf, there are records of some of the other characters and places that appear in the text. It's believed that it heavily blends myth, legend, and obviously like complete fantasy with some early pagan

Scandinavian politics. And it basically contains two parts. Part one is the one that most people remember. It's the one that you were beginning to recite so eloquently. Right. Low, I see Baywolf. He walks here. Right. Yeah, yeah. As the Vikings. As they did. This is the one I remember reading in high school. King Rothgar essentially parties too hard in his meat hall and wakes up swamp monster Grendel, who decides to retaliate by carrying off Rothgar's men and eating them. Beowulf, Prince of the, I think, Geats, I don't know, Southern in Sweden now, shows up and offers his Grendel extermination services. Baywolf then rips Grendel's arm off with his bare hands, and Grendel sort of slugs off and then dies in the swamp. But, of course, he forgot to kill the big bad, which is Grendel's mommy,

who shows up the next night, kills more people. Baywolf goes out, kills her. Everyone celebrates. Bay Wolf returns home to his king, King Heigalak. That's the part that I think most people remember. But there's also a part two where we kind of fast forward, Baywolf is a lot older. His king and then the next in line to that throne, they've both died, so Baywolf now gets the crown. And then a big scary fire breathing dragon shows up,

causing a ruckus. An old-ass Baywolf has to drag himself out there and fight it. So old for the time. He's at least 30, and it's just his bones are dust, you know? Looking like Ray Winstone in a Robert Semeckis version. Yes. All of his men but one abandoned him. He does eventually kill the dragon, but ultimately dies from a bite in the neck. So part two is a bit of a bummer. That's why I think most people only read part one. Fast forward a millennia or so. And a guy named Kurt Villetsam was planning to teach a college course on the great boars. Now, the idea was to teach a whole class on all the classics that are supposedly crucial for everyone in Western civilization to read, but no one wants to because they're such snoozers. Oh, Boers, B-O-R-E-S. Yes. I thought you were saying like the Dutch, In South Africa. No.

Got it. I was like, I don't know how this is going to connect, but I'm excited. It's not. And he told his friend at the very top of the list of boars was a bore so boring it could kick off the whole semester. And that was The Legend of Beowulf. Now, I think this is interesting because we read Baywolf in high school, and I do not remember thinking it was boring at all. Granted, we only read the arm ripping off slugging through the forest part, but I thought that was pretty fun. And Kurt's friend, a published author, seemed to be.

to agree and took personal offense on Beowulf's behalf. He was like, you're wrong and dumb. Bayowulf is exciting and fun and I'm going to prove it. Also, I'm 6'9 and I'm Michael Crichton. Is he 6'9 or 6.8? 6.9, Chris. It's too tall. Did I tell you my dad met him when he was writing disclosure? Really? Yeah, he was meeting a different lawyer, another labor employment attorney. And I think this other lawyer wanted to show off basically and invited my dad out. My dad's tall. He's 6'3. Not tall enough. And Michael Crichton proceeded to like unfurl his giant Sunderman body over him. Yeah.

Anyway. Yeah. So my dad has a signed copy of disclosure somewhere at our house from that meaning. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. All right. Well, if you're not familiar with actual human giant Michael Crichton, he was the certified smarty pants behind mega hits like the Andromeda Strain and Jurassic Park, of course,

and disclosure. He was born in 1942 and grew up in Roslyn, New York. He went to Harvard and graduated with a degree in anthropology, which he then took and taught at Cambridge University in England before returning to Harvard for medical school. Just a real moron. But during medical school, he started publishing thriller novels under different pseudonyms. And of course, he did great at that as well. He did well enough that he decided maybe it was time to use his real name and give this writing thing the old college try while he's still in college, by the way, because in 1969, the same year he graduated from Harvard Medical

School, he released the Andromeda Strain, which became an instant bestseller. And so Crichton told the medical community, lose my number. It should also be noted that he's like pretty handsome. So he's a 6.9, pretty handsome double Harvard graduate who has just succeeded at literally everything he's done. I wouldn't say he was lacking in confidence. But I heard he couldn't draw blood. This may be a fake story. What I'd always heard was that he had a hard time drawing blood and so the nurses would always do it for him. He was uncomfortable with it. It was what I had heard. But that may be inaccurate. Well, turns out he didn't need to be able to do it. In 1973, he directed his first feature, which was what?

Was it Westworld? Westworld, yes. Yeah. We have to cover this at some point. And in many ways, I feel like he kept revisiting this idea across his career in different ways. Jurassic Park is the obvious correlation. The monsters at the park, you know, go haywire. Absolutely.

Now, he would go on to direct five more features over the course of his career, or should that number, be six? We'll decide today. But back to 1974 and Beowulf, Crichton started with the idea that many epic poems and legends were at least loosely based on real events. We understand this. This is sort of the idea of of like a true story being passed down orally over centuries and decades and then it kind of becomes this fantasy, but somewhere there was a kernel of truth in it. So he started playing around with the idea of uncovering the true story behind Beowulf. But as we discussed at the top of the episode, no one knows who wrote Beowulf. And Crichton realized that if even the best scholars in

the world couldn't figure this out, he would just end up making up a whole new story and trying to pass it off his history anyway. So he decided to flip the script. What if an eyewitness account already existed? As he wrote in the factual note, quote, the concept of a pre-existing manuscript bypassed the logical problems which had earlier impeded me, because a found manuscript would not be my creation, even though I would create it. Of course, such thinking is absurd, but it happens all the time. I bet he's fun at cocktail parties. I just imagine, if I had to be in a conversation with Michael Crichton at a cocktail party, I would fully be René Zellwigger and Bridget Jones' diary with Salman Rushdie just going, do you know where the toilets are? Also, you would have

neck problems just from like looking up at this man as he talks to you. So he figured that the most common kind of eyewitness would have been somebody who's just like kind of boring and describing battles, most likely because they're not from the same culture. They've come along for the ride. He said, I concluded the most useful account would be written by an outsider, someone not part of the culture who could report objectively on the events as they occurred. But who would this outsider have been? Where would he have come from? And then it occurred to Crichton that the outside observer he needed already existed. Because there was a very real Arab man named Ibn Fadlan who had traveled from Baghdad north into Russia in the 10th century. There he came into contact with

Vikings and his manuscript provided some of the best and earliest eyewitness accounts of Viking culture. Crichton said, Ibn Fadlan had a distinct voice in style. He was imitable. He was believable. He was believable. He was unexpected. And after a thousand years, I felt that Ibn Fadlon would not mind being revived in a new role as a witness to the events that led to the epic poem of Beowulf. Somebody ask him. I think that's fair. Yeah, I agree. I think it's a really cool idea. I do too. Now, apparently this manuscript had been translated into pretty much every language except for English. There were only a few fragments in English that existed. So Crichton combined those with some very minor changes into the first three chapters of his next book, Eaters of the Dead.

And then he wrote the whole rest of the book in the style of the existing manuscript, taking Ibn Fadlan along the rest of his now mostly made-up journey. Now, Crichton began with the intention of making it clear which parts were real in which he had added or embellished, but, quote, within a few years, I could no longer be certain which passages were real and which were made up. At one point, I found myself in a research library, trying to locate certain references in my bibliography, and finally concluding after hours of frustrating effort that however convincing they appeared, they must be fictitious. I was furious to have wasted my time, but I only had myself to blame. He was literally looking for scholars that he had made up years earlier and didn't remember that he had made them up. He's turned into chat GPT. That's what's happened here. Yes, yes.

So in March of 1976, Crichton published. his Beowulf fan fiction under the title, Eters of the Dead, the manuscript of Ibn Fadlon relating his experiences with the Northman in AD 922. I know what you're going to say. Colon, a Beowulf fan fiction. It is. And also, this is basically its own genre now. It's real person fiction or RPF. RPF.

RPF, yes. That is the technical title. I believe you. Has a lot of moral gray area that is being discussed currently because you're writing fan fiction about people who are real and usually alive. This feels fine, though, when it's like, yeah, when they're alive, it's very different. But 15 hundred years later, I think we're okay. I agree. I'm watching Love Story, the JFK Jr. Ryan Murphy thing right now. I can't do it. I can't do it. I'm against it. Well, I'm against it. I know. I think I am too. I'm against it. Chris is against it. I think I agree. Is it very entertaining and aesthetically pleasing? Yes. Sure. Is it wrong? I think yes. But we're fine with this. I want to watch the RFK Olivia Nutsi love story. That's what I want to watch. No, thanks. Okay, Eaters of the Dead, in case you can't tell by that title, which is eight pages longer than that, did not take off like the Andromeda Strain had. Sales were pretty modest. It did garner a small but devoted group of fans, and apparently Beowulf scholars liked it, according to Michael Crichton. Anyway, so a film adaptation was put into motion, and it kind of hung around and developed in hell for more than a decade. As did Crichton's directing career, none of the films he directed ended up being big hits. And then in November of 1990, he published Watch, Chris.

Jurassic Park, right? Jurassic Park. And it was an immediate, massive bestseller. Have you read Jurassic Park? Oh, yeah. It's great. A few times. I've read The Andromeda Strain.

I read Eathers of the Dead when I was younger. I read most of his books through the 90s. Yeah. Fear was always a favorite of mine as well. They're amazing. Yeah. Did you ever see The Great Train Robbery? No, but he directed that, yeah.

I really like it. It's a really good movie. I think he's a good director. I think he is, too. He's just an extremely talented person. It's really wild to see how wide Annette he really cast in terms of his interests, both professionally and creatively. Yeah, it is amazing.

Well, suddenly, Crichton IP was the hottest ticket in Hollywood. So Jurassic Park, obviously, gets snapped up by Stephen Spielberg. That was released in 1993. We've covered it on the podcast. Massive hit. And then back to back in September of 1994, ER premiered on NBC, which Michael Crichton also created. So he is as hot as you can possibly be at this point.

And producers are combing through his bibliography, looking for their next big hit, when, of course, they come across. Congo! I think that was the next movie that came out. I can't remember what year that was, but I think it was between Jurassic Park and Eaters of the Dead. We have to cover it. They were just covering silver bag gorillas with lasers. Yeah. Anything. Anything he had written, they were like, we'll take it. How much does it cost? Yeah. So obviously, they're like, great. Eaters of the Dead, let's do it. And by December of 1996, the press release went out. Synergy and Touchstone Pictures would produce Eater's of the Dead directed by John McTiernan.

produced by McTiernan and Crichton, and it would star Antonio Banderas. Okay, great. It's a hot, hot package. It is. Now, shortly thereafter, Synergy struck a deal with Disney over an unpaid production advance. They fork over most of their library, including this, at which point this movie moved fully underneath Touchstone and Disney. Something Disney may come to regret.

Now, it seems Disney was very excited about the partnership between John McTiernan and Michael Crichton, because the same press release announced that McTiernan would be helming Airframe, for them as well, another Crichton adaptation. Right. And this partnership does seem like a great idea on paper. By 1990, John McTiernan had churned out three back-to-back hits. Predator. Die Hard, my personal favorite, the Hunt for Red October. That's your favorite of those three?

Yes, I love that movie. I think it's a great movie. It's like it would be an underdog pick. I think most people would pick Die Hard. I think it's really cool that you pick The Hunt for Red October. I love Die Hard too. I really love The Hunt for Red October. It's a great movie.

It's a sleeper. I think people sleep on it a little bit. I think it's great. Well, they shouldn't. Yeah. And I love nothing more than 90s, Alec Baldwin. But then, of course, another movie we've covered on the podcast, the last action hero came out in 1993. Much better than people give it credit for.

Yes, it is. Very smart movie ahead of its time. It is, but it was absolutely dinosaur stomped by Jurassic Park at the box office. Big time. Big time flopper. You know, we covered this movie. This was personally crushing for both McTiernan and Arnold Schwarzenegger. It really hit them both very.

very hard. So McTiernan was looking for a hit, and he had high hopes that Eaters of the Dead would fill that gap. And he had read the book when it came out. He liked it, but he had a couple of notes that he thought they could spice up a little bit. So Chris, let's listen to John McTiernan, talk about the book a little bit. And again, this clip and all of the other clips that you will hear over the course of this episode are from the making of the 13th Warrior documentary, which was included as part of the French Blu-ray release. I was always curious about it. I thought it had a problem to work as a story. It's interesting.

I should have paid attention to my own, my first intuition. I thought it had a problem because the monsters weren't serious enough. And in the end, they didn't do anything. The ending was kind of a, it was not quite serious or scary enough. So then I came up with this idea that, wait, if, I make the people who are attacking them. If I make them truly not human and physically very scary, well, then the story gets a lot better.

He's exactly right. Yes. Even in this version, they don't go far enough. Oh, they don't do his idea at all. Okay, good. Because the thing I was going to say, my biggest bump that I wrote down in my notes was, why are we seeing these shots of the, quote,

monsters watching them, which gives it a way that they're just people early in the movie. And the two touchstones that I had watching this movie, I was thinking about the descent, the Tragaludite movie, does a great job of making a terrifying monster that's ultimately just like a person, you know, and Bone Tomahawk, which is almost even closer, which does another version, basically just Eaters of the Dead. It's cannibals in the hills. I mean, even Barbarian does something similar. That's, yeah. I agree. And he's right. They're not super compelling. He's right about a lot, as we will see over the course of this episode. But Michael Crichton

didn't like that idea. He was very focused on it being scientifically accurate. He didn't like the idea that there could be any suggestion that these were not humans. He didn't even want that to occur to people as a possibility. So this idea of McTernan's goes in the garbage. Now, when it came time to adapt the novel, McTiernan, obviously, very excited. He's like, great. Again, I have some ideas how we can make this translate to film better. And in fact, screenwriters William Wisher Jr. and Warren Lewis did most of their writing at McTiernan's ranch in Wyoming. William Wisher, best known as one of James Cameron's longtime writing partners, they worked together a ton. and he'd also worked as a script doctor on Die Hard with a Vengeance, with McTiernan.

They knew each other. Warren Lewis, also, industry veteran, had been working as a production assistant, just had worked absolutely everywhere, and he'd been an assistant director on McTiernan's directorial debut. So both of these guys, been in Hollywood forever. Now, McTiernan and the writers all felt that the ending of Eaters of the Dead was a little weak sauce, as he said there. And they had a solve.

McTurin referenced the Michael Cain film, Zulu. Have you ever seen it? No. So at the end of this movie, Michael Kane and Co. They're completely outnumbered by the warriors that they're fighting. Oh, this is, is it like the 19th century colonial British regiment film? Yes. Yeah. Okay. Maybe I have seen this movie now that you mention it. You might have. They're completely outnumbered. And at the very end, the tribesmen start chanting. And one of the Brits is like, why are they mocking us? And someone else is like,

they're not mocking us. They're saluting us because we have put up such a fight. And so that's McTiernan's idea for the end of this. It would be the Wendell's and the Vendels and the Vikings are fighting. Almost everyone is dead. The Vikings are still outnumbered, though. And at the very end, the Wendell start chanting. Initially, the Vikings think that it's them taunting them. But then it would be Ibn, the cultured man in the group, saying, no, they're saluting you. And that would be the end. And the Wendell would retreat after recognizing the Vikings' strength. So it's still a little bit of like a meir, but it's a little less of a meirle than it is in the book. And Crichton said, no. So McTurton was quickly discovering that Michael Crichton was not just a consultant.

He had final veto rights on pretty much everything in the movie. And also, I said McTurton was going to be right about a lot. Not on this. He had a very specific vibe that he wanted for the movie, and that vibe was comedy, Chris. Oh. And that's because he had someone very specific in mind for the lead role, a natural fit for the material.

Michael Keaton. Well, you know, when I'm reading the Koran at night, and it's just hanging out with my friends. Yeah, I mean, look, Michael Keaton's amazing. He is amazing. Not for this. I don't think he makes sense in this as a Viking. Like, he's just really fit to me in this world.

I don't want to sell him short. Maybe Michael Keaton could do it. It doesn't make sense to me on paper. No. So the way McTiernan was picturing it was, quote, basically an urban Jewish guy who goes off with these crazy barbarians, but then Michael did a movie just before that didn't do very well. So now the studio suddenly didn't want him.

It's like describing like city slickers or something. I know. Like, what, yeah, this is so different. Yeah. So he has like, completely diverged from the source material here. So I will give Michael Crichton some credit. If somebody came and pitched me this idea, I'd be like, what? So I think, you know.

And then he's quetching the whole time. He's like, what are we doing? He's supposed to be Muslim. It does make sense that they didn't want Michael Keaton for those reasons. And also, he'd had a string of clinkers before this that had done very poorly at the box office. So I think that they were scared off from a financial perspective as well. Now, this is confusing, though, because according to Warren Lewis, the Islamic faith of Ibn Fadlam was always going to be central to the story, and they wanted to present it respectfully. So I don't know if the screenwriters were in a totally different... They can both be true. You know what I mean? I think they are true. Yeah. The screenwriters could have had one directive and believed it. And then at the same time, McToran's like... I want Michael Keaton. What if we did it with Keaton? Yeah. And he's Jewish. Yeah. Okay. You don't know. I don't know. I didn't mean you. I meant the collective we don't know. Like, who else.

still write real person fiction about it, and maybe I will. We should write the book of the making of this movie, but it's Michael Keaton. Great, let's do it. So Antonio Banderas was either filming or had just filmed The Mask of Zorro, and it seemed pretty clear that he was poised to be quite a big star at this point. Love that movie. We will cover The Mask of Zorro. I love that movie so much.

Also, I just want to give a shout out to Antonio Banderas, because he was a bigger star in Spain, obviously. He was trying to break into Hollywood. But the earliest roles that he took in order to break into Hollywood, I mean, do you know what some of his first English language roles were? Philadelphia. Philadelphia. Yes, where he plays the partner of Tom Hanks' character, which was, I just love him. Yeah, I think it makes sense. I mean, he came from, like, the school of Pedro Almodovar and, like, interesting Spanish sex comedy world. So. I know, but it doesn't mean that. No, I agree with you. I'm just saying it's consistent with who he seems to be, you know, but also, you're not. Also Desperato. I fucking love Desperado. That movie's awesome. It's great. So according to Antonio,

they sent him the script for Eaters of the Dead and basically said, who do you want to play? And he was most interested in playing Hager, the character eventually played by Dennis Storhoi. Now, does this make any sense? No. But can you give me the archetype of which one that is? Dennis Sorhoi is the main, other than Beowulf, he's the main one. Like little little brother, that one. But you know what? That, to me, knowing Banderas is, because Banderas is very, very funny. He is very fun. Like, that does make sense, like, a little bit more of a court gesture approach. Except there's zero percent chance you could have him play a Viking. Sure. But I'm just saying, like, from a personality perspective, if they said, take your pick, you know, sure. Totally. My guess is

they were doing that as a courtesy because they expected him to just say, I want to play the lead. And then they handed it back and they're like, no, one of the highlighted names is just Yvonne is the only one that's... Basically. So he does come around to playing Yibin Fadlon. And according to McTiernan, quote, it became a very different movie with Antonio Banderas because he was more serious. I had intended it to have a comic edge, this very urban, basically modern guy among these creepy guys, and then he would use that sense of humor all the way through. Antonio is very good with humor, but it's a different sort of humor. He doesn't do that wise-ass stuff.

That's true. Antonio Banderas is very funny, but in a very different way from Michael Keaton. Although, I will say, having seen the Mask of Zorro, I think he's quite a bit funnierer than McTiernan is giving him credit for her. He's very funny, but here's where I think the difference is. Antonio's funny when it feels like he's in over his head, right? That's where I find him very funny is when he's like in Desperado, right? When he's like, hey guys, let's slow down.

And then the guitar pops open and all the guns are there. He's like, oh, shit. You know, like that whereas Keaton's, I think, funnier when he's more in control reacting to things. Yes. Which actually, in this scenario, Bandaris makes more sense. I agree. He's supposed to be a fish out of water. I think he's perfect.

Right. Now, you might say, but Lizzie, Antonio Banderas, like Michael Keaton, is neither Muslim nor Arab. And you would be correct. However, I think there is a much stronger case for Banderas to play this role than there ever was for Michael Keaton. Let me explain. Ben Derris was born in Malaga in southern Spain, and he has spoken at great length about his own identification with Arab culture because, quote, the Arabs were in Spain for eight centuries, and that is a part of me. This is, of course, true.

A lot of Spain was under Arab rule for almost 800 years. And yes, that time frame does coincide with when Beowulf was probably written. The dominant language in the region was classical Arabic. Arab architecture, literature, and culture were all extremely prominent, especially in Al-Andalus, the region we now call Andalusia, all of which is to say, is this the most appropriate casting? No, definitely not. Is it technically possible that this character could theoretically have been from Spain? Yeah, maybe. I don't think so. All I'm saying is Michael Crichton's making shit up left and right, you know, this is not the worst thing they could have done. No, but obviously you should

cast an Arab actor in the role. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying I don't think this casting deserves quite as much shit as people give it for this. Well, I think, like, three things can be true at the same time. I think, yes, you could do some mental gymnastics to say, you can flip yourself around. You can kind of, sure. But I think the truth is, and I was looking at a Reddit post about this, and somebody emailed about, like, you know, take it easy on Alec Guinness in Lawrence of Arabia. This movie never would have been greenlit, you know, without him, blah, blah, that's,

hey, that's a fair point. But also, you know, they made a choice in that movie to cast an unknown in the lead, Peter O'Toole, and therefore they would need, like, an Alec Guinness, you know. So that was our point on that film. But in this movie, you're going to need a big name in the lead role. And the 13th Warrior is the lead role. And there were very few, if any, Middle Eastern North African actors working in Hollywood to your point at the time. And so I think part of it, though, is that Michael Keaton, if you were to say he's an Arab, we wouldn't believe it as a Western audience.

Right. But if you say Antonio Banderas, we believe it because we've been used to seeing Hispanic actors play these types of roles are going all the way back to Anthony Quinn and stuff, you know, back in the day. All I'm saying is. I see how they were justifying this way more than they would ever have been able to justify Michael Keaton in this part. Yeah, of course. But again, should you cast an Arab actor? Yes. Sure.

I think they would now, probably. I hope so. Who knows? Now, for the role of Bulvai, the studio also had someone very specific in mind. Stellan Scarsguard. Yeah, sure. He's the only one. Was he that well known?

He was in the Deep Blue Sea around this time? In terms of large, blonde Scandinavian actors, there's probably one name. Well, it's like him and Rutger Howe. Yes. Yeah. And Rutger Hauer is too old. I was like, where is Rutger Hauer? Yeah, I think he was. Yeah. But maybe it's the king. Well, Scars Guard was unavailable. So they were forced to run down their list of literally every giant blonde man they could in America, Canada, Europe, until they came to pretty much the last choice, Czech-Canadian actor Vladimir Kulich.

She's great. And he still had to wait four months to get the part because the studio didn't want him. Michael Crichton didn't want him. The only person who thought that he could play Bulvye was John McTiernan. And eventually they ran out of blondes and they said, fine, cast him. Now, the other Vikings were cast a lot to do with the way that they looked. You've got Dennis Storhoi. He is Norwegian.

Tony Curran, of course, is Scottish, who did League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Richard Bremer is English. You got the idea. They're large. So, McTiernan and Crichton seemed to be mostly focused on physicality for the rest of the Vikings. This does make sense. They wanted big guys to contrast against Antonio Banderas. I have met Antonio Banderas in person.

He came into the IMDB studio at TIF for an interview. He was so unbelievably lovely and graceful and generous. And he's a pretty slight guy. And according to Coolidge, he also didn't have any problem with the film playing up their size difference. He had zero ego about it. Banderas said, quote, for me, it was like making a movie with the Los Angeles Lakers. These people were enormous. Yeah.

I mean, the Mask of Sorro, he and Anthony Hopkins seem around the same size, you know, when they're shooting that movie. And again, it works. And there's something very ballaic about, you know, the way that he moves. Oh, he's beautiful. Yeah. Actually, to be honest, I think they didn't do enough to show the size difference in the finished product. It could have been way funnier, especially when you realize Vladimir Coolidge is 6'5. Antonio Banderas is 5-8 tops.

Yeah, you don't see them next to each other. There's not a lot of like two shots. I almost wanted more of like a Fellowship of the Ring shot, you know, where you see the halflings in front of Dandall. You could. And it sounds like they were all completely on board with it. Bandaris does not have an ego about this stuff. Just a lot of close-ups in this movie.

Obviously, he's super handsome and hot. Like, why? Who cares? So Omar Sharif was cast as Mekhisadek. A glorified translator. We really don't get enough of him on here. And he had a pretty crap time on this movie. It was so bad that he took an almost four-year hiatus from acting and basically made the decision never to take a movie because of the money ever again. He would later say that he thought to himself, quote, let us stop this nonsense, these meal tickets that we do because it pays well.

Unless I find a stupendous film that I love and that makes me want to leave home to do, I will stop. Bad pictures are very humiliating. I was really sick. It is terrifying to have to do dialogue from bad scripts to face a director who does not know what he is doing in a film so bad it is not even worth exploring. It's a little hard on the 13th warrior. Stick it on the DVD. But it was not a fun set in his defense. So let's get into it. And by the way, we're not going to have any time to spend on Omar Sharif. He's barely in the movie. But there was one very sweet story, Antonio Banderas told about how when they were on the camels together at one point. And there wasn't any, you know, they didn't have microphones on. They were just shooting them riding. And apparently Omar Sharif looked at Antonio

Bandaris and said, Akaba! And like, you know, that's great. Yeah. And it made Antonio Van deris so happy because he obviously was looking at someone he'd watched growing up in Lawrence of Arabia. Yeah. So production was set to kick off in British Columbia, but a full month before any camera started rolling, the Viking cast went into training. They had to learn archery, fencing, swordsmanship, horseback riding. Some of them had never been on a horse, including Vladimir Coolich, which he admitted you can definitely tell when you watch him ride. the movie. They were also given Norwegian language classes, and they all went except for Vladimir, again, Beowulf cut class and headed to the bar because he figured he'd already played a

Norwegian in the X-Files, so he probably knew enough to get by. I'd like to point out that the actual Norwegian, I think, showed up, and Beowulf was like, bye. Meanwhile, the production team had an absolute nightmare of building the sets. Much of this film was shot on Vancouver Island in British Columbia. And in case you're wondering, they shot three seasons of alone on Vancouver Island, which is the show where you get dumped in the wilderness and have to survive. So this was not an easy place to set up a movie set. But that's also why McTiernan and the production team insisted on it. They needed somewhere remote with a lot of expansive wilderness and no visible civilization. And they found that that was really hard to find in actual Scandinavia. It makes sense. That's a smaller physical area.

it's much more developed, much more recently. I don't think this looks like Scandinavia. I think it looks like the Pacific Northwest, but... Yeah, it didn't bother me being from there. I was like, it's great. You know, it reminded me a lot in its scope and scale of Last of the Mohicans and the build of the Fort that they do in Last of the Mohicans, the Great Hall really reminded me of that.

Yeah, so they built that main structure, that giant hall using timber they collected from Vancouver Island. And the village they built around it is insane. According to production designer Rod Quinn, there were at least 60 buildings. They built roads. They built a lake in the middle of nowhere for this. Everything was real. Much of it was built by local native tribes, also who understood how to work with the local

materials and in the very extreme weather conditions. Also, if you notice the pillars inside the longhouse that look quite a bit like totems, those were carved by local tribesmen. That's cool. They look amazing. They do. They're huge. That great hall interior...

It's real. It's all real wood. I know. It's one of the best-looking sets you'll see in a movie. It's really amazing. It is amazing. And they, I think, they were forced to do it for real to a certain degree because this stuff was not on a soundstage. Like, they were out in the actual wilderness. You have to build something that can withstand the kind of weather that they were going to have there. Yeah. They also really did burn down the entire village at the end. Again, it looks amazing. Yeah.

That reminded me so much of the burning of the farmhouse. in Seven Samurai. I mean, it really feels like they're doing a real callback to that movie. Yes. So once they were done building an entire Viking city, they started building the Queen's Lair, which they did on a soundstage in Vancouver. And they needed the rock to look as realistic as possible. So they studied Elk Falls on Vancouver Island. They copied the rock face. As you said, I think the cave looks fantastic. It looks great. They light it extremely well. It never feels like the lighting is forced. You know what I mean? Sometimes you do a cave set and you watch it in a movie and you think, Where's that perfect moonlight coming from?

You know, it really... No, this looks good. I thought they did a great job. Well, you mentioned the lighting. I think for large portions of this, they had the actors essentially lighting themselves with the torches. They didn't have additional lights, and it looks really good. And to your point, Lizzie, with the fireside chat scene earlier when he's learning the language,

they establish that lighting style during those scenes very effectively. So, you know, we're used to that by the time we get to the caves. Yeah. And Banderas pointed out the scope of the set is a lot grander than what you actually see in the film, which pissed producers off because they spent so much money on it. They wanted to be able to see it. But his point was that McTiernan wasn't cheapening the shots by showing everything. He wanted it to feel real, even in the close-ups.

I can see both points here. I will say, watching the behind-the-scenes footage, when you see more of what the village actually looked like, I do wish they had shown more of it. I think this also speaks to your point about not seeing Bandaris in the same shot as his compatriots, which is this movie is almost entirely like shot on telephoto lenses. I mean, on one extreme, you have your close-ups, but then on the other, I mean, these 500-millimeter shots of a child, you know what I mean, running up the hill to get back to the place.

I don't know, it flattens it a little bit, and it does, it limits your view. I agree. I understand what he was trying to do, but I'm team producers on that one. Yeah, you can purchase like Robert Eggers, the Northman, for example, where he takes a much wider approach to the way he shoots it. Now, principal photography kicked off on June 26, 1997, and right away there seemed to be a problem, which is that Michael Crichton and John McTie. Tiernan did not see eye-to-eye about anything. Well, Michael Crichton was six foot nine.

So, yeah. So the cast and crew are notoriously tight-lipped about what happened during this initial shoot. But our researcher, Laura, managed to dig out this comment from Huck Caten, who claimed to have worked as a boom operator on the film, and he does have the IMD credits to back that up as Tom Huck-Katon. So I'm going to go ahead and share this. It says, quote, very many moons ago, I was the boom operator on the 13th Warrior. Briefly, well, sort of anyway.

The project was never going to be much more than a sideways take on Bay. wolf, but McTee's take was a much more focused and tighter picture than what was ultimately released. Crichton was a decidedly unpleasant and tall fellow, and John eventually had enough and essentially ordered him off the set and out of Canada. And that is true. It does seem that John McTiernan removed Michael Crichton from the initial set. And then as if a six foot nine grump looming over you wasn't enough, Antonio Banderas dislocated two discs in his back during a fight sequence. It probably didn't help that he had jumped basically straight from the mask of Zorro where he did an enormous amount of his own stunt work. I don't think people realize how much of that is Antonio

Bandaris, and then straight into the 13th warrior. He said, quote, I spent a month and a half working in tremendous pain and on medication, rolling around in the mud and rain, wearing chain mail that weighed a ton. So when all the arguments started, I stayed out of it. I just wanted to finish the movie. He said they were trying everything to fix his back. They flew in doctors from L.A. They ended up just having to shoot him full of anesthetics, and he said it got to a point where you could have hit him in the back with a hammer, and he wouldn't have felt it because he was so known. It reminds me of Harrison Ford and Temple of Doom. It's so rough.

You needed that chimo-papain papaya extract injection. After having my daughter, I had my first real, like, serious back problems and back injury, and it is horrible and can be completely immobilizing. Like, I didn't understand how bad it is and how much it affects every movement that you're making. I cannot imagine doing what he's doing on this movie with that kind of injury. So this required McTiernan to kind of think on his feet and adjust their shooting schedule as well as the script of it, which led to more focus on Dennis Storhoi, which you feel, I think, in the back half of the movie. And then Dennis Storhoi almost died. They were filming the sequence where they have to swim under the cave wall to escape, and they were doing this in a giant water tank on the set. And Antonio Banderas looked around at the dirty opaque water, realized that there's no way they could see him when he was under the water in that tank.

So he's like, I'm not actually going to swim under this wall because there's a bunch of shit down there that I could get caught on. I'm just going to take a big breath, as we both do, go down, go underwater, hang out for long enough for them to get the take that they need and pop back up, which is a good plan and probably what they should have done from the beginning. So he does exactly that. But here's what happened next. So I come out, they already cut it,

and suddenly somebody screams on the other side. Dennis. And it says it's on the other side. He's not here. And we start looking at each other. And then I feel, I see the wall of this cave, this pond there moving. I say, oh my God. So I go under the water and I grab something and I feel this hand grabbing my arm. And I pull like this. And here comes Dennis. Gray, he didn't shoot for three days. He almost die. Yeah. Apparently, Storhoire came out of the water with foam coming out of his mouth. Jesus. Yeah. Yeah, this is where on most tank shoots like this, especially the ones that we've covered, you would have safety divers. Yeah. Even on something as shallow

as this. You know, even a maniac like Cameron has the safety divers there. Now, does he punch them in the face when they save him? Yes. Yes, he does. But they're there. To be fair, I'd rather be punched in the face. and foaming at the mouse. Yeah, I mean, this is really scary. Yeah, it's terrible. Also, to Baneris' point, they didn't need to go underneath that wall. You know, he's saying there's a bunch of pipes and stuff down there.

Like, there were things you could get caught on, and he did. Of their time on set, Vladimir Coolidge said, we were all really passionate about the project and we shot it in the worst conditions in Canada. When you go through something that heavy, it stays in the film. Filming wrapped November 1, 1997. Everyone went home, assuming their job was done. But they were wrong.

They were wrong. They were wrong. Male. Okay. Bollang, come out to play. You need to watch Warriors. I don't want to based on what you're telling me. It's fun.

Okay. Now, the initial release date was May of 1998. And early on, there were already a few rounds of reshoots. November to December of 1997. This took place on McTiernan's ranch in Wyoming. They captured shots of the writers traveling. A lot of this was not the actors. This was doubles.

This is fine. This makes total sense. Yeah. January of 98, though, McTurnon, reshot portions of the scene in the cave with the Wendell's mother. At this point, portrayed by actress Susan Willis, who was 72 years old. Keep that in mind. Which also makes sense, because in the finished version of the film, whoever they use,

I'm just like, there's just a lady who's here. This is no one's mother. This is just a lady. I agree. This is a young, semi-hot lady. More on that in a little bit. So with these early reshoots in place, McTurin screened his cut, still called Eaters of the dead at this point, to a test audience sometime around the end.

end of January beginning of February 1998. And then Ain't It Cool News posted the results. They pooled 19 reviews submitted by people who had attended the screening, and these reviews broke down as such, five positives, eight middle of the roads, and six negatives. Yeah, that's not good. It's not good. Especially for test screening. So, like, you know, I remember the first time I did a test screening, and I'm not going to share the score that the movie got. It improved. But I thought it was really good. And they were like, no, you.

you don't understand. This is quite bad. Well, they were like, it's fine, but it's not what we want it to be because we've pulled in people who are supposed to like the movie. Like, a lot of the time, these test audiences that are pulled in, it's the demographic you're going for. That's actually a really good point I want to talk about for a second, because one thing McTiernan was very upset about with this test screening was that they didn't listen to

him about where they screened it. They screened it at the Galleria in Glendale. And McTurionan was like, this is not that movie. This is not a shoot-em-up head ripping off action movie yet, even though it will be eventually. I was going to say it. He was like, this is Baywolf. This is more elevated. This is something a little bit, you know, longer, more complicated, more developed.

Like, can we also screen it in New York? Can we screen it somewhere else? And they said no. That's the same logic I used. I said, this is elevated. This is Bayo Wolf. They didn't believe me. Well, I didn't believe him either.

I would like to actually read some of these reviews because A&Cool News published three of them. So first, this is the positive one. It wasn't orgasmically great, nor was it painfully bad, not even close. It was a solid adventure film well-told and beautifully staged, and that in and of itself makes it a worthwhile film. Okay. Now the middle of the road. The film was exactly as it read in the script.

I have not read the book, so I can't make any comparisons, but I have a problem. The movie was okay, 2.5 stars, but for some reason, I liked it. I can't explain it. That's how I feel. I agree. Yeah, I'm like, it's not, my brain says, it's not good, but my heart says, I like watching it again and again. And lastly, the bad.

That's it. I hate to say this, my fellow geeks, but John McTiernan is dead in my eyes. A man who I once thought of as an action movie God no longer exists in my world. This guy did end his review with I missed Frazier for this. Sorry, this person sucks. Like, I don't like saying that about people. He's probably a fine person, but also, come on. I agree.

I hate reviews like that. That kind of hyperbole is ridiculous. It is. But the point is none of those are ringing endorsements. Now, there are a few other clues in these reviews that I want to share. One, the score was entirely missing at this point. It was temped with Westworld, The Mission, The Crow, Apollo 13, and Braveheart. This is normal.

Graham Ravelle, who was the composer attached to the film, was still working on the score. He completed it in February of 1998. That's around or after when the screening took place. So, fine. Two, nobody liked the love interest. In fact, one person pointed out that the fact that they were using Braveheart score, I'm guessing during the sequences with the love interest, really highlighted how sort of half-assed it was.

Three, many of the reviewers were familiar with the source material, and most agreed, it kind of sucked, so their expectations for the story of the film were low. However, they came in hoping for over-the-top Viking violence, and they didn't get it here because prior to this point and all throughout the shoot, John McTiernan had been explicitly instructed by the studio to go for a PG-13 rating. I feel like you can tell in the first Great Hall fight, which is so chaotic and dimly lit and fog-filled, that fight was disappointing watching it this time around. I liked some of the other fights a lot more.

But that fight, I just felt like you've thrown the edit into a blender. It's blender cutting. We're just cutting to random shots. And I cannot see anything. I know. What's so frustrating about this is this is completely not his fault. He knew this. Yeah, of course.

And they were telling him, you have to do it PG-13. And his point was, okay, well, PG-13 with guns is a lot easier because you can show a gun going off and not show the person getting shot with a sword. what are you supposed to do? You do exactly what you just described. You kind of make it a mush mess. And of course, two of the highest grossing films of 1999, ironically, would end up being R-rated films with the Sixth Sense and the Blair Witch Project. Yes, because problem number four, prior to this point and all throughout the shoot, John McTiernan had been instructed by the studio to explicitly go after a PG-13 rating. And number five, one reviewer spotted John McTiernan and Michael Crichton whispering feverishly after the screening. It seemed clear to everyone, it had not gone well.

Reportedly, it didn't help that heeded only a few spots away from Criton and McTiernan had been some guy who kept loudly exclaiming it was so bad he could have directed it himself. Those people at screenings, I just... Hate him. Guys, don't. Now, inevitably, the release date was pushed back, because here's what happened next. Disney brought in Michael Crichton to essentially take over the film.

He would be directing reshoots as well as the new edit. But here's the thing, Chris, this wasn't just a result of the bad test screening. Reportedly, this had been in the works for months. Remember that boom operator who said Michael Crichton had been kicked off the set and out of Canada? Well, it seems actual human giant Michael Crichton was none too pleased about this, and he did not let it go. No, like Dennis Nedry, he started working behind the scenes against the production as a whole. He began pouring the poison in Disney's year that they had a choice to make, either honor McTiernan's vision and never work with Crichton again, or get rid of McTiernan and gobble up all the Crichton IP they could shove in their

dinosaur jaws. Well, and this is what, 97 is the Lost World Jurassic Park, so Crichton's still... Oh, yeah. Sphere did bomb around this time. It doesn't matter. The amount of things he's made that are moneymakers are huge. I secretly love that movie. I like Sphere a lot. His point was which is more valuable to you? And the answer to Disney at that point was pretty clear. It is. I mean, on the one hand, they have the crass way of putting it would be an aging action director who may no longer be culturally irrelevant in the way that he was at the tail end of the 80s. On the other hand, they have a freaking idea machine paperback

master. I mean, it's him and Stephen King, basically. And he's also just too tall. If that man is yelling at me, I can't turn him down. I can't say no. So, that song from Oklahoma played in my head, I'm just a girl who kites, I know. That's an actual song. And we did that play

in our high school with that song. Just Michael Eisner, just saying that. Oh, man, we do have to write fan fiction about this and that scene goes in. do. However, you can't get rid of a director of John McTiernan's stature that easily. He was a huge director, and obviously McTiernan pitched a fit. Now, I could not figure out whether or not he had final cut, but what Disney did was they gave both McTiernan and Crichton their own sound stages to both film reshoots simultaneously. They're doing a bake-off. Here's our boom operator again with the good goss.

Quote, both Crichton and McTee were calling the alternating shots. McTee's view of the project was purposely much less bloody, a major bone of contention with Crichton. So I suppose it wasn't surprising that we ended up doing a couple weeks of stage work featuring a whole lot of chopped limbs, squirting blood, and decapitation's courtesy of, quote, director, Mike. As John had to be on set being the director of credit, it was pretty wild hearing him loudly, sarcastically exclaim, oh, that's a great fucking shot. We certainly couldn't have lived without that after nearly every one of Crichton's gems.

Which is also weird because in theory, the studio mandate was not to put in the head chopping off. They switched. After the test screening, they realized that they had made a mistake. Michael Crichton also was like, this needs to be way more violent, and they laid it all at the feet of John McTiernan,

which was not fair at all. Now, if you asked Michael Crichton, he would say, oh, everyone agreed on the reshoots. It was no biggie. Only took forever for them to do because we had to wait for Antonio Banderas to be available.

To which I say, two things can be true, sir. You may have had to wait for Antonio Banderas to be available, but you were not in agreement on this. So in July of 1998, this is when the massive round of Los Angeles reshoots take place, the majority of which are directed by Crichton, with some shots on McTiernan's set. According to makeup artist Charles Pauley, the director's helm scenes, quote, sometimes in

turns, but never together, sometimes one doing a second version of the others just completed scene. It was very uncomfortable at times for the crew trying to maintain two different loyalties to two men who had differing visions. According to Vladimir Coolech, it got so bad that McTurton and Crichton would tell the actors not to tell the other director what they had just been shooting. And finally, one day Koolish had had it, and he was chatting with Krighten about the situation because they had become friends, and Krighten told him, Vladimir, it doesn't matter what you're doing over there because I have final cut. And sure enough, he was right. Now this is due in no small part to the fact that McTiernan had to leave the set in order to start filming the Thomas Crown Affair in New York,

so he threw up his hands and got on a plane. At which point Michael Krichton essentially took complete control of the production. The first thing he did was replace the actress playing the Wendell's mother. As we said, this was initially played by an older woman, much of more of a grand matriarch, and he said, I want a young hot witch. And reportedly people in the test greetings didn't love Bolivai, quote, brutally killing off an old lady. I want to see that. That is what I want. You want more hagsploitation. Just admit. I do. You know I love hagsploitation. So Crichton brought in Kristen Cloak. That's who you see in the final product. He also reshot the leader of the Wendell Army. You can see it because you can see him composited into

the earlier scene in the movie. I just remember that shot happens. Well, the horns. Yeah. The horns are composited in. Jason Glass played the role during principal photography, but Crichton brought in stuntman Vladimir Orlov and then added horns to his headdress. This was to make him more identifiable. That to your point, they had to go back and add horns to glass via VFX. Crichton added way more gore. This is the beheadings, head ripping off. Also reshot the underwater cave exit, which is now at Point Doom in Malibu, and a new rainy funeral for Bolivai at Pacific Palisades. According to Crichton, he also changed the title. He said it was getting constant negative feedback from people. And he said even though the studio did not want to change the name, he pressured them into changing it to the 13th Warrior.

Now, according to McTiernan in 2023, too much is made of Crichton's involvement. And then in the end, only about three scenes of the film were shot by Crichton. He said the difference between their two cuts was only five to ten minutes, to which I say five to ten minutes could be an enormous difference. Well, let's just put it this way. You could say, on the one hand, 90 to 95 percent of the movie was directed on set by John McTernan. I think that's true. On the other, other hand, a movie's tone is very much still established in the edit, which Crichton very much had control over it, sounds like. Yes, I think almost complete control. And he made one pretty massive change in post-production, which is that he scrapped Graham Revelle's score completely.

Yeah, Jerry Goldsmith, right, as the credited. He brought in Jerry Goldsmith, who he'd worked with on Coma, the Great Train Robbery, and Runaway. You can actually hear Revelle's score. It leaked online, and you can listen to it in full. I did. A lot of people argue that it's far superior to Goldsmiths. I don't know if I agree with that. Obviously, Jerry Goldsmith is one of the best composers ever, but... It feels like Goldsmith's doing Hans Zimmer. Yes. Like, it really feels like he's doing the score from the rock. I was actually comparing the two of them. It felt close to me. Well, because it was rushed. Of course. They may have tempted with that score. You know what I mean? And he's trying to match that. Who knows? It's hard to know without seeing the score connected to a cut

in terms of the Graham Revelle one, but I will say it is definitely more varied. It features both more Nordic instruments and more Arab instruments. There's a lot more space in it. I do think I prefer it to what's in the final film. Sound designer Brian Williams, who worked on Graham Revelle's original score said the original cut of the 13th Warrior had a darker, grittier, and more realistic tone. Of the music, he said, quote, I must confess that Goldsmith's score didn't leave any impression on me at all. It was just another generic Hollywood score from what I recall. I think that's fair. Now, in September of 98, they held another test screening with Crichton's cuts in place as well as Goldsmith's score, and it didn't really test better than McTiernan's. In fact, I think you could argue it tested worse. One audience member wrote, quote, The 13th Warrior is a poor example of filmmaking. The plot is as thin as Kate Moss, and the characters are as interesting as wet cardboard. Antonio Banderas plays Ahmed Ibn Fadlan, an Arab with a Spanish accent, who is chosen by Vikings to be the 13th warrior in a fight against an invisible enemy who eats away flesh and may not be human. Well, it turns out there's not a lot of flesh eating and the invisible enemy turns out to be mountain men who think they are bears.

You know, one of the problems, too, is I feel like the movie gets a lot of energy when they go on the offensive and they move into the caves. And it's interesting how if you look at the other movies, I feel like who have done similar things, the ones I mentioned, the dissent and Bone Tomahawk, they have that forward momentum, right? In the descent, it's like they're entering the cave right at the beginning of the movie. And Bone Tomahawk, it's a journey to find the cannibals. Defense movies, I think, can be tough like this, right? where they're effectively just stationary for a lot of the movie. Yeah. Trying to survive the night, and it can feel pretty static.

Well, at this point, it seems the studio kind of just threw their hands up and decided to dump the film. They didn't even give it a premiere. Coolidge couldn't believe that the film, which he'd thought would be his big break, had devolved into watching these two men behave like children. Here's Vladimir Coolidge talking about what he felt like the problem with the movie was and a possible solution.

The weakness is you got 13 characters that you don't develop fully. So when you start to lose them through the battles, you don't really care because you're not connected to them. And I made a suggestion, which unfortunately didn't happen, was we're on this boat. All you have to do is take a handheld camera, walk around the boat, as you travel, and give each character 20 seconds. You know, like let's say this guy is a blacksmith, you know, or this guy is an arch or he makes a, archery equipment or whatever. And so when this guy dies, you go, oh, that's a blacksmith. Oh, that's too bad.

It's a shame. But they never got that. So we lost a lot of characters in the first battle. You didn't know who they were. And I thought that was a sad because we shot for 10 months. We had plenty of time to establish characters. So the reason I wanted to play this clip is because I think this is a really good and simple idea.

And it's a great example of why. it can be important to listen to people. You know, I think the best directors are able to listen to their collaborators. And in this case, maybe because there was so much defensiveness, because the director position was being challenged, suggestions like this completely fell by the wayside. He's totally right. This was a simple way to at least be able to identify who was dying,

because you literally can't. Yeah, it's the hardest thing in the, quote, like, men on a mission subgenre, right? the team mission subgenre. And the two examples that I think do this so well. The one that probably just takes too much time and would be too difficult to copy is, for example, Ocean's 11. Yes. Which in a four-minute montage explains 11 characters down to a T, and we know all of them going forward. But it does it basically by saying exactly what he's saying to do here. Yeah, you get roughly 30 seconds with each character, 20 to 30 seconds. It's really just one beat, you know, with each character. And we

understand them. It's an extremely well-written movie. The other one, though, that could be a better, again, it came out after this movie, but I think it's a great example of this. Set aside any feelings you might have about the movie and it being jingoistic, et cetera. Black Hawk Down establishes all of its characters so well. These are all grunts, GIs with the same haircut, pretty much all just white guys. And you understand this guy's the typist, right? This guy's the rah-rah go guy. This guy doesn't have his backplate armor on. That's Tom Sysmore. This, you know what I mean? Like, you know only ever plays himself and does it great. But that movie does such a good job in the first 20 minutes of we know who 10, 12 guys are very specifically.

I have a secret to admit, I like that movie. I think I haven't seen it in a long time, but I like that movie. Oh, I like it too. I think it's an exceptionally well-made movie. I think there's a lot to grapple with geopolitically, but I think it's actually one of Ridley Scott's best directing efforts of like the last 25 years. I agree. All right, on August 27th, 1999, the 13th Warrior released wide and came in second place on its opening weekend behind the Sixth Sense, which had been released three weeks earlier. But something else was released three weeks earlier, too, the Thomas Crown Affair, directed by John McTiernan.

Wow, it's crazy. Unlike the 13th Warrior, the Thomas Crown Affair opened to good reviews and a strong box office turnout. It made its budget back and then some. The 13th Warrior did not. The reviews of the 13th Warrior were also. also not kind. Roger Ebert said to extract the story from the endless scenes of action and carnage is more effort than it's worth. The film seems to have been conceived from the special effects on down. Instead of beginning with a good story and then adding FX as needed, it apparently

began with FX and then the story was shoehorned into the pauses in the action. Which is funny because, of course, it did actually start with the story, which is it started with Beowulf. Rumor started swirling that the 13th warrior had been a very expensive mistake. The budget had been set initially somewhere around 60 million, we think, and it seems like that was inflated to over 85 million with the cost of reshoots and recuts. Some blogs started reporting the budget had ballooned to more than 160 million. This seems almost impossible, given Disney only reported an $85 million loss that quarter based on box office receipts from this film, Mumford and Mystery Alaska.

Nevertheless, the 13th Warrior did lose an enormous amount of money. It made something like $60 million at the box office. And it seemed doomed to go down in history as one of the biggest box office bombs Disney had ever seen. Joined later, of course, by John Carter, which I think also deserves a rewatch and a different legacy, and the Lone Ranger,

which we can leave where it is. We covered it. I know. Which, though, to be fair, has some amazing set pieces. Trains? It does. The last train chase shootout

is fantastic. I agree. But something unusual started happening when the film released on VHS and DVD. People started watching it. Chris Winterbauer kept renting it. So did Lizzie Bass. it. Over the years, it gained a cult following where the vast majority of people who have

watched it never did so in a movie theater. We all watched it at home. And it did garner some support from the Muslim community as well. Writer Muhammad Zahir pointed out that the film, quote, pioneered a Muslim hero in Hollywood blockbusters and cultivated a devoted cult following, especially amongst Muslims searching for positive representation on the big screen. However, Dr. Reza Aslan wrote, quote, as someone who has spent 20 years trying to make movies and television shows that put Muslim identities at the forefront, I think the 13th Warrior probably hurt the situation because it was such a box office disaster, that some people in Hollywood decided that they weren't going to make a movie with a Muslim protagonist anymore. Then almost

immediately, we had the events of 9-11, which allowed Hollywood to turn Muslims into the antagonists. I wouldn't necessarily say that there was a snowball effect so much as it was 9-11. I agree. Like, I don't think this movie made a big enough impact. You know what I mean? Well, it was a box office bomb. I see his point. It's the same argument that studios have made, you know, in previous episodes we've covered against women as directors. It's like if you made a movie that didn't do well, don't put a lady behind the camera, you know? Yeah, but I guess in this instance, with the amount of behind the scenes bickering going on between McTiernan and Crichton, I could see a lot of other reasons being pointed. I'm not saying they're not going to look for a scapegoat.

I'm just saying, I would imagine it would hurt Bandaris more, for example, potentially as like a leading man. It didn't, which I think is good, because he came out pretty unscathed. Everybody agreed he held his own in the movie and was one of the best parts of it. As for John McTiernan, his string of clinkers would, of course, continue with Rollerball and Basic. But it was on Rollerball that he hired a private eye, Anthony Pelicano, to illegally wiretap the phone of his co-producer during a creative dispute, which he then lied to the FBI about. He would end up serving 10 months in federal prison. So many have theorized that what happened on the 13th Warrior may have been the breaking point that led to something like this. He developed a paranoia so strong that he wiretapped his

co-worker's phones. And after going through this story, this had to have been traumatizing. Because in this case, it was true that Michael Crichton was absolutely working behind the scenes to edge him out from pretty early on in the production. Now, does that mean that you have an excuse for wiretapping your creative co-producer's phone? No, not at all. Do I potentially understand what broke his brain and led to that? Yes. Yeah. And I would imagine it's almost more of a holistic breakdown.

Yes, there are specific things pushing him in that direction. But I would imagine just it's really hard to come down from such a high of those three movies he did at the end of the 80s into the early 90s. And then all of a sudden you're just not on sure footing anymore. Never recover. Never fully recovered, right? Yeah. And that's extremely that I think would shatter my brain personally. more than necessarily the specifics of the 13th Warrior, although I'm sure there's a cumulative

effect. Yeah. But yeah, no, it was a tough end, you know, to a very, very talented director's career. Now, there are still diehard 13th Warrior fans who advocate for the release of the McTiernan cut with Graham Ravell's original score. According to Coolidge, Crichton wanted a really fast-moving, quick-cut film, and McTurin wanted something much more layered. Coolich said Crichton seemed uncomfortable with dead air. If people weren't actively telling the story, his story, he wanted to move on. McTurton understood the importance of space and silence. And it seems he still does. When asked about the infamous director's cut, he said, maybe it's better. It remains a myth. It probably does, right? You know what I mean? My guess is he's telling the truth that it's not as

different as people think it is. Yeah. I think having had the opportunity to, you know, make a movie where I've seen, if you were to see the director's cut of something I made versus the final one, I think most audience members would have a hard time pointing out the differences, even though it feels so drastic to me. And I think that's probably the case with most of these films as well. Yeah. And there are other instances where the director's cut people actually don't prefer. Like, legend is one of the famous ones. I think a lot of people prefer the Tangerine Dream score that was released with theatrical version against Ridley Scott's Will, as opposed to the Jerry Goldsmith version that was done later. All right, Chris. Well, what went right? Well, I have to be.

say the first thing that went right is 1999, the year of movies with numbers in the title. Can I give you a little list? Six cents. Yeah. So I was thinking about the two that came to mind when I was watching this were the sixth sense and the ninth gate. Oh yeah. The Roman Polansky film with Johnny Depp. Yeah. And then I was going through a list. Okay, so Star Wars episode one, technically, three kings. Which we're going to cover. Yeah. Three to tango, the Nev Campbell movie. Six cents, the sixth day with Arnold, if you haven't seen that one, the cloning one, eight millimeter, ninth gate, ten things I about you and the 13th Warrior. Wow.

That's nine movies with numbers in the title from 99. So that went right. Numbers. Okay. I'm just kidding. For me, Antonio Banderas, movie star. Yeah, I agree. He was, I still think he remains, but he was such in an era, you know, if you go 85 to

95, let's say, an era of beefcakes, a lot of big dudes, you know what I mean? Like from Schwarzenegger, but even Willis a little bit. Oh, yeah. He's more slight than Schwarzenegger. But Mel Gibson, you know, all of these guys. And then here comes Bandaris, who, as you said, is a much slighter person than a lot of these Hollywood A-listers and just embraces himself in every way. And he's so endlessly appealing.

He's so charming. He's so effortless. But without, he never undercuts the drama, you know what I mean, of the scenes and whatnot. He's great. I just think he's wonderful. He's so wonderful. I have never not enjoyed watching Antonio Banderas in anything. Me too.

I think he's fantastic. And I'm very excited. about him in the Anthony Bourdain biopic coming out later this year, Tony. Yes, that looks really good. It does look really good. A number of folks were saying that they didn't love Banderas, his casting, and interview with the vampire, because he's so different than the character described in the book. I loved it.

I agree. I think he fits so effortlessly into all of these worlds. He's such a chameleon, and yet he's always so himself. Yeah. And that's a unique ability. It is. I'll give mine to Antonio. I agree.

I love him. I'm going to give mine to the production design team on this. I think the work that they did is... It's amazing. It's amazing. I hope they know... I'm sure they do, but I hope they know what an accomplishment this was and how many people love this movie and love it for that.

Love being able to see the scope of this and see the Viking Village and everything. I mean, it's amazing. I think that's what gives it its rewatchability is actually that the world feels so lived in. So even though the story's thin, it still feels rich around it. I agree. And then I want to give a little sub what went right as well to the original... idea behind the book. I know we dumped on Michael Crichton a lot during this, and I think, you know, he handled this pretty poorly. He's a brilliant writer, but yeah. I love this idea. I think this is a very

cool way of handling this. And I love the way that his brain worked backwards from, okay, here's Beowulf. What if it was real? Okay, I can't find the real story. I'm going to make the real story from which this legend bloomed. It's really fun. It's really cool. To your point, It's a version of, yes, essentially fan fiction or real person fiction, but that doesn't hurt anyone. And if anything, even expanded on and resurfaced this real person, Ibn Fadlon, who actually did write an extremely important documentation of the Vikings at that time. So I think the idea is really cool. He was so smart. He was such an incredible writer.

And he's directed some great things as well. He didn't do himself any favors here. But those are my what went rights. All right, Lizzie. Well, thank you so much. We finally got through a true, was it great or were you eight? And the answer is both. Yeah.

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further, you can for $50 a month get a special full stop supporter shout out just like one of these. Uh, David, can I get some Viking music here to set the mood? Thanks. Lo, there do I see my father's. Adrian Peng Korea, Ben Shindleman, Blaze Ambrose, Brian Donahue, Daniel P. David Friskolanti, Michael McGrath, Steve Winterbauer, and James McAvoy. Lo, there do I see my mother's, Angeline Renee Cook, Beatrix Earhart, Brittany Morris, Brooke, C. Grace B, Lena L.J., Lydia Howes, and Rosemary Southward. And my sisters, M. Zodia, Felicia G., Karina Kanaba, Kate Elrington, Kathleen Olson, Amy Elgeslager McCoy, Lousy Susan, Suzanne Johnson,

and my brothers, Darren and Dale Conkling, Evan Downey, Jason Frankel, JJ Rapido, John D. Wilshire, Nate Ashley, Nate the Knife, Scott O'Shita, Chris Bleal. Lo, there do I see the line of my people, Cameron Smith, Don Sheibel, film it yourself, Frankenstein, half-gray hound, Rale J. Soman Chianani. Back to the beginning. Lo, Galen and Miguel, the broken glass kids, Jory Hill Piper, Jose Amelano Salto del Giorgio, Mark Bertha, Mariposa's humans, Matthew Jacobson,

the Provost family, the O's sound like O's do call to me. The cast and crew of Winnetrip to Browntown bid me take my place among them in the halls of Valhalla, where Sadie, just Sadie, may live forever. Thank you so much, Lizzie. Next week, we are really excited because we are also going back to a 90s cult classic that has been requested so many times.

And that is Lizzie, a movie that made Hollywood say, this is why you don't let ladies direct or star in movies. And we are talking about Tank Girl. I'm very excited. Incredibly creative. Talk about great production. design movie that has a complicated story and legacy. And I'm really excited to dive into it with you. Great. I can't wait. All right, guys. Until next week. We'll see you done. Bye.

What went wrong is a Sad Boom podcast presented by Lizzie Bassett and Chris Winterbauer. Post-production and music by David Bowman. This episode was researched by Laura Woods and edited by Karen Krupsaw.