Underrated masterpiece that’s Game of Thrones meets Gladiator is now on Netflix | Films | Entertainment

With the release of Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey in cinemas last weekend, movie fans have been revisiting ancient-world epics from Troy and Gladiator to 300. Although it received glowing reviews, one criticism of The Odyssey is that it feels too modern and materialistic.

Nolan begins the movie with the line “in a time of apparent magic” before explaining away anything fantastical in the film via Odysseus’ drug-fuelled lotus plant memories. However, if you want a period action film with a historically accurate cast and an engrossingly immersive step back in time to an enchanted world, The Northman is for you.

Based on the legend of Amleth, this Viking epic, set in 895AD, was the basis for Hamlet and, subsequently, The Lion King. In a Game of Thrones meets Gladiator plot, Alexander Skarsgård is an exiled prince who disguises himself as a slave to avenge his father’s murder at the hands of his throne-stealing uncle. Heavily influenced by Norse mythology, writer-director Robert Eggers’ (The Witch, The Lighthouse, Nosferatu) period action epic is one of the most underrated films of the last few years.

The film co-stars Nicole Kidman, Claes Bang, Anya Taylor-Joy, Ethan Hawke, Björk and Willem Dafoe. Beautifully shot on location in Ireland and Iceland, The Northman, which is streaming now on Netflix, was showered in five star reviews and has 90% on Rotten Tomatoes.