13 Comments

Fjolnir was not any better than Aurvindel. He tries to rape his own slave, and only doesn't because she's on her period.

It is plausible that he could take on Amleth in a fight, despite the age difference, because Amleth had already been stabbed by both his mother & half-brother.

Kidman is Australian, not South African (you might be confusing her with Charlize Theron).

The term Richard is thinking of for the "standard British" for period pieces is what TV Tropes calls "The Queen's Latin".

The TV series Game of Thrones did add racial diversity compared to the books. Xaro Xoan Daxos(?) was white in there, as was Sallador Saan & Areo Hotah. In the new spinoff series House of the Dragon they've made another notable character & his children black even though it's a significant plot point that his son's alleged children don't quite look like him, and it would be harder to be ambiguous in this case.

I believe The Witch takes place in the 1600s.

My take is that Gudrun was just messing with Amleth when she kissed him, and he was unable to understand her telling him that she wanted him dead.

It was actually the introduction of doctors (who would perform autopsies and not wash their hands) that greatly increased the number of deaths in childbirth. Poorer women in the 19th century who couldn't afford doctors and instead relied on midwives wound up better off.

Amleth does explicitly tell Olga that he'll take his half-brother with them when he saves his mother.

Clark's story is more complicated than it just being the black death. It was a long process of downward mobility. It was admittedly the case that the poor & malnourished would have been more vulnerable to disease.

They tried to make a Conan movie with Jason Mamoa, but I don't think it was successful.

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You're going to hold having sex with slaves against him given the times? He backed off when she fought back! That was probably very rare.

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If raping a slave is what makes Aurvindel bad, then the same thing should logically apply to Fjolnir. His reason for backing off isn't simply because she was resistant, but because of her menstruating.

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Could it be that Amleth and Olga’s daughter is actually Olga of Kiev, the first Kievan Rus ruler who got baptized? The movie starts in 895 while Princess Olga’s birth is dated between 890 and 925, this is basically within the movie’s timeframe. This might explain the maiden king bit.

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Well now that would be cool.

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I definitely got the feeling that this was implied - if not exactly this specific historical person, but the general "half-Norse founding of an eastern European kingdom"

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My apologies for laziness, would it be possible to get a transcript?

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Too lazy to listen to a podcast? You can do it during other things.

It’s cheap to make an AI transcript but they’re usually awful. The really important CSPI podcasts we do by hand.

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np, not trying to impose any more work on you or anyone else! Just if it happened to already available. For a number of reasons, reading is way more practical for me. Thanks! The movie was fascinating.

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Finally got round to watching the movie and listening to this podcast. Have you guys seen Oldboy?? I was expecting this to go down that route of a seemingly conventional revenge tale being upended by a devastating conclusion... but in the end it played things very straight. In a weird way this was even more surprising than if the film had gone down the Oldboy route of showing the futility of vengeance or something like that (the Batman is a more recent example of this).

I feel like we have been so preconditioned to expect traditional narratives to be subverted that when films play things conventionally this in of itself somehow feels subversive. Top Gun Maverick gave me a similar vibe.

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I would love for you guys to take a look at something from the Taylor Sheridan universe. Feels like he would be up your alley.

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Never heard of him, what do you recommend to start with?

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Taylor Sheridan wrote Sicario & Hell or High Water. He also directed Wind River & Those Who Wish Me Dead and created the TV series Yellowstone & Mayor of Kingstown.

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