I mentioned Pathfinder a couple of times last year. As you may recall, it's about a Viking boy (Karl Urban) who is raised by a Native tribe and grows up to fight the Viking invaders on behalf of his adopted people.
This movie was scheduled to premiere last year, but it was postponed. Now it's going to be released April 13. It's the first major Native-themed movie of 2007.
Here's the trailer:
Hmm. Looks like Apocalypto meets 300 to me. A highly stylized appearance (lots of monochromatic scenes), ultra-violent, not much genuine Native culture.
Apparently Pathfinder is also coming out as a graphic novel. Judging by the pages posted on the official website, it looks like another "lite" read.
In short, I'm not expecting much except another bloody thrill ride (see 300, Apocalypto, SCALPED, LONE RANGER, etc.). These days, nobody seems to have anything real to say about Natives. All they want to do is project their fantasies onto a Native backdrop.
6 comments:
Writerfella here --
writerfella and company viewed the PATHFINDER trailer several times in theaters during fall of last year. Yes, it did resemble the 300 trailer but it in no way resembled the APOCALYPTO trailer as that film mostly was shot in non-CGI real time and out of doors. As for any "genuine Native culture", did the trailer reveal any particular tribes or recognizable areas of location? What about any "genuine Viking culture", which in light of the above becomes a fair question? Demanding or even having the expectation that works of fiction somehow should be absolutely and completely real and/or true violates the principle that generates fiction in the first place. Fiction has the singular characteristic of never having happened at all and usually is fraught with verisimilitude to grant only the appearance of being either real or true without losing the generalized suspension of disbelief on the part of its audience, at least for the time they experience the story. If fiction somehow is held to the same standards as is non-fiction, it will cease to be fiction. As is expressed in Joseph campbell's THE HERO WITH A THOUSAND FACES, mythmaking always has been an essential part and parcel of every human culture that ever has existed, if only because man's powers of imagination and intellectualization outgrew and then outstripped his realities...
All Best
Russ Bates
'writerfella'
Pathfinder resembles 300 in style and Apocalypto in content. You know, the lone noble warrior against a horde of ominous adversaries? The good indigenous hero against the evil representatives of "civilization"?
The film is set in America among its Native tribes. Given that setup, the opportunities to explore Native cultures clearly outweigh the opportunities to explore Viking cultures. But to me it seems the Vikings predominate.
I don't expect a trailer to show much. But in the trailers for The New World, End of the Spear, and Apocalypto, at least you could tell the movie was about a particular tribe or nation. In the Pathfinder trailer, you can barely detect any Native culture.
Writerfella here --
Movie trailers are sources of "style and content"? Other than nearly-monochrome CGI fantasy landscapes, the two trailers resembled each other only because they both were trailers. Plus, the story is about a Viking child captured by Natives and raised as one of them who then faces the crisis of opposing his birth people to help defend his adopted tribe. Thus, he is far from being a "lone noble warrior" and even an "indigenous hero", and Vikings far less were civilized than the Pirates of The Caribbean.
Maybe so much was intuited from the PATHFINDER trailer because it was kept in a mayonnaise jar on Funk & Wagnall's porch since noon today...
All Best
Russ Bates
'writerfella'
Yes, "nearly-monochrome CGI fantasy landscapes" are a huge part of both Pathfinder's and 300's style, apparently. So you agree with me that they have similar styles?
Ghost (Karl Urban) isn't literally indigenous, but he's adopted by an indigenous tribe. His membership in that tribe makes him an indigenous hero (i.e., a hero of indigenous people).
In fact, any white or black person adopted into a tribe becomes an Indian by definition. But I've explained this before elsewhere.
I understood from the trailer that Ghost fights alone. Now I've read an article that says his situation is similar to Jaguar Paw's in Apocalypto. (I won't be more specific because I don't want to spoil the movie for people.)
In other words, my conclusion seems to be correct. I guess I know how to "read" trailers better than you do.
It's pretty common to say the Vikings had a distinct culture or civilization. As some websites put it:
http://www.missgien.net/vikings/vikings.html
Viking civilization flourished with its skaldic literature and eddic poetry, its runic inscriptions, its towns and markets, and, most of all, its ability to organize people under law to achieve a common task--such as an invasion.
http://www.nat.is/travelguideeng/icelandic_vikings.htm
The word Viking is a collective designation of Nordic peoples, Danes, Swedes, Norwegians and Icelanders, who ranged abroad during a period of dynamic Scandinavian expansion in the Middle Ages, from about AD 800 to 1100. Called the Viking Age, the period has long been popularly associated with unbridled piracy, when freebooters came swarming out of the northlands in their predatory long ships to burn and pillage their way across civilized Europe. This, however, is now recognized as a gross simplification. Modern scholarship emphasizes the achievements of the Viking Age in terms of Scandinavian art and craftsmanship, marine technology, exploration, and the development of commerce, the Vikings as traders, not raiders.
Writerfella here --
Actually not any agreement at all, as you said "a huge part of both PATHFINDER's and 300's style" and writerfella did not. And you disagree with yourself in saying "any white or black person adopted into a tribe becomes an Indian by definition" which flies in the face of another such statement of yours that Indian identity merely is a political matter. And if Vikings ostensibly were traders rather than raiders, then the Chickasaw re-naming of The Trail of Tears as 'the relocation' also must fly, therefore. Revisionist history only appeals to revisionist historians...
All Best
Russ Bates
'writerfella'
I explained why the two films have similar styles. You haven’t explained anything—perhaps because of your continuing inability to articulate your views. Readers can note the difference.
So what are the glaring differences between the two movies’ styles, if any? Feel free to offer something positive rather than your usual carping criticism.
Your comment about my alleged contradiction shows you really don’t understand what I’m talking about. A tribe’s ability to enroll anyone, even someone with white or black blood, establishes the definition of an Indian. It’s a political and cultural definition that the tribes have argued for and the feds have acknowledged. What it isn’t is a biological definition based on race, genetics, or heredity.
In short, there’s no contradiction except for those who don’t know Indian history and law. Which seems to include you.
There’s also no contradiction between being raiders and being "civilized." Just look at various corporations, the Nazis, or our own forces in Iraq.
At least I can cite sources for my so-called revisionist history. That puts me one up on you. Let us know if you have any evidence that the Vikings were brutes or barbarians with no culture or civilization.
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