A new trailer for Robert Eggers’ The Northman has just dropped, promising what all signs point to the acclaimed director’s most epic film to date.
The film only marks Eggers’ third directorial outing for a feature-length project, but he’s already received heaps of praise for two historically-grounded horror films, 2015’s The Witch and 2019’s The Lighthouse. Each project has seemingly surpassed the last, and at this rate, The Northman could be the director’s magnum opus. That’s a tall order for a man who helmed the surreal The Lighthouse, arguably channeling Stanley Kubrick while also delivering some of the most striking cinematography and rich dialogue the year it came out.
Unlike his previous two projects, which were both distributed by A24, this newest film boasts a much bigger budget from Focus Features. Though Eggers said some changes were made to the film so that it resonated better with test audiences, a process he didn’t have to go through with his first two movies, he maintains the changes were mostly to ensure he delivered “the most entertaining Robert Eggers movie I could make.”
Co-star Ethan Hawke even compared the film to the Vietnam psychological war epic Apocolypse Now, and with the latest trailer’s brooding scenes of brutality set against an ancient world backdrop, we can see why.
The film centers around Alexander Skarsgård as a Viking Prince who embarks on a bloody warpath to avenge his father’s death, at the hand of his uncle, in a tale based on a Viking legend that helped inspire William Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
The Northman, which is already receiving high critical acclaim, rampages into theaters April 22.