Viking Destiny Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.0
Overall		2.0

Viking Destiny Blu-ray Movie Review

Xena-phobia.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman December 6, 2018

If only Wonder Woman had come out just a little bit earlier, we might have all been saved from Viking Destiny. In a release where the admittedly short supplemental features may hold more interest than the “main event”, writer-director David L.G. Hughes discloses that he came up with the idea for this film after having “survived” watching countless “Disney Princess” movies with his young daughter, coming to the conclusion that what the world really needed was a butt kicking heroine who could hold her own with any overly muscled hunk of beef. Evidently, the blandishments of such small screen wonderments as Xena: Warrior Princess didn’t come immediately to Hughes’ mind, and Gal Gadot had yet to be viewed in all her glory, so instead this pretty haphazard and sometimes disastrously poorly written escapade was the result.

Viking Destiny is the sort of movie that has a scene where a woman in what seems to be rather painful labor simply stops having contractions for a few minutes in order to engage in some overheated dialogue with her husband, the King, urging him to pick up his sword and fight like a man, she’ll take care of all the messy birthing stuff (I exagerrate, but not by much). Unsurprisingly, the baby born turns out to be the heroine of the piece, a Viking heiress named Helle (Anna Demetriou, who looks a lot like Saoirse Ronan with red hair). Unfortunately, Helle’s mother doesn’t make it through the birth, and her father, King Asmund (Andrew Whipp), is more interested in having a male heir, leading to a swap of sorts which finds Helle being raised by her Uncle, a prince named Bard (Timo Nieminen). To say that Helle is surrounded by subterfuge might be a bit of an understatement, and in fact the film is stuffed full of villains of various shapes and sizes, arguably including both Asmund and Bard.

While Helle’s battle skills are unmatched, she’s the victim of fate and circumstance, not to mention the “restrictions” of her gender, but luckily she gets a little help from beyond in the form of Odin (Terence Stamp, evidently needing to a buy a new yacht or something). Odin appears magically in a literal puff of smoke every now and again to offer Helle a bit of Heavenly Fatherly advice, but, wouldn’t you know it, Loki (Murray McArthur) is also lurking around, urging various folks to give in to their dark sides, which they of course willingly do.

There’s a certain camp factor at play here which may in fact recommend the film to some folks, but more than anything it has the kind of anemic and slightly comical ambience of the lesser grade sword and sandal epics of the late fifties and early sixties. The film is so patently fake feeling so much of the time that even when it utilizes some real locations, as in a big set piece obviously filmed on a real beach, that, too, looks like cinematic artifice, and not especially artful artifice at that. The performances are all over the map in this piece. Demetriou is a striking presence with that shock of curly red hair, and she tries to invest the role with both steeliness and vulnerability. Stamp literally looks and sounds like he’s counting the seconds until he can pick up a paycheck, while McArthur chews the scenery with so much gusto that he may actually annoy some viewers. (His makeup may also be slightly objectionable within the context of the recent furor over a certain newscaster’s comments about blackface.)

The oddest thing about Viking Destiny, though, is how clearly dependent Helle is on males, despite this being a supposed paean to female empowerment. Not only is Helle rescued more than once, she seems to need not just the muscle, but also at least the occasional guidance, of various males, not necessarily limited to the Big Kahuna himself, Odin. It’s a seriously weird element in this film and I have to wonder why Hughes, trying to champion females as he professes to do in the supplements, didn’t offer Odin’s wife Frigg as the “conduit” for Helle’s evolution.

Viking Destiny Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Viking Destiny is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.39:1. The IMDb doesn't offer much technical data on the shoot, but I found a site listing some of cinematographer Sara Deane's credits, and that site in turn listed the ubiquitous Arri Alexa and Arri Alexa Mini as having digitally captured the imagery, which I'm assuming was then finished at a 2K DI. This is a rather interesting looking film, at least at moments, with a number of grading and lighting choices that add a certain amount of drama and intrigue to the proceedings. That said, while sequences like a desaturated opening offering a gritty, "grainy" look at a battle, are themselves unique looking, on the whole, the appearance here is surprisingly drab a lot of the time. Detail levels are at least okay, and in fact look rather good in bright lighting, where things like the chainmail on some costumes resolves without any issues like aliasing, but there's an overall softness to many scenes that makes even practical "on location" sequences almost look green screened at times. Some of the outdoor locations are rather glorious looking (I tried to provide a few examples in the screenshots accompanying this review), and some of the aerial shots provide substantial depth of field.

Viking Destiny Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Perhaps the fact that Viking Destiny tends to feature a "cast of tens" rather than thousands keeps the DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track here from ever really tipping over into complete surround excellence. There are certainly moments of nicely placed effects work, notably in any of the expected hand to hand (and/or sword to sword) combat scenes, but otherwise a lot of the surround activity is given over to relatively subtle ambient environmental effects. It's perhaps not a "plus" that dialogue is always rendered cleanly and clearly (yes, that's a joke).

Viking Destiny Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• One True Heir: A Warrior's Destiny (1080p; 8:34) is one of three pretty interchangeable EPKs, this one focusing on Hughes' creative spark for the idea.


• Of Gods, Women and Men: The Cast (1080p; 9:53) focuses on the performers and includes the typical gushing interviews.


• Strength from Within: Staging the Battles (1080p; 7:47) was for my money the most interesting of the three featurettes, with Demetriou talking about how Stage Fighting classes early in her acting training helped to prepare her for this role.

Viking Destiny Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

One might be tempted to call Viking Destiny a "Frigg-in' disaster" if one were prone to making horrible puns involving a Norse deity's name. Lionsgate has failed to send review copies of any number of much higher profile releases of theirs lately, and I have to wonder who is holding some executive's reputation ransom that this obviously small scale effort was deemed worthy of critical analysis (again, I'm joking, in case it isn't clear). There's just not much "here" here, despite an honorable attempt to craft a film around a strong female butt kicking heroine. Technical merits are generally fine for those considering a purchase.