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Show me the way to go home

Godzilla vs. Mothra with Vikings and Indians
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By Steffen Silvis
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
June 20th, 2007 issue

COURTESY PHOTO
Fighting without a Thor axe. Some balletic butchering in Pathfinder.
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Pathfinder: The Legend of the Ghost Rider

Directed by Marcus Nispel
With Karl Urban, Moon Bloodgood, Russell Means and Jay Tavare

Columbus discovered nothing. First of all, it’s rather rich to claim to discover land already inhabited. But if we are considering first encounters with Europeans, there, menacing the stage, are the Vikings, ready to steal the curtain call from the Italian. Yet even this spawn of Odin was probably beaten ashore. The Vikings stumbled upon Iceland only to find Irish monks already there, holdovers, perhaps, from the fabled journey of St. Brendan the Navigator in the 500s, who was also supposed to have made it to what Leif Erikson named “Vinland.”
Ah, but then there was Prince Madoc, who might have left behind a tribe of Welsh-speaking natives, the Tuscarora. And, of course, King Brut himself, the man who gave his name to Britain, and whose ancient claim to North America lent ballast to Elizabeth I’s case for purloining Virginia. (The history of the America’s West Coast is even more intriguing. Why are there so many similarities between Zuni Pueblo culture and ancient Japan? Further, how did the Kennewick Man, a Caucasoid fellow, make it to the Columbia River 9,000 years ago?)
In short, the early history of the New World is ripe material for sagas and yarns. Yet somehow Pathfinder successfully avoids creating anything even slightly thoughtful with its proposed encounter between Vikings and the American Indians they met in Vinland. In fact, the film is little more than bloodletting wrapped in politically correct hokum, bragging of all the cinematic artistry that one finds in Godzilla vs. Mothra.
Into the land of peaceful hunters and gatherers, who naturally speak a solemn form of English that’s innocent of contractions, come horn-helmeted demons, the “Dragon People,” hell-bent to take over the neighborhood. Rapaciousness and slaughter are mere hors d’oeuvres for this brutal lot as they set out to exterminate the native “Skraelingar” on their path to conquest.
An early incursion from Norway’s finest ends in disaster for the Vikings, and one of their young sons is the last of the survivors. He is adopted by the local chief’s family, and reared in the ways of being an American Indian brave.
Years crawl past, and our Viking waif, Ghost, has taken his place within the tribe, though his Caucasoid features still leave him out of the running for the role of shaman/pathfinder. However, the true worth of our hero is soon discovered when a new roving band of Scandinavian terrorists arrive.
The film then becomes a small-budget epic of good versus evil, with the saintly natives turning the tables on the intruding evildoers. For those who enjoy the hacking off of limbs and the gouging out of eyes, there is much to munch on here. But for the rest of us, Pathfinder does at least manage to become so ludicrous that it almost becomes fun to watch.
The deathless lines uttered by the cast of human automata are often uproarious. Perhaps the native cry of “Come on, let’s get them,” is my personal favorite, though it seems to indicate that there might actually have been an editor involved in the project. Surely, that sentence must have contained the word “dudes” at one point in the script’s construction.
There is even a car chase on sledges, with Ghost (the grunting, over-muscular Karl Urban) drafting a Viking shield as his getaway vehicle. The CGIs are a casebook study in amateurishness as well, but it’s the dialogue that keeps begging for your laughter, particularly the final voiceover narration. This is earnestly intoned by Starfire (Irish-Korean actress Moon Bloodgood), daughter of the wise, fallen chief (American Indian activist Russell Means), the original pathfinder.
Naturally, one must interpret this final slice of schmaltz, as with all the previous offal-spilling it tops, as a helpful Hollywood reminder of how peace-loving Americans are, but how these gentle giants can bestir themselves to wrath if their patch is attacked. Much to mull over as you hastily beat a path to the exit.

Steffen Silvis can be reached at ssilvis@praguepost.com


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