The creator of Jurassic Park wrote a medieval box office failure – now is the perfect time to remake it

Sometimes a film is a victim of its production and the era in which it was made, and few films match “The 13th Warrior” quite as well. John McTiernan’s critically panned film was a box office failure at the time of its premiere in 1999, although it was based on a book by “Jurassic Park” author Michael Crichton and starring heartthrob Antonio Banderas. There are a whole bunch of reasons why the film didn’t work, from its bloated budget to the general lack of interest in historical epics at the turn of the millennium, but “The 13th Warrior” is not a success. bad film, in itself. It’s just a perfect movie for a remake.

Crichton wrote the screenplay for “The 13th Warrior” based on his novel “Eaters of the Dead,” and while there are a few things that could use some tweaking, it mostly works as a sort of “Seven Samurai” meets “Beowulf” story that’s a really cool take on the vikings. There are some truly inspired moments in the film, including a sequence that shows Arabic-speaking Ahmed ibn Fahdlan (Banderas) learning Norse simply by being immersed in it, and the audience only hearing English words as he learns them. It’s brutal, gory stuff that feels right alongside something like “The Northman” by Robert Eggers or even “Game of Thrones”. If ever there was a perfect time for a new reimagining of “13th Warrior,” it’s now.

“The 13th Warrior” follows court poet Ahmed ibn Fahdlan of Baghdad, who is sent on a mission to the Volga Bulgarians (in present-day Russia) after being caught having a tryst with a nobleman’s wife. He then ends up being rescued from Tatar raiders by a group of Norwegians and accompanies them on their journey, their leader Buliwyf (Vladimir Kulich) having been summoned by King Hrothgar (Sven Wollter) to help him kill the cannibalistic “wendol”. Those of you with degrees in English literature may recognize all of this in “Beowulf,” but “The 13th Warrior” takes a few extra little twists and turns that separate it from its inspiration, tying it to reality and history rather than myth.

Show as “Vikings” made people more interested in this topic than they were in the 1990s, and there’s certainly more patience for brooding and violent period pieces than there was back then. This is the kind of film that could be done well with almost a shot-for-shot remake or with something that deviates more, because there are so many good elements to choose from. “The 13th Warrior” has some memorable scenes and some truly excellent production design, and while it’s a shame that it flopped in 1999, maybe we can get a remake that people go berserk for in the 2020s.