Review of Outlander (2008) by Jason J — 16 Dec 2009

A film in which a man from the stars crash-lands on Iron Age Earth and must team up with the local Vikings to hunt and kill an escaped alien dragon. First however, he must track down and kill and completely innocent brown bear that lives in a cave.

I would say fully 50 minutes of screen time are devoted to the star mans quest to find and slay the bear. The subsequent after-party, when he returns to the Vikings Ewok Village bearing (if youll pardon the pun) the animals corpse upon his manly shoulders, is a celebration of insane proportions.

The Vikings go mental, partying as if twere 999, pounding on each other in a frenzy, draining mead at a maniacal rate and dancing quasi-Celtic jigs like Michael Flatley on PCP. Their incredulous over-reaction to the bears death would seem excessive even if the star man was actually Boromir returning to Gondor with the One Ring on one hand, Excalibur in the other, Saurons head on a stick and Aragorn running along behind him dressed as a butler and carrying two large carpet bags.

Needless to say the star mans valiant deed earns him acceptance amongst these proud warriors, not to mentioned the undying bromance of the Viking king and full access rights to the Kings adoring daughter.

What is most ludicrous about the saga of the bear is that the star man is just some dude from outer space who has lived his entire life surrounded by advanced technology like microwave ovens, TV remote controls and predictive text messaging, yet is suddenly able to grab a sword and hack down the bear while the supposedly manly, rugged, berserker warrior, rape & pillaging Vikings faint and cower away from the growling bear like little bitches.

Indeed the crapness of the Vikings is the main reason this film is so piss poor, second only to the monumental idiocy of the storyline. For a start, the Vikings do not possess a single axe between them.

Nor do they have any horned helmets. Nor are there any berserk warriors. Or longboats. Or rape. Furthermore, the actors playing the Vikings obviously have no fucking clue how Vikings are meant to speak and act and settle for a mixture of generic pseudo-Irish accents (the irony of assuming the Vikings were somehow Celtic obviously lost on them) occasionally lapsing into RADA-honed, perfectly elocuted Queens English.

The Star Man himself (who bears a remarkable resemblance to Jesus from PASSION OF THE CHRIST) is almost as ridiculous. After escaping from the sunken wreckage of his space ship, which crashes in a lake, the first thing he does is strip off his space armour, which is promptly never seen again during the course of the film.

You would think a man whod just crashed on a primitive world of barbaric savages, and who had to track down and kill a hyper-dangerous alien beast, would want to hang on to his Master Chief robo-suit, but no he prefers to style out the freezing Scandinavian forests in a skimpy sleeveless tunic, until of course the amazing technicolour bear-pelt is obtained.

The second thing star man does after ditching the robo-suit is grab a gun that pops up out of a mechanised crate, at which point he exclaims "weapons!" in a hoarse voice, twirls the gun with an absurd kung-fu flourish, and blasts a distant pine tree, which bursts into flame.

Satisfied that the gun works he heads off into the forest, only to wee himself with fright and drop the gun in a river when he subsequently realises he is being chased by a Viking on a horse. It obviously did not occur to him that he did not need to be scared because he could have used the gun to shoot the Viking.

Later in the film he comes to sorely regret the absence of both his armoured suit and the gun, because the Vikings feeble swords (not axes, may I remind you) simply bounce off the alien dragon. He hatches an ingenious plan to lure the alien into a large pit filled with burning oil.

Fire? Is that the best you can fucking do, man from the stars? Ugg the cave man could probably have dreamed THAT one up. As Marge says in the Simpsons "Fire? Thats your remedy for EVERYTHING, Dr.

Hibbert". The fire doesnt work, so the man from the stars comes up with a better idea. He goes back to the crash site, dives down into the lake, and recovers a couple of laser pistols from the wreckage of his ship.

Then he uses them to shoot the alien. Then he becomes king of the world and founds a dynasty spanning 1000 generations. Ha, actually no he doesnt. He dives down to the space ship and returns, not with guns, but with.

.. some pieces of scrap metal, which he then forges into a mighty sword to use to kill the alien dragon with. Even the most perfunctory consideration of this plot development must surely lead one to the conclusion that it is monumentally stupid.

Apart from anything else how the fuck is a Viking forge supposed to melt space metal which is hundreds of times harder than steel, the whole point is that steel is too soft and weak to penetrate the alien monsters skin, therefore in order to work the space metal must be super-strong, and therefore logically it cannot be hammered into a sword using a steel hammer.

.. AAARRRGGGHH!!! A man could go mad contemplating this Ourouborous of circular insanity. Even in the deeply messed up world of dream logic and bent science that infests the minds of film directors, this cannot be made to make sense.

It gets worse however. The alien beast is wounded and hides down the Vikings well. The intrepid Vikings, led by the star man, decide to climb down the well after it. Usually, at the bottom of a well one finds some stagnant water, maybe some pennies, a foul smell and botulism.

In the crazy world of films, sometimes wells contain sodden ghost child corpses, or even, in the case of the Goonies, a trap-filled maze that leads to a pirate ship laden with Jew gold. And in the crazy world of OUTLANDER, climbing down the village well leads to a labyrinth of caves which actually lead to the magma-filled, beating volcanic heart of the world.

Beyond the mile-wide lava cave are yet more tunnels which lead to a gigantic cavern filled with thousands of corpses. Where the alien found them all is debatable given the local human population appears to be about 150 max.

After an epic struggle with the beast, the heroes emerge out of the side of a cliff thousands of feet above the sea!!! I must flush myself down the toilet one day, Ill probably burst out of a manhole cover in New York with a tyrannosaurus rex egg in each pocket.