Five movies to watch if you loved Assassin's Creed: Valhalla

It's been almost a year since the release of Assassin's Creed Valhalla, so far the last episode of the Ubisoft Assassins saga.

A brutal and compelling story, which led fans of the saga to visit wild early medieval England as Eivor, brave Viking hero.

While Valhalla continues to delight us with post-launch content (including The Siege of Paris, DLC expected to be released on 12 August), we recommend five movies and TV series that you should see if you loved its violent and epic atmospheres.

Pathfinder - The legend of the Viking warrior

Let's start with what is perhaps the most light-hearted movie on the list: Pathfinder - The Legend of the Viking Warrior di Marcus Niespel is an absurd example of how you can take a setting - the Viking one, in fact - and use it in the most bizarre way possible.

Early Middle Ages: on the coasts of North America, the life of a native tribe is turned upside down by the arrival of a horde of Norse warriors arrived here after crossing the sea.

But there is to face them Ghost, the only survivor from a previous Viking expedition and raised by the natives of the place. When the Vikings arrive, Ghost will have to choose whether to follow his native or adopted people.

It goes without saying what the answer to the question will be.

The Beowulf Legend

Robert Zemeckis he is what is called a “director for everyone”: they are his, for example Forrest Gump, one of the most loved generational melodramas of the last thirty years, the masterpiece Back to the Future and Polar Express, a splendid Christmas fairy tale in CGI with an absolute star Tom Hanks.

Still exploring the field of animation, in 2007 the director transposed the Norse sagas through his own The Legend of Beowulf, with Ray Winstone (The Departed-Good and Evil) and Angelina Jolie.

Spectacular in form, but perhaps a little too "classic" in the narrative structure functional more than anything else to pay homage to the masterpiece of literature, The Legend of Beowulf is an interesting sortie into Nordic mythology, between epic and dreamy atmospheres and barbaric aesthetics, able to celebrate an entire collective imagination (and, if you love God of War, you may find some point of contact).

The thirteenth warrior

The Thirteenth Warrior, headed by the action specialist John Mctiernan (Die Hard, Predator and many other cult of the genre) and based on a novel by Michael Chrichton (Jurassic Park and Westworld), is a bizarre encounter between chivalrous action, fantasy and folk horror in which a young Arab warrior (Antonio Banderas) finds himself in the deep north of Europe, welcomed into a Viking tribe that sees in him and in twelve other warriors the salvation against a disturbing horde of demons.

The atmosphere, while referring to the classic stylistic features of US cassette cinema, gives the viewer a fairly weird story shaking epic and mystery convincingly, giving away numerous moments of epic and pleasant fun.

Visionary and lively, perhaps it represents one of the last examples of true low cost cassette action ever produced.

Valhalla Rising

Also this built on the myth of the arrival of the Vikings in the New World, Valhalla Rising is perhaps one of the most hallucinated and authorial genre films of the past decade.

Year 1066: One-Eye is one-eyed, speechless man who joined a group of Vikings who converted to Christianity together with a boy with whom she made an unlikely alliance and friendship.

When the Viking warrior group leaves for Jerusalem to recapture the Holy Sepulcher, the erroneous knowledge of geography leads them from a whole other part of the globe. It's just the beginning of a crazy epic.

Slow, thoughtful, characterized by a dirty and brutal aesthetic, Valhalla Rising is not a film for everyone, nor can it be said to have a tone in line with that of Assassin's Creed or other Viking games, but if you love the setting, if you appreciate the style of Nicolas Winding Refn (his Drive, Only God Forgives and The Neon Demon) and if you like them films halfway between genre and author storythen Valhalla Rising is what she can do for you.

Vikings

Finally, one can only recommend the television series that probably inspired the setting and approach to the narrative of Assassin's Creed Valhalla.

Started in 2013 and ended this year, Vikings represented a solid History Channel response to Game of Thrones' dominance, the undisputed king of the epic genre for television for the past decade.

Like AC Valhalla, the series follows the Viking colonization of the British Isles by adopting the POV of Ragnar Lothbrok, legendary Viking king, committed to leading the work of conquest (nb: the sons of Ragnar appear in Valhalla).

Continued for six seasons, Vikings is a good example of a serial epic, perhaps at times even superior to GoT, capable of transporting us into a splendid dimension between history and myth.

There is no doubt that the Viking epic has greatly inspired entertainment in recent years, starting with Vikings and AC: Valhalla.

How many of these films or series have you already seen and enjoyed?
How many would you recommend?