There is no doubt: ‘The Northman’ is a movie visually exciting. The practical effects make, being more and more used to perfect compositions made by CGI, everything has an almost magical bombast. He’s used computer-generated visual tricks here and there, in places you least expect: a bird flying away, a spear being thrown… Or the sneaking appearance of a testicle.
a hilarious movie
Let’s get down to business: in the final battle, two characters fight a deadly duel, completely naked, at the foot of a volcano. All very epic, very realistic (except the lava, of course, although it moves exactly like real lava does) until we get to, precisely, to nudity.
And it is that the two actors fought, during the filming, with a thong on. Was it out of modesty? Not: actually Alexander Skasgard stripped naked as soon as he was asked. So why lower the age rating? Not exactly: It was, Robert Eggers told Polygon, for two reasons. The first, don’t distract the audience. The second, the airplanes.
A movie this size needs to be able to air on planes, and you can’t show penises on planes. I’m kind of embarrassed, I think if some of the warriors in the attack had been completely naked it would have been really great.
And this is where the CG comes in: Eggers may not have been able to show a penis, but at least, he told himself, yes. could make a testicle show. The smoke covers that area for most of the scene, but you did have to notice that there was something there instead of two Ken dolls, so he used a genital enlargement technique, and make them look like they were in a moment when the smoke passed. testicles really fast, “just to help maintain the illusion live”.
I just want to say that this is another movie where I wanted penises and I didn’t get them.
Someday Robert. Someday.