User Reviews

Wow. In addition to being horrible for all of the reasons already listed, the plot was completely stolen from Dog Soldiers.

The British soldiers are swapped for Vikings with the names, and vaguely, the personality traits of Norse gods, and a few villagers as the zoologist/farmhouse family. As far as I can tell, there is no similar plot in Norse Mythology. I could see the twist coming from a mile away. It totally ruined the reveal for me.

A pale rip-off of the best werewolf movie ever made, with an Eaters Of The Dead/13th Warrior setting, and a title stolen from Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song." Sad.

Awful! I was mislead by the title of this movie. They use the name of Thor to sell it and it just doesn't match up to the expectations of a Norse war God. Doesn't qualify as an adventure movie, nor as a horror movie. More like low-budget fantasy. The acting is poor. The actor who plays Thor is not convincing at all.

The warrior costumes look like the ones you can buy for Halloween. The film starts out of nowhere and the plot line is weak, oh how weak. The fighting scenes are dull, the werewolves look like rabid dogs wearing trousers. Special effects are as good as in the 80's

++++++++++++++ Spoilers ++++++++++++++++++++ Well if you really care to watch this, these are spoilers below.

The scene where Baldur cuts off the rope bridge is just lame. When Thor throws two spears at the two werewolves, the second spear slows down in the air before hitting the wolf. Very bad editing. The special 'defect' of the wolf-woman shape-shifting back into woman is ridiculous! And the end is so predictable.

In a nutshell, don't waste your time.

I saw this without any real expectations and totally on a lark but I liked it! Yes, some parts of the movie were really bad or slow and the big bad guy was really really badly done BUT I think that all gave this movie a very campy character to it. It reminded me of third season Doctor Who's where everything is fake and bad but yet the whole is really enjoyable.

** Spoilers ** I thought that this movie gave you a real feel for how Norsemen might have talked and felt about things. Not in a truly documentary way but far more realistically than in most movies. I think people don't register how different believes could create dialog like that. If a good death is the ultimate prize then they would say things like 'too bad you didn't die in that great battle'!

I especially liked the fact that the women were not at all helpless. Any women taken on a ship to an unknown destination would have to be some tough stuff. Speaking of women - I really really liked the evil villainess wolf. I thought she did the part very well and sort of saved the film. Can anyone tell me who that actress is? She does not show in the cast list here and I could not find it online.

It would actually be nice to see a sequel to this but I don't see where there are enough characters left for that. Besides, people don't appear to be open-minded enough to give it a chance. Oh well, color it one of my guilty pleasures!

This movie blows. Hard. And that's unfortunate. I'm a big fan of the sword/sandal/sorcery genre, and vikings have a particular place in my heart. Sadly, this movie sodomizes and decapitates the redeeming qualities other fantasy action movies have.

First, the casting. Zachery Ty Bryan of Home Improvement fame just looks and sounds like a man-child, and Daz Crawford is really too swarthy to play a fair-skinned Northman, looking more Egyptian or Moorish. Squinty-eyed motherf*cker Mac Brandt was, to me, the most believable as Baldur, and the only character whose flowery way of speaking matched his thoughtful nature. That brings me to the second big F-up, the dialogue.

Every viking speaks like a retarded Shakespeare tried to make them sound dramatic. They over-explain everything that they do and that happens to them, using either Tarzan like speech or bad metaphor to make them sound historical. And even though they all keep swearing oaths about killing enemies or risking their lives, most the time they just stand around, or worse, run away. Which reminds me of the third F-up.

I admit, I'm only 1/5 or 1/4 of the way through the movie, but I have yet to seen any actual swordplay. Yes, a severed head did get thrown at a remaining sentry, and in another scene several men stand within a foot of some were-creatures, but all you see them do is shout, which they do as if they want to convey the idea of action without actually moving. Not showing the first confrontation that occurs can build suspense, but after a while you need to have some combat.

The movie is not without some good points. "Vikings" is basically point #1. All the characters are named after Viking gods, and seemed to follow the basic personality corresponding to mythology, without being a literal allegory. Point #2: The weapons and armor are some of the most realistic I've seen in a viking flick, but as I mentioned above it seems they rarely get used. It's too bad the accurate weapons and gritty scenery are mixed with some terrible CGI. "Dream" sequences courtesy of ZTB's Thor are horribly done, even with their so-dark-you-can-barely-see-it tint, everything in the sequence seems fake and cartoony. Luckily, from what I can tell the monsters are guys in suits rather than bad animations, but the camera shows them for fractions of seconds before blurrily panning away.

All in all, this is a movie that I really want to be decent, but which has failed to be anything more than terrible. Although unburdened by the cheese of such Hollyword fare as Pathfinder, which had higher production values but little substance, it lacks any of it's own integrity. I thoroughly enjoyed the 13th Warrior, but Hammer of the Gods cannot be compared in any way. While Keith Urban and Antonio Banderas are not the best actors, they played much better main characters than any in this movie. And none of the actors in HotG could compare to Vladimir Kulich as Buliwyf from the 13th in looks, voice, or presence.

OK ill give it some kudos it was.... interesting.... maybe three times the entire movie. Its an awesome coincidence that i saw it when i was reading my Norse mythology book and it happens to have the entire list of names in the book. I didn't quite see it all cause i came in 15 minutes in and i was switching between it and another thirty minute show later in the story cause i didn't quite like the acting at all. The movie truly made me laugh a lot... It kinda bugged me... i mean i didn't quite understand it. it made it look like Thor had to go on a journey to retrieve his hammer or something. idk i'm not an expert at this stuff at all but from what i've read i'm pretty sure hes always been a God and i don't know if he had to journey to get his hammer from Fenris (Fenrir?) I mean Baldr wasn't even killed by his half brother. idk it was very strange and i didn't care much for the acting... or for Thor's haircut/ fo' hawk. It was all very bad. i didn't like the acting it was very ammiture type acting. it wasn't really worth watching but i did it anyways because i'm fascinated with Norse Mythology now. so it was an hour wasted that i could have been using on my stack of Mythology

This movie was a lot better than I could have expected. The story is an interesting spin-off of the original story of Thor. While some of the lesser characters where terrible actors, the majority of the cast had a great performance. The dialog was clever and original and each character had his/her own unique qualities. The music had a good affect on the atmosphere of the scenes and really paid off in the end. The scene where Baldur dies was portrayed quite nicely and had a tint of sorrow to go with it, which is a good thing. The effects were pretty good for the most part especially with Ulfrich's great vertical-slice death scene. Overall the movie is a good fantasy film with cool aspects for an enjoyable experience.