In many places you can see the stitching in the final film, in an introduction that sets up the film in seconds where clearly more was filmed, and in story elements introduced and then dropped without fanfare. When Crichton came out on top the edits and reshoots resulted in a different, more action-oriented film than what McTiernan had planned. The 13th Warrior became infamous during production for interminable delays, cost overruns and for the power struggle between credited director John McTiernan and author Michael Crichton. Crichton’s in-character afterword has fooled many into thinking that a real manuscript containing the events of the novel was indeed unearthed, and it’s actually pretty convincing, but the throwaway reference to Alhazared’s Necronomicon should give the joke away. The premise of the story is interesting: using the fragmentary text of Ahmad ibn Fadlan‘s journey among the Volga Rus in 922 AD, Crichton filled in the gaps in the historical account with what we’re intended to take as the real historical story that inspired the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf, with a tribe of remnant Neanderthals thrown in for good measure. One of my favorites is the 1999 film The 13th Warrior, based on Michael Crichton’s 1976 novel Eaters of the Dead. Around this time each summer I tend to go through a number of ancient and medieval films, usually from a short list of movies that I’ve seen many times before.
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