Outlander

Sympathy plays an important role in character development in films. Without sympathy, why do we care about the protagonist? Sympathy can be used to make us cry when a character dies, it can be used to make us cheer when they emerge victorious, and it can be used to pull the rug out from under us when a character turns out to be evil. If sympathy can make or break a film, consider Outlander broken.

Outlander is one of those films that, after reading the plot, you think that it's going to be the most bad ass film of all time. Outlander is the story of Kainen, a space marine who crash lands on planet Earth during the time of the Vikings. He is pursued by a giant space creature called a Morwen, and he must band together with a kingdom of Vikings to destroy the creature. Did I mention that the role of Kainen is played by Jim Caviezel, a.k.a. Jesus Christ? After reading a plot description like this, I walked into the theatre fully erect. I left it, not with priapism, but with erectile dysfunction.

There were so many things I wanted to complain about during this movie that I realized I needed a notepad to keep track of them. I'll start with what I mentioned in the opening paragraph. The biggest problem with this film is it's lack of sympathy development. Kainen is obviously the protagonist in the film. He crash lands on the planet and is taken hostage by a local group of Vikings. The Vikings think he may be part of a rival village, and they interrogate him with their fists. So, being a standard audience member, I should now feel sympathy for Kainen's plight and dislike the Vikings who just beat the shit out of him. Immediately following this scene, the film decides that now would be the time for the Morwen (the evil space creature) to attack the village. We're shown scenes of the brake Vikings falling in battle... but wait... why do we care? Weren't these the people that we were just shown beating the shit out of our hero, Kainen? Aren't they the bad guys?

With a skilled director, this sort of back and forth sympathy play could be used as a tool to make more dynamic characters and play with the audience's emotions, but fear not: These characters are as one sided as ever. The problem is that the director (the film, the producer, who do I blame here?) just seems to forget which side the characters are on. At the beginning of the film, we're introduced to some of the Viking characters that will play a larger role in the tale. Rothgar, the leader of the tribe, his (not) surprisingly well groomed and attractive daughter, Freya, and the hot-headed commander Wulfric. (Guess which one of those three gets taken hostage by the Morwen?) Wulfric is set to ascend to the throne on the death of Rothgar, and it is shown early in the film that he has strong feelings for Freya. One would suspect, as Kainen and Freya grow closer, that a love triangle would develop. Surprisingly, Wulfric seems to completely forget that he has feelings for Freya after the first ten minutes of the film, and Kainen and he become best buddies. And finally, the star of the show, the Morwen. The Morwen is a CGI monster with the upper body of a Hell Knight from Doom 3 and the rear of Godzilla from the horrible Matthew Broderick film. To be honest, it does look wicked, and the graphics are well done for such a low budget movie. It's unfortunate that the sounds it makes are "generic demonic monster sound taken from Doom 3" (so much so that iD software should probably contact their lawyers). Oh, there's also a Viking in this film named Boromir. Someone should contact the Tolkein family about that.

There's a lot of forgetfulness in this film, and I often wondered whether there was some underling dementia that had been written into the script. After the first attack on the village by the Morwen, the Viking men band together with Kainen to go hunt the creature. They find a cave that houses a giant bear, and they all work together to slay the animal. Cheer, drinks, and celebration ensue, because the Vikings all think that they've slain the creature that attacked their village. Kainen is well-aware that the creature that was killed was not the Morwen, yet he neglects to mention this small, but important, detail to anyone during the party. Maybe he just wanted to enjoy the free booze, or maybe he was still pissed that the Vikings had just beaten the crap out of him the day before. There are numerous plot holes in this film that revolve around characters and entities forgetting obvious facts, most of which would spoil the movie, but just be warned. There are some "are you kidding me?!" moments towards the bitter end.

But, back to sympathy. I mentioned earlier that sympathy was a large reason for why this film fails. The main conflict driving this film is that Kainen is being pursued by this horrific creature, and he needs to defend himself and the Vikings from destruction. Great, so we're supposed to care about his survival, right? Well, about that... Kainen decides to take a moment in the middle of the film to give us more insight into the backstory. We learn what his actual duties were, and why he was crash landing with a Morwen stowed aboard his ship. I'm not going to spoil anything, but let me just say that it doesn't paint him in a positive light. In fact, he sounds like a real douchebag after telling us the story. Again, in the hands of a skilled director, this could have been used to develop a dynamic and conflicted character. This never happens. Kainen is a one-dimensional hero that we're supposed to cheer for because he's fighting a monster.

The positive in this film is that Ron Perlman plays a dual hammer wielding bad ass Viking named Gunnar.