Individually, it would be fair to say that science fiction, fantasy, and the historical epic are three genres famed for being consistently inconsistent, so there were really only two ways 2008’s Outlander was going to turn out; it would either be a cult favorite sleeper hit, or a disaster of epic proportions. Sadly, it was the latter.
There’s a decent and suitably insane high concept in play that ties the story together, with Jim Caviezel’s alien soldier doing his damndest to kill his extraterrestrial arch-nemesis, only for some temporal shenanigans to drop him in ancient Norway instead, where the Viking populace don’t take too kindly to the mysterious interloper literally crash-landing on their turf.
That’s without mentioning the fearsome Moorwen also made the trip to Earth, with the locals believing it to be some sort of demon and/or dragon ripped right from the pages of legend. The potential was definitely there for a gonzo hybrid of Predator and Beowulf, which was clearly the intention of co-writer and director Howard McCain.
Tragically, the world was gifted with an unrelentingly dull slog that failed to even come close to maximizing the unhinged nature of its core conceit, yielding an embarrassing box office total of only $7 million against a $47 million budget, while critics and crowds panned it into the ground.
15 years on, though, and FlixPatrol naming Outlander as one of the top-viewed titles on Amazon does at least make it clear that B-tier cinema is as popular as ever, despite the end product turning out to be vastly inferior to the sum of its parts.
Published: Jun 25, 2023 01:50 am