I thought that was kind of interesting, throwing a monkey-wrench into the whole macho thing, the great king's wife turning the tables on him, knowing her own son would be slaughtered. She wasn't down on the saga, and seemed happy enough being a sheep farmer's wife.
The movie was at best, at best, average. But at least it had this slightly novel twist.
I wasn't impressed at all with that "big plot twist". I saw it coming from a mile away as soon as Amleth (Skarsgard) saw that his mother was alive and doing well with his uncle. I immediately knew she was where she wanted to be and I very highly suspected she was in on her ex-husband's murder.
Maybe the casting of Nicole Kidman have something to do with it. I'm used to see her portray untrusty characters so to me it was predictable.
And I really don't think that women being treacherous and manipulating men in movies is something new either.
As for the movie being average.. I sort of agree with you. It's definitely not great but it's not bad either. I'd say it's a good average.
The fact that she adapted to a new life wouldn't, on its face, justify an expectation of treachery necessarily. If we're looking for that, its a possibility. But the other possibility is simply that 15 years or so on, she finds her new life/husband preferable to the old, is committed to her new family, even after their fall from grace. The usurper does, actually, seem to have a lot more personality than either the dour hero or his dad, both of whom seemed fairly limited in outlook.
My take isn't that it isn't totally out of the blue, but that it subverts the 'larger' theme of the hero's kingly saga - that's all. The writers were clearly trying to knock down the Nordic rapey/pillagy mystique a bit, giving a view into the dynamics by which these people were settled, domesticated into the emerging European social order. Which, to a large extent, subverts the supposedly main narrative. I didn't really care for the film, but did appreciate that bit of nuance.
My take isn't that it isn't totally out of the blue, but that it subverts the 'larger' theme of the hero's kingly saga - that's all. The writers were clearly trying to knock down the Nordic rapey/pillagy mystique a bit, giving a view into the dynamics by which these people were settled, domesticated into the emerging European social order. Which, to a large extent, subverts the supposedly main narrative. I didn't really care for the film, but did appreciate that bit of nuance.