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The edit reason given was rude, but the essential point is valid. The Northman and Skyrim are both drawing for Norse mythology, you can't really say that the film is somehow taking a page from Skyrim. I could list dozens of books (not to mention countless video games) that have someone enter a grave to retrieve a special/magical weapon. It's a very thin thread to hang an example on.
I didn't choose the troping life, the troping life chose me
Also this might all be moot anyway since Spiritual Adaptation and Spiritual Successor are being merged... more on the TRS thread linked on both.
Edited by WarJay77 Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness
Although now that I check that TRS thread, it's also saying that the new trope will be YMMV and apply to works perceived as 'spiritually' connected to each other, regardless of authorial intent. Which makes me think this might actually be a legit example after all.
Maybe. Not under that name, at least.
Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness
But also YMMV is not, and should not be thought of, as a single person's interpretation. YMMV is for audience reactions. If comparing that scene from The Northman to Skyrim hasn't been done by a broader swath of the audience, then it wouldn't be added
The reason why I wrote this entry isn't "a guy steals an artifact from a tomb", which is indeed too generic to qualify, but "in a Scandinavian setting, a guy enters a tomb, steals an artifact, and has a bossfight against something looking like a Skyrim enemy-class omnipresent in this kind of dungeon".
By the way, I checked Youtube comments (in extracts from the Mound Dweller scene and trailers), and various random sites, I'm not sure how common the opinion "The Northman has similarities with Skyrim" is, but I'm not the only one.
For instance :
- I watched "The Northman" yesterday and playing Skyrim made me appreciate both the movie and the game even more
- 6 video games to play if you liked The Northman
- For One Scene, The Northman Becomes The Best Video Game Movie Ever
- “The Northman” Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Monster
"in a Scandinavian setting, a guy enters a tomb, steals an artifact, and has a bossfight against something looking like a Skyrim enemy-class omnipresent in this kind of dungeon"
Well, here's the thing, though: The Northman draws from Scandinavian myth, as we've established. The Draugr, the undead warriors of Skyrim, are taken directly from those myths. Seriously, Skyrim didn't invent those guys, they're references to creatures from folklore, particularly popular in Iceland IIRC.
So is the undead monster a Skyrim reference, or is it just the same thing that Skyrim also referenced separately?
There remains a foothold out of this mire — now climb.
Given that this is a YMMV trope, the issue should be if the fandom has made the connection or not.
Just the very way OP framed this post is kind of suspect "Valid entry removed for specious reason." Except without consensus, we don't know if it's a valid entry and you can't go ahead and declare someone else's editing reason wrong just because.
Does the idea of a burrow mound having an undead warrior in it remind me of Skyrim? Yes. It also reminds me of dozens of other things, from Jason and the Argonauts to many others.
However, with the new rules surrounding Spiritual Successor, it might fit. Though I can't help but think that's going to lead to a lot of bad examples where a fan watches a work and draws comparisons completely independent of what the creators wanted.
Each time I try intervening in things like this (both online and IRL, and especially IRL) happens because I does because I temporarily forget I shouldn't do this, and each time I'm objectively wrong (or I may be right but I'm unable to express myself clearly to be convincing, so in practice it's exactly like being wrong). I don't know why I still bother trying to communicate with people.
I think I'll stuck to non-subjective/non-controversial contributions for a while.
For what it's worth, similar works that objectively share a creator now fall under Creator-Driven Successor, which is Trivia.
Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.
As someone who has not seen The Northman and only played a tiny bit of Skyrim: is it possible that the decision to have The Northman adapt these specific elements of Norse mythology was inspired by Skyrim's popular use of these tropes? I think it would be a valid example if that was the case.
^ Can't outright say it's impossible without asking Eggers himself, but I think it's doubtful by simple virtue of the fact that the film is directly adapting Scandinavian mythology and thus comparisons between the two are just as likely to be purely coincidental.
I personally feel the entry is really tenuous and really falls to "Is that a Jojo reference" levels of stretching to justify itself, but if someone sees it, they see it.
I'm admittedly not super familiar with either work, but going off the descriptions it sounds to me like a case of "two things drawing inspiration from the same source", the source in this case being Norse Mythology. I wouldn't consider it this trope unless there's something in the movie that links it to Skyrim specifically.
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I bring this here instead of just re-adding the entry to avoid starting an Edit War.
I added a Spiritual Adaptation entry in the YMMV subpage of The Northman, which compaired a Dungeon Crawling scene to The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, and it has been removed (by Snake) for a reason which doesn't seem valid.
My entry:
The deletion reason:
The sagas and initiation rites of ancient Scandinavia have barrow delving all the time. To say this film apes Skyrim is conceit of the lowest kind. Hamlet the Dane is the adaptation of Amleth's legend.
While I see their point, it seems they missed the "spiritual" part of Spiritual Adaptation. The movie being an overt adaptation of Norse legends and mythology doesn't mean we shouldn't point out similarities to other works, and that's actually what Spiritual Adaptation is for. With the same justification, the other Spiritual Adaptation entry on the page, added later (the same scene being compaired to a Dark Souls bossfight because of the fight's choregraphy) could be deleted too, because fights against giant enemies are everywhere in Norse mythology?
To be fair, between the trespassing into a burial mound, the plundering of a unique weapon, and the undead guardian serving as a boss (which looks almost exactly like the burial mounds' guardians from the game), their's enough similarities to make the compairison valid.
Can I restore my original edit?
Edited by Psychopompos007