Dennis Kastros reviews the movie Pathfinder: The Legend of the Ghost Warrior, a “politically correct” film which is an example of the “white guilt” message so often peddled by film-makers in Hollywood — providing yet another instance of anti-White racism.
Take a movie which probably is supposed to have a moral message, supposed to show a race of people in an endearing and compassionate manner (non-whites of course) and then botch it up so it insults everyone, including the poor audience who had to bear this 107 minute travesty.
When the DVD cover actually advertises the fact that this particular edition has more blood and gore, one can safely assume that a good plot, or story, or even a decent premise isn’t the movie’s selling point.
“Pathfinder: The Legend of the Ghost Warrior” is about a young Norse boy known as “Ghost” who is living amongst Native Americans. 500 years before Columbus, Viking warriors who look more like homeless unwashed Orcs from Warcraft than any Vikings we know, are heading to the Americas for a bit of murder and pillage. Why exactly they are going so far just to kill people, when there are so many other people far closer to home remains unanswered.
One also wonders what there is to pillage, except perhaps a nifty dreamcatcher souvenir or a few poorly crafted baskets, which is all these natives seem to have. Despite the fact that there’s nothing there except scenery, they’re bloodthirsty enough to go back again and again to wipe out small villages.
So we are led to conclude that these “Vikings”, who grunt like the orcs they got their clothing from and display no human characteristics whatsoever, exist purely to kill in a manner which gives the special effects department free licence to animate rotating disembodied heads and flying eyeballs. It’s almost as if they just asked the CGI guys what kind of blood spurts and disembodied parts they could animate, and they built a movie around that.
The movie starts with Ghost, the young Norse boy who for some unexplained reason has come along with the Vikings on a raid on the Wampanoag tribe, being rescued by the only surviving Native American after the other Vikings whip him for refusing to kill a young boy. This young Native girl who rescues him adopts him as her son and names him Ghost, because of his white skin and blonde hair. Ghost grows up with the Natives and becomes one of them, even taking a fancy to a young lady called “Starfire” (Moon Bloodgood) who ends up acting out many clichés later on.
Ghost (Karl Urban) has his request to become a Brave declined after the Pathfinder (Russel Means) determines he still has demons from his past he must confront. The Braves go out on a mission and Ghost goes out to wander and sulk about being rejected. Perhaps he went wandering to look for a better scriptwriter or to hopefully wander onto the set of a better film?
While the Braves are gone the Vikings, known to the Natives as the “Dragon People” (get it?), make a raid on the village, killing and burning everyone. Ghost, noticing the flames, rushes back, and in true predictable fashion, develops a deep-seated desire to exact revenge.
From here the movie becomes more predictable and trite. Ghost runs into the Braves and warns them about the Dragon People and urges them to flee. After another clash with the Dragon People, Ghost goes to confront his Viking brethren and try to take them out. Through unbelievable after unbelievable fight scene, Ghost, along with a couple of Native comrades manage to make short work of them despite all odds.
Vikings, it seems, can navigate across the Atlantic, but can’t hit the broad side of a planet with an arrow. The tribe’s Pathfinder also shows up and gets killed as a martyr, not to the tribe, but to this weak script. Who saw that coming?!
The only way to progress this movie was for Russel Means to lay down his life so he may reappear as a ghost vision to “Ghost” with some sage advice that most people would expect from a Hollywood Native American. The end involves Ghost quite predicably pretending to be on the Vikings side, and then turning against them to protect ‘his’ people, the natives.
They are supposed to be in North America, but it looks more like the Amazon or the Andes. Which one I’m not sure, as the location is inconsistent. The location seems to only exist to provide a background of trees, hills, snow and lots of fog, not to provide some sense of place. Actually, it looks like it was randomly generated with no regard as to where the events were supposed to be taking place.
I was almost waiting for them to end up in a desert or underneath the Arc de Triumph or on Mars, but two or three locations was all they could budget for. It may as well have been Mars as the setting, like the actors, are nothing more than cardboard props for the blood splatters and flying eyeballs. Everything looks fake, foggy, messy and artificial.
The acting is more wooden than the trees. Mercifully, there was little need for acting skills as the dialog was scant. Any more dialogue and we might have seen Russel Means cringe on camera while forcibly reciting the little dialog he had – stereotypical aphorisms and embarrassing clichés.
Perhaps this story is supposed to be an allegory of white man’s conquest of other peoples’ lands. It seems to portray the Vikings, not just as warriors but quite literally as demons. Worse still, the Vikings don’t speak English. Hollywood convention states than when English is spoken with a German accent, we assume they are speaking German, and so forth. The dialog spoken by these Vikings is actually a Scandinavian tongue, Icelandic. Without the obligatory subtitles appearing on the screen, one not versed in the language would have to resort to the extra subtitles provided by the DVD if they were inclined to find out what is being said. Not that it matters, as it was of the same low quality as the rest of Laeta Kalogridis’s supposed screenplay and not worth bothering with anyway.
At first, the movie appears overtly racist against the Vikings. Now, the Vikings might be known for their prowess as warriors, but they weren’t purely a race of bloodthirsty killers, as this movie depicts them. Vikings also engaged in trade, were accomplished sea-farers and were more technologically advanced than the movie gives them credit for. But this movie isn’t about historical accuracy, nor does it necessarily need to be, but it is slanderous to those of Scandinavian descent, giving them a slap on the face, as well as a subtle backhander to all whites.
That said, this movie also depicts Native Americans in a very stereotypical fashion, but without the bravery and knowledge of their surrounds which historical natives would have had. These Natives for some reason don’t even know when the Viking raiders are on their way and seem to mill around during raids like lobotomised teens shopping for handbags. They never fight each other and can’t fight against the “Dragon People” either. In an effort to make them look peaceful, they are portrayed as weak-willed wimps who can only fight when the script calls for blood.
They are shown as incompetent warriors and are depicted with the same saccharine treatment that can only come from someone who doesn’t understand Native Americans, aside from what they learnt from posters bearing slogans and pictures of Indian Chiefs. Slogans like “There are two wolves fighting in each man’s heart. One is Love, the other is Hate”. This particular one being uttered by the Pathfinder in this train wreck of a movie. Congratulations to Marcys Nispel for directing a movie which insults BOTH racial groups depicted – Nordics as inhuman subterranean demons and Native Americans as weak, incompetent people who walked right out of Hallmark cards.
Pathfinder looks in many ways like the more well-known movie “300”, the comic book movie about the 300 Spartans holding back the Persians at Thermopylae. Pathfinder seems to follow the same excessive CGI style, the monochrome backgrounds and stylised fight scenes. This is a ‘reverse’ 300, where we have non-whites fighting against whites who are invading, instead of whites fighting against non-white invasion.
Perhaps this stance is more “PC”, but the popularity of 300, and the plethora of bad reviews for this movie show that feeding white guilt doesn’t really pay. Neither does making a movie which shows the target demographic negatively and which is obviously supposed to make them feel bad about themselves and what they supposedly did to other races.
For whites who want to feel bad about themselves there are far better movies, like “Rabbit Proof Fence”, to appease the guilt-ridden Westerner in the mood for self-flagellation. In the real world, only a very small number of liberals and anti-white lefties would think this movie has any message worth taking home.
Most people would receive it as the disaster it is and would still desire a movie which portrays them as heroes, as a courageous and noble people with a past to be proud of. That’s what people want to see after a day sitting in a cubicle being chewed out by the boss – a movie which shows them how they wish to be, something they would like to aspire to.
The target demographic for this comic book movie clearly is young white males and it’s perplexing to think they would enjoy a movie where they, Nordics in particular, are displayed as bloodthirsty barbarians who make the worst serial killers of all time look like Girl Scouts trying to sell brownies. Maybe the producers thought they would hate their heritage enough to enjoy it, or not be offended at someone demonising them because they don’t care. Even those Americans with a Native background would probably feel slighted by it.
Again, the success of the movie this one was trying to copy, 300, shows otherwise. Political Correctness really just doesn’t pay, but the overall crumminess of the movie, the repetitive sets, the corny dialogue and lack of any originality probably didn’t help much either.
I’m not sure whether they MEANT to put forward the message that whites are bad people who kill and plunder, or whether they thought that idea would bring people to the movie. Perhaps it’s coincidental but the fact they Vikings actually SPOKE Icelandic leads me to think that the movie is supposed to evoke a feeling of revulsion against these people who are modern day Swedes, Norwegians, Danes etc.
One Swedish commenter on IMDB.org writes “As a Swede and proud of my heritage, I find this movie highly offensive. We, and our fellow brothers of Norway, are portrayed as savage brutes who give little or no respect to the native tribes in pre-America”. He then goes on to write “It came to the point where I felt personally targeted against as a ‘Man from the North’ and left the theater. I urge you to boycott this outright racist movie. Yes, racist, to play on these prejudices is ****ing racist.”
Of course, this kind of racism is totally acceptable, and such complaints are never taken seriously. The follow-up of complaints demonstrate the lack of concern or regard that others have when a white person feels their heritage and ethnicity has been insulted.
There is no need to go over the double standard concerning perceptions of racism. If this person was an African expressing concerns about historic Ethiopians in Africa being shown as demonic bloodthirsty inhuman beasts, this concern would not be taken lightly. We all know that his complaint wouldn’t result in pedantic nitpicking over who technically is Ethiopian or not but would be acknowledged and recognised.
Pathfinder is a boring, tiresome movie that was supposed to be visually pleasing but is in reality about as visually pleasing as a concrete wall with blood splatters.
If the creators of this movie were intelligent enough to make a semi decent movie, I would have credited them with deliberately trying to manipulate the audience, but more likely they just latched into the tired ‘evil whitey against the peaceful native’ stereotype and made it overly obvious so we wouldn’t miss the point, thinking it would add credibility to the movie.
Here’s a hint, making a GOOD movie gives it credibility. Well-written dialogue and a story worth telling, not pandering to those who think watching White people slaughter Native Americans relentlessly will in some perverse way atone for the sins they think their own ancestors committed.
Two greasy thumbs down for this stinker.
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