Hagen - Im Tal der Nibelungen

As someone who grew up reading the source material and especially the interpretation by Hohlbein from the POV of Hagen, i have been waiting for a state of the art adaption of Song of the Nibelungs ever since I saw my first Lord of the Rings Movie. I never had high hopes it would get made because despite being one of the most influential historical epics of all time, hollywood has always been blissfully ignorant.

Now a european production has finally stepped in, and i am here for it!

The filmmaking is superb. The visuals are stunning. Everything looks realistic yet stylish, and the sword fights are down to earth yet filmed in a way that makes you feel the weight and impact of each strike.

Qualitiy of performances varies, but the main characters all deliver. Everyone has botteled up emotions to deal with, you know what they feel by looking in their eyes, everything is handled with a minimum of dialogue and a maximum of context to make you understand the driving forces behind each character. It does not feel like just another fantasy film, but more like a dark, tragic saga that hints but never 100% commits to the supernatural elements of its plot, similar to projects like "The Northman" by Robert Eggers or the "Hellblade" video game.

If you are into sagas and gritty medieval dramas, or if you are a fan of the source material like i am, this one is for you!

German fantasy productions have become rare, so I was glad someone decided to once again use the Song of the Nibelungs, the classic German hero tale, as a source for inspiration - even if the movie itself is based on a book by Wolgang Hohlbein.

Visually this is an impressive looking production, with lush setdesign and inspiring costumes.

But the acting is wooden - all around, I'd say. Main protagonist Hagen f.e. Never goes on any kind of classic "Hero's Journey". He just stays his stoic, usual self throughout the entire film, often coming off as a person looking "into the film", while more interesting stuff happens to other characters.

It also can't seem to answer its own question whether or not to lean into the really outlandish fantasy elements of the story it is based on. That must explain why I never could shake the feeling off that entire scenes were simply missing, especially in the first act, because the film does a horrible job introducing characters and story. You'd be lost without at least basic knowledge of the Nibelungs.

See it for the visuals. Otherwise there's nothing really memorable here.

The film is said to have cost 40 million euros. (There will also be a TV series made of the movie, or it was filmed simultaneously. ). Anyway, the result is just sad and embarrassing.

First mistake. Boring as hell of screenplay.

Second mistake: Boring actors, or rather, what are they supposed to play given such a lousy script? The box office in Germany was a disaster. Not even 200,000 viewers in theaters. Not to be recommended at all. No TV series with X to Z episodes will fix that either.

Maybe the filmmakers should have just watched Game of Thrones or one of the really good Viking series to see how to entertain in an exciting way.

This movie is far better than presented in imdb (even the plot summary is plainly wrong). For centuries-literally centuries-Hagen von Tronje has been the villain of Germany's most famous saga (yes, Wagner and all that). This movie retells the saga from a different perspective-an apology for Hagen-that alters some details, omits certain parts, and adds others. What you get is still a saga (they travel to Iceland in what may be a 15th-century carrack, 400 years before the Vikings dared cross the gap between Sweden and England), but it all comes together coherently.

It's also well-crafted from a technical standpoint, with good visuals and entertaining scenes. It never felt "long." I believe it's solid if you don't know the story, but if you do, it's at least very good.

Kriemhild isn't a main character, nor is Brunhild or the women's quarrel; it might seem that both characters seem a bit one-dimensional. However, I'd call this a deliberate technique to clarify that the story isn't about them for viewers who might expect otherwise. Alberich the dwarf plays a larger role, and boy-they are properly creepy.

All in all, if you know the book (yes, the old one!), "Hagen" will create a tension between the adaptation and the original. This allows you to better observe themes like "old world heroics versus courtliness", "individual glory versus greater good", and "who's at fault versus who's at shame." These themes are already present in the 13th-century book but are now brought into the spotlight for discussion.

Germany has some pretty awesome folklore and mythology. Germans also developed and built some of the best film equipment in the world. Unfortunately, Germany doesn't seem to have any talented people to bring those two together.

HAGEN is a tremendous waste of crew talent and money, and it is even more sad when you occasionally see a glimpse of what this could have been in the hands of somewhat capable filmmakers. The script delivers a boring, incoherent story that fails to take its audience on any journey. The characters are astonishingly bland, and Hagen himself stumbles through this film in complete apathy.

It is a special gift to make the ancient German equivalent of Severus Snape be so terribly boring, but somehow the writers-directors accomplished this seemingly impossible feat. His actor is amongst the best of the entire film, but still fails to carry it, actively being stripped of any charisma and/or actual things to do in the scene. The rest of the actors are mostly embarrassing, especially Kriemhild and Siegfried. What a farce.

And so, this is another fine example of how millions of euros get burned to produce embarrassingly bad films and shows and keep a small elite of "filmmakers" on top of the game. It doesn't even matter how bad and ill-received these productions are - somehow, it's always still the same names, the same production companies, the same incompetence.