James Caviezel clearly has a thing for playing extraterrestrials. Best known for his role as Jesus in Mel Gibson’s gruesome The Passion of the Christ (2004), Caviezel will star as Kainan, a humanoid alien, in Howard McCain’s Outlander (2008).
Set in Norway, circa 709 AD, Outlander is a hybrid of two genres: ancient epic, Beowulf in this case, spliced with a science fiction rationalisation for the prowess of its hero and the existence of the monster, Grendel. Written by Dirk Blackman and Howard McCain, Outlander originated as an adaptation of the Anglo-Saxon epic; in their version the hero is a humanoid alien and Grendel a monster from the stars. With time the screenplay became increasingly distant from the epic although there are residual similarities with the source material.
The premise of Outlander goes something like this: while the Vikings are busily doing the things that Vikings do, two races battle it out for dominance amongst the stars. Kainan’s space craft crash lands in ancient Norway and he emerges from the wreckage along with a Moorwen, the enemy – a fierce and bloodthirsty predator, which sets off wreaking a path of destruction through the local Viking tribes. Kainan unites the feuding tribes in an alliance, fusing his technology with their weapons, as they set out to destroy the Moorwen before it destroys them.
The role of Kainan was originally to have been played by Karl Urban (Lord of the Rings, The Bourne Supremacy, Riddick), but he pulled out due to delays in production and went on to film Pathfinder, another period movie involving Vikings (which was probably a mistake given the truly shocking reviews for Pathfinder: it has a dire rating of 12% on Rotten Tomatoes).
Also starring John Hurt, Sohia Myles (Tristan and Isolde) and Ron Perlman, Outlander will be released in early 2008.
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