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Exceptional Screenwriting Lessons from The 13th Warrior

The Finest of Adaptations


There lie exceptional screenwriting lessons in the movie The 13th Warrior. While author Michael Crichton is mostly affiliated with the success of his most well-known work Jurassic Park there does exist an earlier work which is often overlooked and underrated. The 13th Warrior is a 1999 film that offers many skillful lessons in storytelling which exceed beyond the film, back into the novel from which it was adapted called Eaters of the Dead written by Michael Crichton and adapted for the screen by William Wisher (Terminator, Terminator 2: Judgement Day, Judge Dredd) and Warren Lewis (Black Rain, Kill Box). It should also be noted that Crichton himself is credited as one of the two directors, specifically for sequences which went through reshoots.


Book cover of Eaters of the Dead
Book cover of Eaters of the Dead

An Important Lesson in Screenwriting and Language


As this article is about The 13th Warrior and its adaptation from Eaters of the Dead, there is one very important lesson of skill which has always fascinated me and which I have used as an extraordinary example of the exposition of using foreign language in film. It is often that a standard audience might complain about the use of subtitles when films attempt to remain as true as possible to the source language or nation from which they originate.


There exists a seamless exploitation and delivery of overcoming this issue within a montage sequence contained in The 13th Warrior. This montage sequence is truly what made the movie stand out. While Ibn Fadlan speaks to us through English in both narration and dialogue interactions, once he experiences the Vikings we are presented with a language barrier. They all speak in Norse and the audience is not given subtitles. This is because we are to journey through the story through the eyes and ears of Ibn Fadlan.


The montage takes us through the moments where Ibn Fadlan, played by Antonio Banderas, is left with no choice but to somehow learn or interpret the Vikings on his own, being forced in many ways to travel with them on their spiritual journey. It is night after night over a campfire that the audience sees and hears what Ibn Fadlan is, which is the Norse using foreign words to describe things and poke fun at Ibn. As Ibn begins to make associations with their words and gestures, he is able to begin to identify words like “Horse” and other words representing numerical values.


As he begins to understand these words, the dialogue begins to slip these words into the mix as English. In screenwriting, one important rule is to show the reader rather than tell them, as a screenplay is meant to be a literal description of happenings which should be captured by a camera. And just like that, the film makes a seamless transition from a foreign and unknown language being used without subtitles, to all of the characters speaking English.


To quote the film…


“Where did you learn our language?”


“I LISTENED!”




A Boring Story…


There are many who watch the film and get a sense of familiarity they can’t quite pin their fingers on. To understand this phenomenon, one must first understand the novel. Crichton wrote this novel as a challenge in adaptive storytelling.


The origins of Crichton’s work stem from an argument which was born in a lecture given by a friend of Crichton. The argument entailed that one of the oldest pieces of known literature was in fact boring. Crichton disagreed and instead of simply speaking his mind, he fabricated a retelling of the story in question in the form of a manuscript, detailing the journey of Ibn Fadlan and his encounters with the Northern Vikings.


If you have read Eaters of the Dead then you probably know, but if you have only seen The 13th Warrior you may have only had a sense that you had heard this story before… the story of course, is Beowulf.



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