27 Years Later, This Forgotten Viking Action Movie That Bombed at the Box Office Is a Success on Prime Video

The streaming era is a very strange time in entertainment. It’s the wild west in terms of predicting what content will break through and hit with mainstream viewers. Sometimes it’s the newest show or movie that’s debuting on a streaming platform – other times, it’s an old show or film that gets rediscovered on a streaming platform, and goes viral as if it’s new. Today brings such a case: a cult action film from nearly 30 years ago is getting much more fame now that it’s streaming on Amazon Prime Video.

Unless you were a dedicated film fan in 1999, you probably won’t remember the film The 13th Warrior. Well, even though the film was overlooked at the time (in a milestone year that gave us Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, The Matrix, The Sixth Sense, and so much more…), it’s since stood the test of time as a cult-favorite. And now that streak continues to run, 27 years later.

Die Hard Director’s Viking Action Film Is A Hit On Streaming

The 13th Warrior starred Antonio Banderas (Desparado) as “Ahmed ibn Fahdlan,” a Muslim poet living in AD 922, whose tomcat ways make him the target of some nobles, who have him exiled on an ambassador’s mission to the territory of ancient Russia (Volga Bulgars). There, the party is ravaged by a band of raiders and is only saved by a band of Norsemen (Vikings). The Noresmen are asked for aid by a local king, who needs warriors strong enough to defeat the “Wendol,” a tribe of cannibals disguising themselves as monsters of folklore. A Norse shaman predicts that the expedition will succeed if twelve Norsemen and a man of a different race (a 13th warrior) go with them. Ahmed becomes that 13th man, whether he likes it or not.

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As stated, The 13th Warrior is now sitting at No. 6 in Prime Video’s movie rankings. That’s a shocking comeback for such an old film, which wasn’t a success when it was first released – but again, 1999 may be the best single year in movies there was, so it’s not a surprise that some films fell through the cracks. In fact, The 13th Warrior would’ve taken the top spot at the box office on its opening weekend if not for The Sixth Sense, which knocked it down to the No. 2 spot. The film ultimately made $61.7 million at the box office, against a massive budget that is said to be anywhere from $85 million to nearly double that figure. That was too much of a loss for Touchstone Pictures, and the lackluster performance even made Egyptian acting icon Omar Sharif (Lawrence of Arabia) temporarily quit acting after appearing in the film. It was a pivotal misstep in some ways, as The 13th Warrior was one of the first major Hollywood action films to make a Muslim character its protagonist.

However, when you read the criticisms of The 13th Warrior, they sound very much at odds with our modern views on action movies. “To extract the story from the endless scenes of action and carnage is more effort than it’s worth,” Robert Ebert wrote in his review. “The film seems to have been conceived from the special effects on down. Instead of beginning with a good story and then adding f/x as needed, it apparently began with f/x and then the story was shoehorned into the pauses in the action.”

The 13th Warrior Comes From A Master of the Action Genre

Director John McTiernan was one of the premier names in action during the late 1980s and 1990s. His list of screen credits before The 13th Warrior includes Predator, Die Hard, Die Hard with a Vengeance, The Hunt for Red October, and the satirical action film Last Action Hero. If you don’t see a pattern: every single one of those aforementioned films has been cemented as either a cult classic or bona fide classic piece of action filmmaking, often blending in other genre elements like political thriller, horror, or sci-fi.

It’s hard to look at the run McTiernan was on in the late 1990s and not give him the benefit of the doubt; watching (or re-watching) The 13th Warrior seems mandatory, just to verify that it’s an anomaly in McTiernan’s filmography, and not a criminally overlooked gem. The filmmaker released The Thomas Crown Affair remake the same year (starring Pierce Brosnan and Renee Russo), and that is considered a classic. So it’s even harder to believe The 13th Warrior was the miss they say it was.

See for yourself on Amazon Prime Video. Discuss your favorite 1990s action with us on the ComicBook Forum!