Alexander Skarsgård has a fever, and the only prescription is more revenge in Robert Eggers' latest take on gothic history, The Northman , co-written by novelist and songwriter Sjón and produced by Skarsgård and Eggers. The film is loosely based on the Icelandic saga of a legendary medieval hero named Amleth, the murder of whose father and the bloody revenge upon whose uncle served as the template for Shakespeare's Hamlet . It's the broad strokes and archetypes of the legendary hero that ultimately serve as the conceptual foundation of Eggers' film, more so than, say, the supposed historical fidelity for which he has become ironically infamous. The project certainly provides another signature opportunity for Eggers to stress his commitment to period accuracy in dialogue, production design, and music, previously demonstrated in his debut, the colonial horror film The Witch , as well as its follow-up, the darkly romantic black comedy The Lighthouse . But there's no mi...