Chris Hardwick's Blog, page 2230

The ONE PIECE FILM: GOLD Trailer Sees the Strawhats Explore An Appropriately Golden New City

Since 1999, we sure have gotten a lot of SpongeBob SquarePants: The cartoon classic is currently in its tenth season and recently surpassed the 200-episode mark. Anime moves at a decidedly quicker pace than most American cartoons, however, so over the same period, One Piece, has aired 18 seasons, or a whopping 768 episodes as of today, and is as much a classic in Japan as SpongeBob is stateside.

We don’t have to explain to even cursory anime/manga fans, however, that there have also been thirteen One Piece movies, and now, the most recent one has been dubbed into English and is set to hit U.S. theaters for a limited run from January 10-17. In the just-released teaser clip for One Piece Film: Gold (above, via Anime News Network), captain Monkey D. Luffy and the rest of the strawhat pirates find themselves being toured through Gran Tesoro, a luxurious golden city that looks like Las Vegas got mashed up with an opulent Mayan municipality.

According to the film synopsis, Gran Tesoro “is a city of entertainment beyond the laws of the government, is a sanctuary for the world’s most infamous pirates, Marines, and filthy rich millionaires,” so Luffy and company found their way there with dollar signs (or berry signs, rather) in hopes of gambling their way to, as the first season theme song so iconically puts it, “wealth, fame, power.”

However, it appears like the strawhats will have some sort of run-in with the city’s power-hungry king, so, you know, we have an adventure on our hands. The movie has pulled in about $42.5 million in Japan since July, so “gold” appears to be an appropriate descriptor.

Featured image: FUNimation

Here are this winter’s must-watch anime!

Audio Rewind: Frank Sinatra, The Voice of An Era

Few names in American pop culture are as universally adored as Frank Sinatra. His persona was larger than life. His life, even, was larger than life. Charismatic. Suave. Oscar-winning actor. Friend to presidents. The speculative—yet convincing—mob ties that somehow enriched his legacy rather than add rancor. And, of course, there was that unmistakeable croon. The catalyst for such nicknames as “Swoonatra” and “The Voice.” The irascible and esteemed music critic, Robert Christgau, called him the greatest singer of the 20th century. And who could convincingly argue with that claim? Listening to Sinatra is like funneling Christmas through a voicebox. This past Monday would have been his 101st birthday, and as we find ourselves on the eve of the holidays, we remember Frank Sinatra.

Sinatra was born in 1915 in Hoboken, New Jersey to a midwife and a boxer, both Italian immigrants. He grew up fascinated by music and, despite never formally learning to read it, he worked very hard to understand it. His reverence for Bing Crosby led to a love affair with Big Band jazz. After a teenage introduction to the genre with a troupe called the Hoboken Four (they were the 3 Flashes before Sinatra joined), the budding singer watched his star rise higher and higher; or, rather, he gave it a mighty shove into the night sky.

Through hard work and a resounding voice that belied his thin frame, Sinatra thrust himself onto the scene, bouncing around with Big Band bandleaders like Harry James and Tommy Dorsey. With the latter, Sinatra was eventually engaged in ugly contractual issues that, rumor has it, were settled by the mafia. As the story goes, his gangster godfather, Willie Moretti, bribed Dorsey with a few thousand dollars and a gun to his head in order to force him to release Sinatra from his contract. By the time he went solo—reportedly because of an insatiable desire to compete with Crosby—the crooner had already lived a colorful life. Now he was about to be a star.

In 1942, Sinatra opened at New York’s Paramount Theater, marking the official arrival of Sinatramania, a precursor to the manias that would later accompany stars like Elvis and The Beatles. The performance was a smash. Within a few weeks of the show, more than 1,000 Frank Sinatra fan clubs were registered.

George Evans, the singer’s publicist, painted Sinatra as a vulnerable Italian-American who emerged triumphant from a rough childhood. It was an image both endearing and enduring, and Sinatra rode that image and that velvet croon to towering fame. By the end of 1945, a poll in Down Beat magazine listed him as the most popular male vocalist, placing him ahead of  both his erstwhile idol, Bing Crosby, and everyone else in the world. His debut album, The Voice of Frank Sinatra, mirrored his meteoric rise, climbing to No. 1 on the Billboard chart soon after it was released in 1946. But no one, not even Ol’ Blue Eyes, can stay at the top forever.

In the early ’50s, Sinatra sank to a nadir, both in his career and in his life. An extramarital affair with actress Ava Gardner ruined his first marriage with Nancy, with whom he had three children. Evans, a close friend, died unexpectedly. Financial troubles forced him to borrow $200,000 from Columbia Records to pay back taxes. By 1952, he was playing the Kauai County Fair in Hawaii. Soon thereafter, Sinatra was dismissed from Columbia altogether. This wasn’t the end, though, of course; Sinatra packed his bags for Las Vegas, the refuge for stalled careers, and began rebuilding his star.

Once on the strip, the crooner became part of the illustrious vocal supergroup, The Rat Pack, which featured, among others, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. Sinatra then buried himself in work. He appeared in the 1953 film, From Here to Eternity, winning an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, and he signed a lucrative contract with Capitol Records the same year. After recording and listening to playbacks of, “I’ve Got the World on a String,” his first song with Capitol, he famously exclaimed: “I’m back, baby, I’m back!”

A slew of critically acclaimed releases followed in both film—The Man with the Golden Arm (1955), The Manchurian Candidate (1962)—and music: Songs for Young Lovers (1954), In the Wee Small Hours (1955), Songs for Swingin’ Lovers! (1956), Come Fly With Me (1958), Come Dance With Me (1959). He wouldn’t peak, though, until ’65. That year, a Rat Pack benefit concert was broadcast live into movie theaters. His latest record, September of My Years, won the Album of the Year Grammy, and one of its singles, the appropriately titled, “It Was a Very Good Year,” won for Best Vocal Performance by a Male. In November, just before his 50th birthday, he released a career anthology, A Man and His Music. It would win Album of the Year in 1966.

Over the next couple decades, Sinatra maintained his prolific output, collaborating with a bevy of luminaries and cementing his legacy as music magnate. There was Sammy Davis Jr. and Dean Martin, of course, as well as Nat King Cole, Quincy Jones, Count Basie, Bing Crosby, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Gracy Kelly, Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald, John Denver, Luciano Pavorotti, and, on-screen, Doris Day, Rita Hayworth, and Faye Dunaway. He was nominated for multiple Oscars and even covered a number of pop hits in order to remain contemporary: Elvis’s “Love Me Tender,” Paul Simon‘s “Mrs. Robinson,” and The Beatles’ “Something,” a track Sinatra called “the greatest love song of the past 50 years.” When all was said and done, Sinatra left us with more than 1,000 recordings.

It’s the narratives in between the art, though, that persist as Sinatra’s most captivating. The singer befriended and campaigned for both JFK and Reagan. He was married to both Ava Gardner and Mia Farrow, and he reportedly ended engagements with Lauren Bacall and Juliet Prowse. He had fights with notable journalists he felt had crossed him. And he was friends with gangsters like Sam Giancana and Lucky Luciano, with whom he attended the Mafia’s legendary Havana Conference in 1946. He also played an active role in desegregating hotels and casinos (though he did make occasional racist jibes to Davis Jr. during performances). And for all of it he was impeccably groomed. As the best, he felt that he owed the best to his fans, so he dressed to the nines—an outward expression of the assiduous man beneath the suit.

Frank Sinatra died of a heart attack in 1998 at the age of 82. The lights on the Las Vegas strip were dimmed and casinos stopped spinning to observe a moment of silence. The Empire State Building turned its lights blue in his honor. And his gravestone was branded with the words, “The Best is Yet to Come,” the name of a 1959 song composed by Cy Coleman and intimately associated with Sinatra. Though he didn’t compose his own material, Ol’ Blues Eyes brought it to life with a singular showmanship, poise, and vibrance. His hard work got him to the show. His candor won him the world’s adoration. And his voice brought him immortality. Today we still venerate that voice, and we still hope that the best is yet to come.

Image: Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons

Hugh Jackman Made Ryan Reynolds a Hilarious Video for His Hollywood Walk of Fame Star

Ryan Reynolds is being honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, so in order to commemorate this momentous occasion in the actor’s life, he took to Instagram to share his feelings. Well, sort of. Just watch this video posted to Hugh Jackman‘s Instagram today that our friends at comicbook.com featured this morning:

@VanCityReynolds asked me to post this 100% real video by him on being honored with a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame today.

A video posted by Hugh Jackman (@thehughjackman) on Dec 15, 2016 at 7:03am PST

Yes, in a shocking twist, this was not an example of Ryan Reynolds gushing over how Jackman is his favorite actor, throwing himself some shade over his less-than excellent superhero movie that just won’t die, Green Lantern, and encouraging fans to urinate on his section of the sidewalk. No, it turns out the video was posted by Wolverine himself, Hugh Jackman! What a twist!

Jackman’s video was hilarious and adorably silly, and really only serves to fuel our insatiable desire to see Jackman and Reynolds as their Marvel alter egos onscreen together (and I mean something more substantial than what we got in Deadpool). The two actor’s social media bromance has been so much fun to watch, and this video is just another entry in their storied digital friendship…or rivalry…or both…likely both. Regardless, this video is a delight, and it is the perfect way to usher us into the holiday season.

What is your favorite Jackman/Reynolds online interaction? Tell us about it in the comments!

Feature Image: Fox 

David Attenborough Still Used VHS Tapes to Help Narrate PLANET EARTH 2

David Attenborough’s serene, endearingly weathered voice is one that can really only be developed over a lifetime of experience, and that’s precisely what the man has had, starting at the BBC in the 1950s and working in media from then to now, where he sits at the ripe age of 90. Here’s a fun fact that really shows how long Attenborough has been in the game: He’s the only person to win a BAFTA award for shows broadcast in black and white, color, and 3D.

Attenborough has lived and worked through essentially all of television, but it still shouldn’t be surprising that this old dog would rather stick with familiar tricks sometimes. For example, it turns out that while scripting the brand new Planet Earth 2 series, he still relied on VHS tapes to get the job done (via Cinema Blend).

“You work to picture by using, actually I use VHS,” he said. “Move backwards and forwards until you get the right words. It may take you up to a week to get the words absolutely right, and then you should be able to record a one-hour program in two hours.’

This quote comes from a behind-the-scenes video posted to Facebook by BBC One that shows the process, and in the clip, Planet Earth composer Hans Zimmer beautifully summarized what makes Attenborough’s narration so moving: “[He had] that voice that makes it feel like he’s only talking to you and he has something very important to tell you. The work he has done has stayed relevant for all these years… I mean, is it 60 years now? And his voice is more important to this world now than ever before.”

You ain’t kidding, Hans. Watch the behind-the-scenes video below, the trailer for the series above, and catch the first episode of Planet Earth II when it premieres on BBC America on January 28, 2017.

Featured image: BBC Earth

ROGUE ONE’s Chirrut Îmwe Fights Stormtroopers in Rad Stop-Motion Animated Video

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is hitting theaters tonight, and if the early word is any indication, fans are gonna love it. It’s still too early to say who the breakout character of the movie is going to be, but there’s a pretty good chance that it could be Chirrut Îmwe, the blind monk who is dedicated to the Force even though he isn’t a Jedi. Getting the star of Ip Man, Donnie Yen, to play the role was a particularly nice touch. While the trailers for Rogue One have only hinted at how much ass he kicks in this film, Hot Toys has paid tribute to one of Chirrut Îmwe’s signature moments in a new animated short.

Hot Toys has unveiled its 1/6 scale Chirrut Îmwe Deluxe figure in a stop-motion animated segment based upon an early scene in Rogue One which finds the warrior monk taking on several stormtroopers while armed with only his staff. It’s not an exact recreation of the way it plays out in the film, but it’s pretty close! The quality of the animation is so impressive that it could almost be mistaken for footage from Rogue One itself, which may explain the disclaimer at the front of the video.

Fortunately for anyone who is avoiding spoilers, the short doesn’t reveal why Chirrut was fighting the stormtroopers or how the encounter ultimately wraps up. This may be one of Yen’s standout scenes in the movie, but it’s far from the only one he had. We wouldn’t be shocked at all to see Chirrut Îmwe star in his own adventures in the Star Wars universe after this, even if a Rogue One sequel seems unlikely. After all, there’s always Star Wars comics, novels, and animated TV shows!

For the collectors, Hot Toys is currently offering preorders on its Chirrut Îmwe figure here.

What did you think about this video? Let us know in the comment section below!

Image: Hot Toys

Ron Weasley Had a Secret Slytherin Spy Cousin We Never Met in HARRY POTTER

Sometimes it can be tough to be a fan of Harry Potter that’s been sorted into Slytherin. After all, J.K. Rowling‘s books and the film adaptations have not been totally kind to those sorted into the de-facto “evil” house. And while it’s totally not true (some of our more esteemed, non-evil alumni include Merlin, Regulus Black, and Andromeda Tonks—and most of the Nerdist editorial staff), it’s a tough stereotype to shake. So when Uproxx posted an article claiming that Rowling had initially planned to include a young, female Slytherin student who was a spy for Harry and his friends and a cousin to Ron Weasley, we got super curious and super excited.

Apparently a very old interview with Rowling resurfaced on Reddit that featured our Lady of Hogwarts explaining her plans for a character named Mafalda who was slated to be introduced in book four, The Goblet of Fire. Interestingly enough, Mafalda was initially planned to serve a role similar to the one Rita Skeeter ends up playing for Harry, Ron, and Hermione. In Rowling’s initial plans, however, Mafalda was Ron’s nosy, unpleasant, mega-smart but approval-hungry Slytherin cousin. Her parents would essentially drop her off at Mrs. Weasley’s door at the start of Goblet of Fire because they didn’t like her, and her nosiness paired with her need to impress others (likely a symptom of being utterly unwanted) would make her a wonderful informant on Harry and all of the goings-on within the wizarding world and Dumbledore’s Army.

Of course, even the trickiest and nosiest of children can’t hear everything going on in the Wizarding World—especially while cloistered away at Hogwarts, meaning Rowling soon realized that Mafalda couldn’t realistically serve in the role for which she’d originally been created. So instead, Rowling adjusted the role of Rita Skeeter (a character Rowling always intended to include in the series), making her a more realistic source of news outside Hogwarts. So even though Mafalda still exists (after all her parents, the stock-broker second cousins, are mentioned in The Sorcerer’s Stone), she never got to live up to the awesome potential Rowling originally had planned.

I’ll be honest, though Rowling’s reasons for scrapping Mafalda make sense, I’m a bit bummed we never got to interact with Ron’s Slytherin cousin. Rowling said she’d seriously butt heads with Hermione, and it would have been fun to see the two very different, very opinionated (and super smart!) witches interact. However, it is nice to know that in the midst of all of Harry, Ron, and Hermione’s ass-kicking over in Gryffindor, there was a Mafalda Weasley was causing trouble all her own over in Slytherin. I think we need a Pottermore story about Mafalda, don’t you?

Did you know about Ron’s cousin? Are you happy they never introduced us to Mafalda, or would you liked to have met her? Tell us your thoughts in the comments!

Feature Image: Warner Bros.

Superhydrophobic Street Art’s Beautiful Stains Come out When It Rains

Despite any downsides associated with rain, when liquid water condensed from atmospheric water vapor forms into droplets and falls back to Earth’s surface, there’s a shift in mood. Days aren’t normal when it rains, they’re rainy days: Days when we sit inside with a cup of hot cocoa and a fat wedge of Game of Thrones dragon cake. Days when binging our latest favorite series isn’t all that guilt-inducing, because… well, what are we supposed to do, get mildly wet?! Days when invisible street art appears as if by magic, and delivers to passersby tiny messages of hope. And also maybe hopscotch.

That last miracle of the rain is possible thanks to something called superhydrophobic coating, which Peregrine Church and his company, Rainworks, have utilized as a way to create cement art that only comes out when exposed to water. Although Church isn’t the original inventor of the coating, he helped to popularize this particular usage for it by using it as a spray in conjunction with stencils.

The above clip, a GIF of which was first posted to reddit by user SuperXack, shows off the myriad hidden visual treats that can be created with superhydrophobic spray. It works particularly well on cement because cement, of course, changes color when it becomes wet.

Superhydrophobic spray is capable of shedding water the way it does because it develops a nanoscopic surface layer that behaves much like Teflon. The superhydrophobic spray that makes up the slick sidewalk art doesn’t actively repel water, but as a hydrophobe, it is not attracted to water. Some of the more practical uses, street art aside, include coating for solar panels (so they don’t become wet and moldy), as well as a cover on rain coats: those things you should slip on the next time it rains so you can go outside and let out your inner Michelangelo or Banksy.

Images: icreatenovelty

Could a Futurama scheme stop global warming?

Watch the ROGUE ONE Cast Answer the Most-Googled Questions About Them

If you want to amuse yourself and be occasionally disheartened at the same time, few things beat entering the beginning of a question into Google and seeing how it auto-completes your search, thereby indicating what the most asked question on that topic actually is. For instance, if you type in “Why do clowns…”, Google adds the word “exist?” It’s funny because you probably wondered it, it’s sad because clowns just want you to be happy and most of you seem not to want them in the world. (The next most-Googled queries, for what it’s worth, are “Why do clowns wear afros?”, “Why do clowns kill?”, and “Why do clowns attack?”)

In a video for Wired magazine, most of the principal cast members of the newest Star Wars movie, Rogue One, decided to shake up the Google results by actually answering and putting to rest the questions that are most asked about them. The most obvious takeaway is that people doing internet searches actually believe that two different celebrities can be the same person, especially Felicity Jones, who must answer whether or not she is also Eddie Redmayne AND Zooey Deschanel. We also learn that Riz Ahmed thinks in very existential terms—asked why Rogue One has different characters, he take it not as a query as to why Finn and Rey aren’t in the movie, but why it doesn’t simply have one character who remains the same.

As a bonus, you get to see Donnie Yen’s lower back tattoo (it’s not a butterfly), and hear Alan Tudyk argue that Darth Vader is a Jedi. What do Diego Luna and Ben Mendelsohn reveal? You’ll just have to watch the video above.

Have all your non-spoiler burning questions been answered yet? Let’s start some new questions trending in comments below, and maybe the cast will come back for another round when the home video release happens.

Image: YouTube/Wired

Schlock & Awe: LITTLE RITA OF THE WEST (a.k.a. CRAZY WESTERNERS)

My original plan for this, the final week of new Schlock & Awe before the holidays, was to find yet another weird Christmas-themed horror or sci-fi movie, however, a friend of mine recently showed me a movie I simply couldn’t ignore. It’s one of the weirdest, goofiest, most bafflingly bizarre films I’ve ever seen. It is, of all things, a spaghetti western made in the heyday of Italian cowboy movies, but is at once a parody/send-up of popular westerns of the time and a straight-up musical with show-stopping numbers, all to showcase the talents of a famous Italian songstress. What even is this thing? It’s Little Rita of the West, and you’re welcome in advance.

The 1960s were super weird. Super duper weird, even. While the mid-to-late part of the decade produced some truly excellent and genre-defining westerns made in Europe, it also produced things like this, which used a ton of already-concrete spaghetti western tropes for comedic effect. Rita Pavone was the 4’9″ light entertainment performer with a massive voice who cut her hair to look far younger than he actual age. (She was 22 in 1967 when the film was made). She spends the entire movie beating up or wantonly murdering half the bandits in the old west and singing songs every few scenes. It’s also maybe not the MOST racially sensitive movie of all time…

Pavone plays Little Rita, apparently the best gunslinger in the west, as she’s on a mission to help her friend, the Native American chief Silly Bull (genre staple Gordon Mitchell), to obtain all the gold in the entire world it seems so that they can blow it up. Because gold is bad or something. Naturally, other people disagree about gold, so she has to fight a lot of people. Eventually, Rita meets a gunslinger named Black Star (played by future spaghetti western megastar Terence Hill) who helps her retrieve gold, and she falls in love with him. Unfortunately, he MIGHT really secretly want to keep that gold.

All right, so this movie is bananas for a number of reasons. First and foremost, we’re led to believe that Rita Pavone is the toughest gunslinger in the west, with her enormous, solid-gold pistol and solid gold grenades which she is able to fire from said pistol. She also, when having a fistfight, just swings wildly with haymaker after haymaker, mostly because all the baddies she’s fighting are at least a foot and a half taller than her. MINIMUM.

Another crazy thing they do—which I actually find very funny—is they have Rita duel with a couple of well-known spaghetti western characters. First, she meets Ringo, a character who was the subject of a dozen westerns in Italy and elsewhere (he’s established as a badass bounty hunter, out looking for gold). After taking out a bar full of bandits, he then loses a battle with Rita, culminating in him blowing up via grenade. This sequence also has a fair amount of references to the most successful Italian western of them all, For a Few Dollars More.

There is also a sequence in which Rita finds Django, evidently minutes after he vacated his own 1966 film. Django, dragging his trademark coffin behind him, refuses to give up the stockpile of gold within. They then have a duel in a suddenly-appearing cemetery (which looks remarkably like the one from the finale of the Django film) and Rita, of course, comes out on top.

While neither Ringo nor Django are played by the actors who made the character famous, the idea of having her face off with two of the biggest stock heroes of the genre, and killing them dead, is actually a very funny idea. It makes the movie feel distinctly episodic, and kind of like a video game.

Okay, so I’ve written about this movie and not talked at all about the musical sequences. Well, as Pavone was a huge singing sensation, it seemed natural for her to sing and dance. However, when the movie was sold to America and dubbed, the distributors wanted a straight-up spaghetti western and cut out all the musical numbers. (The movie flopped as a result.) Eventually, the numbers were put back in and the movie fell into the public domain in the U.S., which is how my friend showed it to me. Except, all the musical numbers were neither dubbed nor subtitled, because nobody at the time did it and nobody owns the rights to do so now. So we just watched a movie where every so often, a tiny woman would sing huge songs with dancing Native Americans or saloon patrons. I have no idea what any of the songs were actually about.

As I’m a big fan of spaghetti westerns, it was fun and refreshing to see such a goofy take on the genre done by Italians for Italians. I watched with a bunch of friends who aren’t nearly as steeped in the genre’s trappings as I am, and even they still really enjoyed it. I think anyone would. It’s bizarre, it’s ridiculous, it drags in the middle (not a fun thing, just a fact), and I got a lot of laughs out of it. And, it’s bound to be less objectionable than the movie Pavone and Hill made the same year: The Field Marshal, a musical comedy about Nazi Germany…yeeeeesh.

Images: B.R.C. Produzione S.r.l.

Kyle Anderson is the Associate Editor for Nerdist. He writes the weekly look at weird or obscure films in Schlock & Awe. Follow him on Twitter!

VIKINGS Recap: Two Journeys (Season 4, Episode 13)

Hope you haven’t forgotten what happened during last episode, because the gods have granted us with all the spoilers. May your mind be as keen as Lagertha.

The episode headliners for this week’s two journeys were obvious going in: one following Ragnar’s pathetic raiding party of revenge with Ivar in Wessex ,and another following Björn’s quest to the Mediterranean with his merry band of followers, Floki, Helga, Hvitserk, Harold Finehair, Halfdan the Black, and—oh—60 longships filled with willing and able Vikings.

But you didn’t think it would be as simple as that, did you?

Though the second set of journeys have escalated things a bit quickly, another civil war is upon us whether we want it or not. Timing was key for Lagertha and her warriors of Hedeby to dethrone Aslaug—but why go for it at all? This feud between our two polarizing Viking women isn’t exactly the clearest part of the coup. We know that Lagertha thinks Aslaug is unfit to rule, which is partially true, in the past Queen Aslaug has been pretty careless when it comes to keeping track of her citizens. (Sidenote: there’ve been some questions regarding Aslaug’s vision scene from last episode—a hidden miscarriage brought on by her grief is my only explanation for her bleeding. But was she carrying Harbard’s or Ragnar’s child?)

Some tough choices lay ahead for Lagertha’s seemingly simple plan—like two full grown sons of Ragnar and Aslaug. The whole lock-them-up deal was a bit of cannon fodder IMO; you’d think that these two warriors could have come up with a way to break free or fight back. Here’s hoping that they rage at the last moment in the next episode. In all, though, this isn’t shaping up to be as legit a civil war as the ones in past seasons, but hey, at least we got to see Astrid in action! A worthy hand-to-hand tactician indeed.

Also there’s a certain mystical object from Norse mythology in play this week…

The sword that Aslaug adorns herself with is most likely Gram, the reforged  rune-covered golden sword that Odin gave to Sigurd (Aslaug’s father) to slay the dragon Fafnir, amongst other tales of heroism from the Völsunga Saga. (If you’re a fan of the show, reading the Völsunga Saga is the next step if you haven’t already.) Not too shabby, Aslaug. But is wielding Gram enough to save her from certain death? Will the gods favor the skill and bravery of Lagertha or the mythical lineage of Aslaug?

Now back to our raiding pairs and the return of those cheery Wessex folks, King Ecbert, Judith, and Aethelwulf. A touching moment between Papa Ragnar and Ivar helped solidify their relationship—which is pretty important considering that they’re the only Vikings alive in Wessex at the moment. In order to deal with Wessex, though, they need one another physically and mentally. But they’ve got a long way to go until those bonds are forged—they’ve only just now started to bond in a way that was never possible in Kattegat. Points for parenting on the fly! And some points for Ivar’s good humor despite it all. (Still a legit jerk though.)

And then there’s Rollo. Rollo, you see, has been busy in his coastal home. Blessed with three little kids of royal parentage, Rollo seems to be in the perfect position for a quiet life, filled with longstanding fame and power as a Duke. Despite high tensions—mostly prompted by Gisla’s never-ending reservoir of shade—Rollo’s thirst for adventure won over. Now he leaves behind his pissed-off wife and sulking French children, but that might be because she never really saw Rollo embracing his peak Viking side. (Try staying mad at this epicness!)

Finally, after a much needed history lesson for Björn, the full scope of his journey across the Holy Roman Empire is just now sinking in. Unlike Ragnar’s rash and deceptive attitude with foreign leaders, I think Björn might actually have a better chance at remaining diplomatic in order to get to these distant lands. (I mean, you can’t argue with that Ironside charm.)  But it’s Duke Rollo with his current French allegiance that I’m more wary off in the coming episodes. Björn’s going to need to prepare himself for more negotiations, more compromises, and more Floki sass. (All the Floki sass please!)

Before we go, click on this link to hear a dope remix by RHINO of the Vikings Fever Ray theme song ““If I Had a Heart” because we love it so much. And check back here for the episode 14 recap, “In the Uncertain Hour Before the Morning.” Leave your Vikings comments below.

Images: The History Channel

GIF: VikingsHistory/Tumblr