Opinion: 'The Northman' turns Shakespeare inside out

Debuting one day before the annual celebrations of Shakespeare's birthday on April 23, 'The Northman' exploits the same Shakespearean text it avoids, writes Jeffrey R. Wilson. He says the film is an adaptation built for the 21st century while also example of centuries of work that interprets and reinvents the massive realm of sources, contexts, performances, criticism, adaptations and appropriations surrounding the plays and poems Shakespeare wrote.

Instead, the film -- with an all-star cast that includes Alexander Skarsgård, Nicole Kidman, Anya Taylor-Joy, Ethan Hawke, Björk and Willem Dafoe -- is an adaptation of one of Shakespeare's sources, the legend of Amleth in the medieval historian Saxo Grammaticus' "History of the Danes." "The Northman" overleaps "Hamlet."