The Weekly Watchlist: Seven Kings Must Die And Titans Season 4 Bring The Action (April 10, 2023)
There's lots of great stuff hitting streaming this week, but the debut of the Netflix film "Seven Kings Must Die" and the return of HBO Max's fourth season of "Titans" are two guaranteed to deliver high-intensity action. Fans looking to pair brutal historical epics with their watch of "Seven Kings Must Die" need to look no further than Robert Egger's Shakespearean Viking epic "The Northman" on Prime Video or Neil Marshall's Romans-vs-Picts action-adventure film "The Centurion," available on more than half a dozen streaming services. For those looking for something less bloody and closer tied to "Titans," there's always the Superman origin story series "Smallville," streaming on Hulu, or if you want to get really vintage, there's the young adult shapeshifting series "Animorphs," streaming on Prime Video. There's no shortage of action and adventure available on streaming this week, so let's get to it.
Seven Kings Must Die brings The Last Kingdom to a close
Where to watch "Seven Kings Must Die": Netflix
When "Seven Kings Must Die" releases: April 14, 2023
Fans of the Netflix and BBC Two series "The Last Kingdom" were disappointed to hear that the series would be ending, but at least there's a movie headed our way to wrap things up. "The Last Kingdom: Seven Kings Must Die" is the feature film sequel to "The Last Kingdom," directed by Ed Bazalgette, who directed six episodes of the series. The film will take place after the events of season 5 when King Edward's heirs, Æthelstan and Ælfweard, begin vying for the throne and send all of the kingdoms into chaos. Series hero Uhtred of Bebbanburg (Alexander Dreymon) is back, of course, to try and help put an end to the constant war and in-fighting between the kingdoms and create a united England.
"The Last Kingdom" was a gorgeous but frequently brutal historical action-drama series based on "The Saxon Stories" novels by British author Bernard Cromwell, condensing the 13 books into five seasons of television. There were some major changes from the books to the TV series, especially in later seasons, so even fans of the book series probably don't know everything that could happen in "Seven Kings Must Die." History tells us that England eventually gets united, of course, but it will be interesting to see how Uhtred and his best mate Finan (Mark Rowley) manage to deal with both the troubled succession and a new invasion by a Danish warrior-king. It's sure to be bloody, but also bloody entertaining.
Titans season 4 returns for more adolescent superhero action
Where to watch "Titans": HBO Max
When "Titans" season 4 part 2 releases: April 13, 2023
On the other end of the action-adventure series spectrum is "Titans," based on the "Teen Titans" comics from DC Comics, bringing the teenage heroes to live action with a bit of edge. The first half of the fourth season was the best the series has been so far, establishing a tone that really works by balancing a bit of humor with some darker, spookier material. There's some of the traditional "Teen Titans" stuff in there, of course, like dealing with the evils of Lex Luthor, but there are also some truly wacky moments, like Bruce Wayne (Iain Glen) doing a dance that originated on the 1960s Adam West "Batman" series, the gang fighting a team of ninjas, and demonic enemies with some seriously scary supernatural abilities. It's been a little scattered so far, but things were coming together in the first half of season 4, and hopefully, that means the second half will be even better.
The Northman is a brutal and beautiful historical epic
The movie: "The Northman"
Where you can stream it: Netflix
After terrifying audiences with his slow-burn Puritan horror nightmare "The Witch" and re-creating the tale of Proteus and Prometheus through a pair of wickies in "The Lighthouse," director Robert Eggers delivered his ferocious take on Shakespeare's "Hamlet" with "The Northman." Alexander Skarsgård plays Amleth, an exiled Viking prince who returns to take the kingdom that is rightfully his (if that sounds like "The Lion King," that's because it's based on "Hamlet," too!). Eggers doesn't have his Vikings speaking in verse, however, instead opting for a version of the tale where action tells the story much more than words. It's a beautiful and truly brutal historical epic, much like "The Last Kingdom" and "Seven Kings Must Die," and features similar themes around succession, feudalism, and warrior kings. (You can read our review here!) They're also set in close to the same time period, as both take place within the same stretch of about 100 years.
"The Northman" is both dreamlike and a nightmare, as Amleth takes psychedelics in order to enter a trance-like berserker state and the visuals go totally wild. If you want to see an old story told in a bold new way, check out "The Northman."
Smallville paved the way for teen superhero TV
The series: Smallville
Where you can stream it: Hulu
Once upon a time, live-action superhero shows were few and far between. There had been a few attempts at bringing the story of Superman to television, but the first to feature a young Clark Kent as he first realizes his Superman identity was "Smallville," which premiered in 2001 on The WB (which later became The CW). The series starred Tom Welling as Clark, who befriended Lex Luthor (Michael Rosenbaum) before the two grew apart and eventually became mortal enemies. It's a fun series about teens and young adults that manages to be fun enough to hook older audiences, too, even if they're not big Superman fans.
"Smallville" helped usher in the earliest parts of the superhero boom of the 2000s, kicking off the beginning of what would eventually become The CW's massive Arrowverse. It was a game-changer that featured some inventive ways of bringing comic book storylines to the small screen and had some great performances, especially from Rosenbaum as the best live-action Luthor to date. There's a direct line from "Smallville" to "Titans," so if you haven't checked it out, now is the time.
Centurion shows British history before The Last Kingdom
The movie: "Centurion"
Where you can watch it: Prime Video, Peacock, Roku, Tubi, and Vudu
"Centurion" is another violent historical epic set on the island of Great Britain, though it takes place about a thousand years earlier than either "The Northman" or "Seven Kings Must Die." The film follows a Roman officer named Quintus Dias (Michael Fassbender), who is captured by a clan of Pict warriors. He's rescued by a legion of Roman centurions who are looking to kill the Pictish leader, and he joins them. They end up far behind enemy lines when the majority of them are slaughtered, and they must survive both the fierce wilderness and the furious Picts. It's a grueling story that has moments of real beauty, especially with a subplot that involves a healer woman (Imogen Poots) who nurses Dias back to health.
There aren't a ton of movies about the Picts, but they were just as fierce and fascinating as the Vikings, and "Centurion" shows them as complex and courageous warriors. It's not the most historically accurate thing, but it's nice to look at, and Liam Cunningham (the Onion Knight from "Game of Thrones") gets to play a grumpy officer, which is automatically a bonus.
Animorphs was willing to get weird
The series: "Animorphs"
Where you can stream it: Prime Video
Hear me out on this one: "Titans" is a series about a group of young people with extraordinary powers fighting forces beyond our comprehension. "Animorphs" is a series about a group of young people with extraordinary powers fighting forces beyond our comprehension. It's just a lot older, cheesier, and somehow even weirder. Based on the novel series by K.A. Applegate, "Animorphs" aired on Nickelodeon and followed five teenagers who found a crashed alien spaceship and were given the ability to shapeshift into any animal they had physically touched. It turns out there's a full-scale alien invasion on Earth with slug-like aliens called the Yeerk that crawl into people's brains and drive them, creating a real "Invasion of the Body Snatchers"-style problem for the teens.
What makes "Animorphs" so fascinating is that it is incredibly dark and adult given its target audience, and the series executives were willing to get as weird as the source material, with several species of goofy-looking CGI-aliens, some absolutely horrifying transformation sequences, and the inherent weirdness of being a teenager in charge of saving the world and being able to turn into a Golden Retriever. "Animorphs" was honestly way ahead of its time, and helped create an entire generation of kids who would go on to love seriously strange science fiction.