Vikings: Journey to the New Worlds Movie Review

There's something pretty special about the IMAX Experience. Whether a film is made specifically for the towering IMAX screen or is a standard theatrical release that's been digitally remastered to accommodate the format, the image and sound quality is unparalleled. The experience rarely fails to entertain. Now IMAX films are being released on DVD and the question begs asking: Is it possible to capture the same grandiose experience on the small screen?

The latest release, Vikings: Journey to New Worlds is a brisk 40-minute history lesson that gets right to the point: Vikings were warriors, explorers, and settlers - not horned-hat-toting obtuse beasts. Beginning in the late 700 A.D., the Vikings began their dominance and for the next five centuries, they used their superior ships to conquer lands in Eastern Europe and explore new territories in the Atlantic. Like most others in the world, the Vikings were farmers who valued poetry and stories as much as conquering lands.

Vikings is based on a collection of stories written by the Vikings known as the North Atlantic Sagas. One Saga chronicles the exploration of Erik the Red, who after being banished from Iceland, went on to discover the largest island in the world. He called it Greenland because he hoped that its fertile valleys would appeal to the colony of Viking farmers. Another Saga follows the explorations of Leif Ericsson, Erik the Red's son, who found a landmass that many of today's scholars believe was the northeastern tip of America.

Vikings is more educational than action adventure. The film does feature numerous non-violent reenactments of Viking colony life and exploration and some breathtaking aerial vistas of Iceland, Greenland, and Newfoundland. Visually, Vikings loses a bit of its dramatic punch with this slimmed-down home theater edition. But what is not lost in the translation to DVD is the majestic score, which increases the film's dramatic effect and easily keeps our attention throughout. This Vikings proves to be a worthy complement to its IMAX roots.

Aka Vikings.