Why all the genital tweaks in The Northman? ‘You can’t have penises on airplanes’

polygon.com:

Fans of Robert Eggers’ films — The Witch, The Lighthouse, and now The Northman — know he goes to extremes to make his visuals as real and lived-in as possible, using extensive research, natural light, practical effects, and authentic period costuming and set-building processes. All of this makes The Northman’s climactic battle — a sword fight between two naked men at the base of an erupting volcano — all the more astonishing. The rise of digital special effects has taught us to expect that anything surprising we see onscreen was probably composed inside a computer, but that didn’t seem likely for a Robert Eggers movie.

Eggers’ immediate response when asked how the scene was shot suggests he’s been fielding some complaints that the fight sequence is too astonishing: “There was a music video that was shot during the recent eruptions outside of Reykjavik, and it looks like the end of my movie, only it’s a music video,” he says. “So anyone who thinks it’s too far-fetched to have a sword fight up there — if you can shoot a music video during a volcanic eruption, you can certainly have a sword fight there.”

Still, for health and safety reasons, the Northman team created their own version of Iceland’s Mount Hekla volcano for the fight, using a mix of practical and digital effects. Those included competing genital enhancement and de-enhancement for the combatants, Viking warrior Amleth (Alexander Skarsgård) and his murderous uncle Fjölnir (Claes Bang).

“Basically, we found a quarry that looks more like the summit of Mount Hekla than we might have expected,” Eggers says. “Craig Lathrop, the production designer, brought in a whole lot of black earth to dress it in, to make it look even more like Hekla. Then [SFX supervisor] Sam