Hebbuli 2024 Bengali Dubbed Movie .Hollywood has been the subject of frequent criticism for its often-toxic portrayal of Muslims and Islamic culture over the years. It is quite telling that, even today, one would be hard pressed to find an example of a positive or nuanced depiction of a Muslim protagonist in a film but no dearth of villainous or problematic ones. There is the odd biopic about a significant Muslim figure such as Ali or Malcolm X, and a handful of comparatively smaller budget films with Muslim protagonists like Traitor and The Big Sick that buck the trend. Yet, none had the level of resources poured into them that The 13th Warrior did, making its underperformance even more stark and its legacy a complicated one.
“As someone who has spent 20 years trying to make movies and television shows that put Muslim identities at the forefront, I think The 13th Warrior probably hurt the situation because it was such a box office disaster that some people in Hollywood decided that they weren’t going to make a movie with a Muslim protagonist anymore,” says Dr Reza Aslan, a bestselling author, TV producer and professor of creative writing at the University of California, Riverside. “Then, almost immediately, we had the events of 9/11 which allowed Hollywood to turn Muslims into the antagonists.”
Its genesis from book to film
Now, 25 years after its release, the film warrants a reassessment, especially in light of its contribution to on-screen Muslim representation, at a time when having a Muslim protagonist is still pretty unconventional.
“Legend has it that Michael Crichton was arguing with a friend about the merits of Beowulf – the first important Anglo-Saxon work of literature – and on a bet decided that he could rewrite it for a modern audience,” says Aslan. “In the process of doing so, he stumbled across this manuscript by Ahmad ibn Fadlan that is the very first outsider’s description of Viking culture that we have – and was so taken by it that he decided to make him the protagonist of his story.”
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