The Northman’ Director Robert Eggers Really Wanted Penises In His Movie And He’s Bummed He Didn’t Get Them

There is ample nudity in all three of Robert Eggers’ exquisitely detailed films, The Witch, The Lighthouse, and The Northman, but no full-frontal male nudity. What gives There was supposed to be a scene with Robert Pattinson’s “actual erect penis” in The Lighthouse, but that would have put the film in NC-17 territory, which was a no-go for box office success. Eggers tried again in The Northman — which features a naked sword fight on an erupting volcano — but he “didn’t get them,” he told Letterboxd with a sigh.

Eggers tried to take a glass-half-full perspective on the lack of dongs:

“It’s probably good that we don’t see any penises there; it might distract from the story and the tension, because human beings are such sad creatures that we would be trying to catch a glimpse the whole time.” That said, he does think full-frontal nudity could have added to an earlier sequence. “In the berserkers’ raid of the Slavic village, I think if some of those berserkers had been entirely naked, that would have been a lot scarier.”

Someone needs to let Eggers make his Nosferatu remake (with or without Harry Styles) and have every male character be naked. I’m worried for his happiness otherwise.