Hollywood Does Iceland: Authenticity, Genericity and the Picturesque

• Main Author: Norðfjörð, Björn
• Format: Book Part
• Language: unknown
• Published: Edinburgh University Press 2015
• Subjects: Arctic; Ridley; Iceland
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9780748694174.003.0013

This chapter addresses the use of location substitution by Hollywood in Iceland. Ranging from films as diverse as Ridley Scott’s Alien prequel Prometheus (2012) and Lee Tamihori’s James Bond vehicle Die Another Day (2002), Nordfjörd considers how the landscape of Iceland is configured as beautiful, sublime, and fantastical. At the same time, he shows, they become generic background fodder for Hollywood cinema, precisely because of their seemingly otherworldy characteristics. By way of comparison, Nordfjörd argues that these ‘otherworldy’ Arctic environments are rarely mobilized as local sites in icelandic film production, and when they are used in films such as Dagur Kári’s Nói the Albino (2003) and Fridrik Thor Fridriksson’s Cold Fever (1995) they are aesthetically far away from realism.