Film / Troll (2022)

Troll is a Norwegian Kaiju movie produced by Netflix, directed by Roar Uthaug, and starring Ine Marie Wilmann. When an explosion in the Norwegian mountains awakens an ancient troll, officials appoint a fearless palaeontologist to stop it from wreaking deadly havoc.

The movie was released on December 1, 2022. The cinematic trailer can be see here.

Not to be confused with Troll (1986), or for that matter Troll 2.

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This work contains examples of:

• 419 Scam: Sigrid makes this up when asked what she is doing while actually hacking the military's weapon system, before having her laptop snatched.
• Actor Allusion: Nora's American colleague at the paleontological dig site, Dr. Secord, is played by Billy Campbell, an actor best known for starring in The Rocketeer - in which his character's surname was also Secord.
• Actually Pretty Funny: When Andreas correctly identifies Captain Holm's night-vision goggles, he adds that he has some military experience... from Call of Duty. Holm actually smirks at this.
• Agent Scully: Even though it's obvious what the troll is, and equally obvious conventional methods aren't effective, anyone who suggests calling it a troll and using folklore as a reference for dealing with it are treated as crazy for even suggesting it by those in authority. They resolve to continue using More Dakka to take it out before they make any headway following fairy tales.
• Alas, Poor Villain: When the troll succumbs to the sunrise in the end, it's treated somberly, because although it was a destructive man-eating beast, it was an ultimately intelligent, normally peaceful being whose kind were unfairly driven to extinction by humans and that simply wanted to be reunited with its family.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: The troll is so massive he goes through a Godzilla-style rampage that wrecks half of (and towers way over) Oslo at the climax and in one scene the protagonists confuse the resting troll for a cliff until it wakes up.
• Arbitrary Skepticism: The longer the troll is out and about, the more and more other characters fall into this as they refuse to believe that fairytales are actually real, such as Captain Kris. By the end though, everyone seems to have accepted the facts.
• Arkham's Razor: Nora is the only one to make the obvious observation that the sequence of depressions look like tracks and a witness' video shows something massive and humanoid. The other scientific experts in the government council meeting condescendingly scoff at the notion, coming up with convoluted theories, because something that big and bipedal sounds impossible. Of course, she's right or we wouldn't have a movie.
• Bad Vibrations: At an elderly couple's rural home, the first sign of the approaching troll is when everything starts shaking from the vibrations of its footsteps.
• Berserk Button: Just like in the fairytales, Christians really piss the troll off. It's immediate instinct upon discovering a Christian soldier is to scoop him up and devour him. The remains of its kin being manhandled by humans also angers it, as when it sees the skull of its offspring on the back of a truck, it becomes positively enraged. The hatred of Christians gets eventual justification that 1) hatred of churches is not because of being Christian per se but because it reacts violently to anything that makes too much noise and church bells do that and 2) Christian humans killed all of its kin in bog-standard Evil Colonialist fashion and thus it's payback.
• Brick Joke: When Andreas quits his job, he dramatically tells the Prime Minister to consider it his "retirement". Much later, he realises to his embarrassment that the word he should have used was "resignation".
• Conveniently Empty Building: A rare justification. The Prime Minister orders the complete evacuation of Oslo in the final act when it's determined the troll is advancing towards the city, and the civilians promptly obey the order. Good thing, because the chaos of the climax leaves at least half the city torn apart.
• The Cuckoolander Was Right: Tobias is absolutely obsessed with trolls and is determined to prove they exist. Naturally, due to his loopiness, everyone writes him off as crazy, or at the very least eccentric. He ends up being proven absolutely right when it turns out that trolls really do exist.
• Detachment Combat: Andreas occasionally mentions a novel he is trying to write about a monk who can remove his own head to throw it at enemies and bite them. The monk can also remove his arms and shoot them at people. Captain Kris asks at one point if the monk is a robot, and Andreas explains that no, he has Enlightenment Superpowers.
• Do-Anything Soldier: Though specifically part of the Norwegian Army’s Special Operations Command, Captain Kris is assigned to a wide variety of tasks by his superiors, such piloting a helicopter, leading a mechanized assault, or directing traffic.
• Dug Too Deep: Or more like "Dynamited Too Much". The events of the film happen because a tunnel construction project blows a hole in the cave where it was hibernating and wakes it up with the noise.
• Eaten Alive: The troll devours a hapless Christian soldier alive.
• Elephant Graveyard: There's a bonebed of troll skeletons beneath the royal palace in Oslo from when the Christians exterminated the trolls. Several of the skeletons are those of baby trolls.
• The End... Or Is It?: After the troll is destroyed, the film ends with the reveal that there is another troll in the same cave the first one was hibernating in, which wakes up equally ticked off just as the film cuts to credits.
• Eye Awaken: One scene has Nora and her father standing in front of a cliffside... until the cliff opens its eyes, revealing it to be the troll's recumbent form.
• Failed Attempt at Drama: Tired of the Prime Minister's attitude, Andreas attempts to resign in a dramatic fashion, leaving his access card on the table. When he tries to leave, he remembers that he needs his access card to open the door, so he has to go back and pick up the card.
• Funny Background Event: Andreas can be heard telling Kris about his kung fu novel in the background of one otherwise-dramatic scene.
• General Ripper:
  • Averted, which is a nice change of pace in this kind of film. General Lunde is a Reasonable Authority Figure who behaves courteously to those under him and is horrified by Minister Markussen's proposal to break out the really big weaponry in the middle of Oslo. When he realizes that there are still civilians in the blast radius, he immediately gives the order to abort.
  • Inverted with Minister Markussen, who is higher in the chain of command and both the loudest person to pooh-pooh the experts' opinions on the basis that the building-sized humanoid monstrosity cannot be a troll and the one who literally screams for the bombs (who are not really said but heavily implied to be nuclear) to drop and collateral damage be damned at the climax.
• Gentle Giant: The troll, normally. It only causes some destruction at first simply because it's so big, only attacks when shot at first, and its ultimate goal is just to be reunited with its family. At one point, it even saves a father and his son from a falling helicopter.
• Giant Footprint Reveal: One overhead shot shows the characters standing inside the huge footprint of the troll, which dwarfs the human figures walking around in it.
• Healing Factor: None of the military's weapons have any use against the troll, partly because it's made of stone and partly because it's able to immediately regenerate from any injury. Only direct sunlight (or UV radiation) is able to actually injure it.
• Hope Spot: Nora decides that killing the troll is wrong, turns off all the UV lights, and tries to tell it to flee to the mountains where it won't be bothered by humans ever again. Unfortunately, at that moment, the sun rises and kills the troll anyway.
• Humans Are the Real Monsters: Although he is dead by then, Tobias Tindemann is revindicated in his daughter's eyes when she finds evidence of his crackpot theory that Trolls were hunted into extinction by the Christianization of Norway — namely, a huge troll graveyard beneath the Royal Palace.
• I Did What I Had to Do: Rikard Sinding, an elderly palace official who knew of the Trolls before the troll woke up, had a great deal of respect for the main heroine's father, who researched trolls for years, but before he could publish his findings, Sinding censored him and shut down his research. He regrets it, but he did it to prevent hysteria and ridicule for her father. She was less than happy about it, since it ruined her father's life and her relationship with him.
• Kaiju: The troll, a towering figure larger than buildings, spends most of the film trampling its way through the countryside and a city, leaving crater-like footprints in the landscape and casually knocking buildings into rubble with swings of its arms.
• Last of His Kind: The troll is speculated by Nora to be the very last of its kind, as the rest were exterminated by Christians centuries ago. However, Andreas raises the possibility of other trolls dormant in other glacier caves at the end, and another troll is shown waking up in The Stinger.
• Monster-Shaped Mountain: In the opening sequence, Tobias tells Nora the legend that a local mountain range is actually made of trolls who got drunk at a wedding and forgot what time it was, ultimately getting turned to stone by the sun's rays. As she looks at the mountains, she gradually begins to see the trollish faces in the rock. The movie ultimately leaves it ambiguous whether that's exactly what the mountains are or if this is a simple case of pareidolia.
• A Mythology Is True: All the fairytales of trolls turn out to be true, but have been twisted by various authors to paint trolls as just that, make-believe creatures. We even get the line about every myth having a grain of truth.
• Never Hurt an Innocent: Oddly enough, the troll only hurt those who attacked it intentionally, and in an instant, where a child was in danger of being crushed by a crashing helicopter, the troll grabbed the helicopter, saving the child and the parent, and then left as peacefully as it could.
• Non-Malicious Monster: The troll isn't hostile to anything that doesn't attack or provoke it first, and actually appears docile around humans who show it kindness and respect. It's later revealed the troll bears no true ill-will toward humanity (Christians notwithstanding) and is merely trying to reach the rest of its kind in Oslo. Unfortunately, all the other trolls are long dead.
• Nuke 'em: Implied. Minister Markussen convinces the Prime Minister to use some type of missile of enormous power against the troll. We're never told it's a nuclear device, but from the way it's talked about, we get the definite sense that this is more than a conventional weapon. Markussen also admits that technically, they're not even supposed to have this weapon, which could be a nod to the fact that, in real life, Norway does not have a nuclear arsenal.
• Oh, Crap!: While the group are hiding right next to the troll's feet, the religious soldier hiding with them suddenly begins praying to God. As the troll can smell the blood of a Christian, Nora and her father share a look of silent horror and quickly decide to get the hell out of there. Sure enough, the troll finds the soldier and devours him.
• Our Trolls Are Different: For the most part, the troll obliges by traditional Norwegian folk-belief, being a giant, stout, shaggy humanoid with rocky skin, a bulbous nose, a clubbed tail, and tall enough to tower over most buildings. It's also able to distinguish the blood of Christians, and responds accordingly. It also is able to walk around in sunlight or at least on very cloudy days. Once Nora figures this out, she makes a plan to unleash UV floodlights on it that do more damage than literal billions of dollars' worth of military hardware could achieve.
• Papa Wolf: Nora is able to get the troll to follow her and Andreas in the climax by mounting the skull of one of his children on the back of a truck. As she expected, it loses interest in reaching the royal palace and immediately starts chasing the truck in a furious rage.
• Really 700 Years Old: The troll dates back to the Christianization of Norway a thousand years ago, and was probably pretty old even then.
• Shout-Out:
  • Many to Norwegian folklore, understandably.
    • The song "In The Hall of the Mountain King" of "Peer Gynt" appears repeatedly through the soundtrack.
    • In one part of the climax the protagonists are in a situation similar to the "3 Billy Goats Bluff" legend (although they snark that it's not knowledge that will help them).
  • A skeptical government agent mockingly suggests that King Kong could be responsible for the giant footprints. Later in the film, there's an Orbital Shot of the troll being circled by helicopters that is nearly identical to a similar scene in Kong: Skull Island.
  • A Japanese news broadcaster dubs the troll the "Norwegian Godzilla" while reporting on its swath of destruction.
  • Andreas has some knowledge of military weapons and procedures... from playing Call of Duty.
  • When the heroes try to recall the old stories about trolls from their childhoods, one says you're not supposed to feed them after midnight.
  • Andreas and his fellow nerd Sigrid occasionally flash the Star Trek "live long and prosper" Strange Salute to each other. At another point, he calls her the Mister Spock to his Captain Kirk, and when talking her into hacking the missile, he slips into Gratuitous English to say "Make it so."
  • Not long after that, Sigrid also switches to English to say "You shall not pass."
  • The Bad Vibrations scene mentioned above is pretty overtly modeled on a similiar scene in Jurassic Park, camera angles and all.
• Stock Scream: The Wilhelm Scream is heard on two different sequences of the troll curbstomping the Norwegian army.
• Surrounded by Idiots: Nora initially feels this way when she's called into a meeting of the top scientific minds in Norway. She can't seem to believe why everyone is debating when it can clearly be seen that the craters are giant footprints.
• Sympathy for the Devil: Nora feels sorry for the troll, since it is not only the Last of Its Kind, it is also an Antagonist in Mourning, having learned of the mass genocide of its species by man, and so she tries to set it loose so it can leave in peace.
• Taken for Granite: The ultimate fate of the troll when caught in the rays of the rising sun.
• Town with a Dark Secret: The film presents the intriguing concept that the Royal Palace in Oslo was built on top of a far older palace inhabited by the titular troll and his family, who were killed following the Christianisation of Norway — and said troll is bloody furious about it, rampaging towards Oslo to reclaim his home.
• Weakened by the Light: The troll in this film is vulnerable to sunlight, or rather, direct sunlight, and UV spotlights work as a good substitute. The troll succumbs to the sunrise at the end and is turned to stone. Interestingly, even the centuries old troll skeletons under the Royal Palace still turn to stone when exposed to UV light.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: The Lord Chamberlain explains that after the massacre of the trolls at Oslo, one of the Troll King's sons was taken to Dovre to lure the King there so he could be trapped under the mountain. At the beginning of the movie, the King escapes and is the main focus of the movie... but what happened to his son? Well...
• The Worm Guy: Tobias Tidemann, has spent his whole life researching Troll folkore and investigating if trolls actually existed, things that made him a laughingstock in academia and eventually labeled as a madman. Worse yet, when an actual troll appears, he is still considered insane by the government and kicked out from a government gathering and one of his old friends reveals to Nora the Troll graveyard beneath Oslo and insists that he did what he had to do to keep Tobias from causing a ruckus that would probably have him silenced by the government, a thing that Nora is more than a little angry to call him out on. Nora, as a more reknowned anthropologist, is also put in this role when she has to tell the rest of the people arguing about what made a mountain explode and kill a lot of people to get their heads out of their rear ends and acknowledge the Apocalyptic Log of one of the victims that shows, on HD video, something humanoid and massive as the cause.
• Written by the Winners: According to Tobias, the brutish qualities associated with trolls are because the Christian establishment slandered them after wiping them out. The reveal of the troll graveyard underneath the Royal Palace confirms this.

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