'Outlaw King's Setting Is Important To The Story

Do you like breathtaking Scottish landscapes, righteous underdog leaders fighting for freedom for their people, medieval times, and Chris Pine? Of course you do. So you're going to want to watch Outlaw King, and as soon as you start it you're probably going to be wondering: where is Outlaw King set? It takes place in 14th century Scotland, which doesn't look at all dissimilar to present-day Westeros. According to The Scotsman, it was also filmed in Scotland, which adds to its authenticity.

If you're wondering about the actual story, Outlaw King picks up where the 1995 movie Braveheart left off and tells the story of King Robert the Bruce of Scotland and his war on the English army. Unlike Braveheart, however, Outlaw King is more sword-swinging and less kilt-clad mooning. In Braveheart, Sir William Wallace was a knight who led the Scottish army in the First War of Scottish Independence and Outlaw King continues that fight. Starring Pine as the titular outlaw Robert the Bruce, the movie originally premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in September, but it makes its official Netflix debut on Nov. 9.

With a reported $120 million budget and the widescreen appearance of a movie theater film you can watch from the comfort of your living room, hopes are high for Outlaw King. The cast alone gave it their all. One of the stars, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, told Deadline that much of the cast performed their own battle stunts, making for long hours and physically taxing scenes. "It was relentless," he revealed. "It was [like] boot camp — two weeks of stunt training, learning to do the fight sequences. And then we’d be out in the wilderness, or in a loch and freezing cold rivers with chain mail on top. Or on a horse, or throwing someone off a horse, and you’d have to improvise a lot on the day because the environments would change."

Pine, who previously worked with Outlaw King’s director, David Mackenzie, on Hell or High Water, told Deadline in the same interview that he was eager to be involved in such a large-scale Netflix film. "I wanted to work with David again, so I was immediately interested," Pine said. "From then, it was a matter of crafting a character from a historical figure, the information on whom was pretty oblique in terms of his driving passions and why he did what he did when he did it… and I was [also] super-excited to make something on this big of a scale."

The movie was filmed in Scotland, so as to get the landscape just right — even if that occasionally led to problems. Actor Taylor-Johnson admitted to Cinema Blend that it was sometimes difficult to film battle scenes in authentic muddied fields, but it certainly helped create some epic war scenes. I’m not saying this will be enough to tide you over while waiting for the monumental battles in the upcoming final season of Game of Thrones to drop, but it might help.

Whether or not historical dramas or battle scenes with mud covered medieval soldiers are your thing, Outlaw King just seems like one of those epic movies that everyone is going to be talking about. And the good news is that if you already have a Netflix account (or access to your brother’s girlfriend’s aunt’s account), you can watch it whenever you want.