Picture Credits: Netflix / Imago
Troll 2, in true sequel fashion, goes bigger. After Norway was rocked by the awakening of a Troll, the country and the franchise’s heroes – Nora Tidemann (Ine Willman), Major Kristoffer (Mads Pettersen), and Andreas (Kim S. Falck-Jørgensen) – are left reeling from the aftermath of destruction. The trio faces a new threat: a hard-charging Troll.
The drama, the gags, the stakes, and the troll action are, as screenwriter Espen Aukan put it, turned up to an 11. Aukan takes pages out of the American action movie playbook. Go big or don’t go at all.
Aukan wrote the original film as well as Viking Wolf (available on Netflix). He knows how to poke fun at genre while respecting it – turning action tropes into both gags and heartfelt action. Recently, with a beautiful shelf full of Stephen King novels, Aukan spoke with What’s On Netflix about writing Troll 2 – including its surprising death scene.
When you began writing the sequel, did you feel you just had to pay off Andreas’ idea for his novel, Fistful of Zen?
I was actually quite nervous because of that impulse I had when I was writing the first one. I wanted that character to have some stupid project that he likes talking about. So, it popped into my head with this sand master removing his head [for the book], but to my astonishment, everyone embraced it.
We really needed to pay that off in the second one. I really wanted to, and actually the director, one of his student films was – I think every film student has made movies like it – A Fistful of Kabob. So, well, we have to do a riff on that. Fistful of Sin just seemed like a perfect title for the book.
In your mind, did Andreas write a good book?
Well, the kids on TikTok didn’t like it. I think he wrote a really fun, campy, geeky story, so it’s a book I would enjoy, I think.
Have you and Roar ever talked about really deepening the Troll universe by making a Fistful of Zen movie?
We actually did. I don’t know how serious it was, but we had a big dinner at the release of the first one. We started talking about the sequel and how we should start it. If he writes this weird book, maybe we should start the second movie with them making a movie of his book. It starts like a fake movie, and then you pull back and see Andreas behind the scenes going, “Oh, this is a terrible adaptation of my book.” I would totally be into it.
You and Roar aren’t quite parodying American blockbusters with the Troll movies, but there are a lot of references and fun poked at them.
It is a really difficult balance. One of the things you probably won’t get so much in America or English-speaking countries is we actually take lines from American action movies, but in Norwegian, we translate them quite literally. When you say them in Norwegian, they sound goofy, like when Kris says, “Come get some,” from the Evil Dead movies, when you say that in Norwegian, it sounds stupid.
When I started writing the first movie, I was sort of in a pickle because I didn’t actually know how to do it. When we started talking about it, it was supposed to be a little bit more like a serious movie. So, I started to do some research into, okay, how would this actually work scientifically, biologically, with the big troll and everything?
How’d that go?
I realized after talking to biologists that a creature that big couldn’t exist because of gravity. It’s not possible to explain it scientifically at all. I thought, well, then we’re going into fantasy land, so I can’t take it a hundred percent seriously. It needs to have a little bit of tongue in cheek.
What’s more fun than paying homage to and playing with stuff from the movies we grew up with? I was a kid in the eighties and a teenager in the nineties, so 14-year-old me would go to cinemas and see Roland Emmerich movies, Armageddon and Deep Impact. Also, Roar is a huge Michael Bay fan.
Picture Credit: Netflix
[Laughs] It shows in many of Troll 2’s action sequences.
[Laughs] Especially in the sequel, we have the Transformers thing with a Megatron/Megatroll. I started putting in lines from other movies that we love, but it is really difficult. You can become too silly.
How crazy is too crazy, right?
You have to decide, okay, how elevated is it? How far from reality is it? When we decided to have the scene in the first movie with the helicopters and the church bells underneath them [attacking the troll], I thought, I have to make that believable in this universe. So, how do these people talk?
Everything has to be just cranked up a bit more. Certainly in the sequel, I mean, we sort of solve the question every Norwegian has about where Saint Olaf is buried, which nobody knows. We solve that question in two minutes. It’s that kind of movie.
[Laughs] Very Michael Bay to rewrite history. Any other references or deep cuts you’re pleased audiences are finding in Troll 2?
I’m always happy when someone gets the E.T. reference when Andreas says, “I think it’s time to phone home.” I think my favorite one is one you wouldn’t catch in English, actually. There’s the old couple with a house and a dog.
The dog’s name is Solo, which was named after a Norwegian soda pop called Solo. It’s an orange pop. The old man says, “Well, Solo is gone bonkers.” Now when you say that in Norwegian, he actually says “Han Solo.” You don’t catch that in English, of course, but there’s a deep, deep cut. I’m so happy when Norwegian people catch that. I got some messages after the first one: “That was a Star Wars reference, wasn’t it?”
Did you know you just had to, in the sequel, destroy the elderly couple’s home one more time?
It’s based on Roar’s grandparents’ house, which he inherited and used as his vacation house. We don’t use it in the movie, but the look of it is based on that. We were actually debating it because, in the second movie, we had to make some cuts because of the budget. We were like, okay, this is a really expensive scene to do. It’s a joke. Is it worth doing it just for the joke?
I always thought that there are a lot of sequel references in sequels, and one of the sequels I really love, which is maybe the most bonkers sequel ever made, is Gremlins 2.
Perfect sequel.
And the old couple now coming to New York after having their house ruined in the first movie, and they come to New York and there are these darn gremlins again. We just had to do it.
Troll 2. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2024
As much as these movies poke fun at American movies, how important for you is it that the Troll films are real deal spectacles? Especially for Norwegian audiences.
I never thought I would do one of these types of movies in Norway because we don’t make these types of movies at all in Norway. When we actually got the chance to do it and do it at this budget… I mean, for an American budget, it’s nothing. People are shocked when Roar tells them how low our budget is.
The most important thing for me is always when I talk about elevating stuff, I still think the emotional core has to be real. That’s the most important thing. I always talk about having what I call the heart scene. If you think of the movie as a human body, we have one scene that’s the heart — it pumps life into everything, and that is sacred. You can have all the explosions and the funny lines and everything, but the emotional core of the movie has to be sacred.
What was the heart scene for you?
When they all connect with the [troll called] Beautiful, everything they feel has to feel real.
Andreas’ death is very surprising. Was that always the plan?
Well, it was always there from the first draft, but the process of getting there was sort of long. If you ask Kim, who plays Andreas, he has a version of the story. I was on a set for the first Troll. I was talking to Kim, and he was like, “Well, what if there’s a sequel? Do you have any ideas?” I thought, okay, this will never happen. We will never do a Troll 2, but if we did, we need to go a little bit darker.
I always think of The Empire Strikes Back, so I jokingly said to him, “Well, we have to kill someone then.” I looked at him, giving him a look, and he was getting a bit nervous and said, “Oh, you’re going to kill Kris then.” [Laughs] We didn’t talk about it anymore, but I think he also kept thinking about it.
And so, we met on the train going to the premiere screening of the first Troll, and Netflix had already started talking about maybe doing a sequel on the train up there. Kim had clearly been thinking a lot about killing Andreas, and he got really excited about it. And then, when we arrived at the premiere, we met Roar and were both like, “We have to kill Andreas if there’s a sequel.” And then Roar says, “I’ve been thinking that too.” We were in sync without even knowing it, but the difficult thing was how to do it.
Troll 2. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2024
In the vein of American action movies, you could always bring him back. People die but don’t really die in sequels.
Yeah, I know. The funny thing is, there’s a scene at the end there: after he falls and explodes and everything, Beautiful shoots his arm through the [troll’s] chest and brings out his heart. Everyone thought that he would open his hand and Andreas would be there and alive.
But there was some debate. I think Kim really got into it, and he was really fighting for it with the producers and everything. “We have to do it. It’s beautiful. Not a dry eye in the house.”
He gets his big hero moment.
I have great affinity for nerds. Andreas is a huge nerd (I’m a nerd), and it was really important to me that we depicted the nerd as a hero, that Clark Kent really IS Superman, you know? That the nerd isn’t just the comic relief or the one with the crazy ideas and the funny in-jokes. Which is also why I wanted him to end up in a serious relationship with a fellow nerd, Siggy. After the first Troll, I remember Kim telling me “This movie is like a revenge of the nerds!” And I love that. I salute the nerds of the world.
If there ever is a Troll 3, will it have three trolls? Is there a third film in any franchise you imagine as a template?
Oh my gosh. Well, I have gotten a lot of messages saying, “Well, shouldn’t you have a three-headed troll?” We were actually thinking of doing that in the second one, but we didn’t go there. That’s actually a thing—three heads with three different personalities. So, we haven’t done that yet.
