Iceland as a movie set

Batman begins is Christopher Nolan’s epic re-imagining of the origin of the Dark Knight. In the movie, this involves fighting an old man on a frozen lake in Tibet. In real life however, Tibet is politically unstable and also very far away. So Svínafellsjökull serves as a nice stand-in.

In the 14th movie – with Roger Moore as secret agent James Bond – 007 has to do his secret stuff in Siberia. Skillfully as always, he snowboards down a hill while killing the population a small Siberian town. Because actual Siberians would not participate in this scene, move directors shot this scene in Iceland.

Die another day, the 20th movie in the series features Pierce Brosnan’s 007 returning to Jökulsárlón. Since we know for a fact that 007 never runs out of ideas for new things to do, we have to assume he really liked the local cuisine. The movie features a consistent ice theme throughout, from where Bond’s Korean arch-nemesis gets a makeover by encrusting his scull with diamonds (or “ice”), to the gigantic Ice castle on a frozen lake. It is therefore fitting that parts of the movie are shot in ICEland (get it?). (Incidentally, a large part of the movie’s characters are also shot in iceland. Or blown up. Or stabbed). There is more than one scene in the movie set in iceland, so at random we chose the one with the car chases and explosions. The Ice Castle does not exists (of course).

Not to be outdone by other posh English secret agents, Lara Croft has to retrieve a magical artifact from Siberia while wearing fabulous outfits. This involves riding dogsleds across the plains of Iceland. Interestingly enough, she is accompanied by her arch-nemesis Daniel Craig, who later played James Bond himself.

Dettifoss served as the backdrop of the iconic opening scene of the movie, where a humanoid alien mysteriously takes their own life and falls into the waterfall. When director Ridley Scott had to pick a view to convey the feeling of other-worldliness and ancient power, and a quiet sense of impending doom, Dettifoss is where he went. We can’t say we blame him.Later in the movie the crew travels from their space ship to and from the alien base, driving across the barren alien wasteland that lies below Hekla, one of the most active volcanoes in the world, the last eruption having taken place as early as the year 2000.