Complaining...

Well, I am going to pull a "Lizzie" on you. YOU know what I mean. However, I actually did this firstly for extra credit for my British Literature class I'm taking at Wake Tech, so I'm not just taking my frustration out only on the blogging world. :)

The latest released movie version based on the poem Beowulf is a movie directed by Robert Zemeckis and, though animated, has an ensemble cast of big names with Robin Wright-Penn as Wealthow, Anthony Hopkins as Hrothgar, Angelina Jolie as Grendel’s mom, John Malkovich as Unferth, and Ray Winstone as Beowulf.

Sorry to be cynical right off the bat (hey, at least I'm apologizing...tee hee), but I absolutely hated it. The CGI animation was a cheesy way to portray it; the movie resembled a video game in a bad kind of way. But that doesn’t even begin to touch on why I didn’t like it. The movie wasn’t just a case of “oh, they changed the original story here and there to make it fit within the time slot or whatever.” The creators basically changed the entire story and the characters. I can honestly say that the only similarities I can remember is that there are characters named Beowulf, Hrothgar, Wealthow, Grendel, and Unferth. Perhaps the creators intended to give Beowulf more human-like traits, but seriously. In the real story, Beowulf is a hero. He is admirable in all respects. He isn’t just strong in the body, he is strong in the mind. Therefore he wouldn’t be going off being perverted and sleeping with every good-looking woman/sea beast/dragon he came across. Also, according to the Pagan values at the time, Beowulf would not go around lying his whole life about killing Grendel’s mom. So…he wouldn’t have given in to her seductiveness, he would have killed her and he wouldn’t have to lie about it. But it was the other way around. He lied his whole life about it. What a jerk. Another difference is that, instead of going back home victorious, Beowulf was crowned King in the place of Hrothgar, the latter of whom then goes and jumps off a cliff. That was the point where I decided that everyone in the movie was drinking WAY too much mead and it had gotten to their heads and beyond. Anyways, from there it got pretty complicated, because it turned out that Hrothgar was Grendel’s father, and then Grendel’s mom had another kid who Beowulf fathered, who turned out to be a dragon. You know, if they were siblings, you would think they would look a little more alike, but nothing else in this overrated movie made sense, so why should genetics? So Beowulf, a few years older but nothing close to the 50 years supposed time span (otherwise his side-kick, the supposed-to-be-much-younger-than-Beowulf Wiglaf would probably be needing a walker by then), Beowulf is miserable instead of successful and happy, when the dragon comes attacking, looking for his dad. Well, Beowulf is more guilt-ridden than ever, so he sets out to right his wrongs, but in the process only kills off his son. So, Grendel’s mom prevails forevermore. Also, at the end it looks as if Wiglaf may be tempted to sleep with Grendel’s mom as well. It cuts off right as it looks like he’s either about to follow her or slay her, so we’ll never know. I’d like to think that at least Wiglaf would do the right thing. But, in going with the general theme of the story, he probably does sleep with her, magically some other fowl beast is born (maybe a Balrog or something), which someone must kill, who ends up sleeping with Angelina Jolie again, and the nation just continues in this pattern for all eternity until the whole world dies of stupidity.

All of that to say, I absolutely detested this film and cannot see why everyone said, “Omigosh, it was sooooooooo good!” If I had my way I’d go give the creators a piece of my mind. In the meantime I am currently composing the soundtrack for my own version of Beowulf that will be coming out in a few years to rightfully portray the story this movie so terribly screwed up.