Beowulf Movie

2038-01-19T03:14:07Z

Actually I did like the movie overall, contrary to some of the people I know who watched it. It definitely is not going to be just a screen copy of the poem, and it really couldn't have been, because the biggest scene was the fight with Grendel, and even that wasn't going to give you a real plot nor is it long enough. The computer animation is not bad, towards the end, the men looked so realistic, but most of the scenes looked real bar the movement. I think it'd be even better to watch the 3D version.

I'm sure some people didn't like the movie just because it 'deviated' from the original piece. But I really don't think that should be a problem for anyone watching it, to me the movie could have been a thesis to a paper on Beowulf, and what could have happened in between the fighting and everything. Yes, Grendel's mother is supposed to be a monster, and yes, in the movie she is a monster, just because Angelina Jolie was playing her doesn't mean she really isn't. In the beginning, before you even see Angelina Jolie come full out on screen, you can see Grendel's mother reflected off some metal, and what you see in there was actually inhuman and monster-y. The reason why we see human celebrity Angelina Jolie with a tail to signal her demonic origins instead of that monster form, is because it's an illusion or just a form she takes on to seduce humans. So it's not really contradicting the poem or whatever, more like expanding on it. The 'heels', lol, she wasn't actually wearing shoes, although it is a modern touch.

The premise to this entire movie is that Beowulf was never as much of a hero as he was immortalized to be. I read the production notes on the Beowulf site, while trying to find out if everything really was animation, and I do agree with some of what they said about the original poem. It is very cut up, when I read it before it certainly was short, I just assumed that it was just an excerpt from the whole thing. If it is the whole thing, then I can understand why the scriptwriters have formed their own theories on how the poem may have been written, or the story told, before it was transcribed by monks or what not. The battle with Grendel was certainly very epic, with many themes of good and evil, (although doesn't it sound like there is a biblical element to it? When the poem or the story should have predated the spread of Christianity in that part of Europe?), yet I don't know if the Beowulf I read could have been popular and epic enough to have survived the years it did. After the fight with Grendel everything seemed to be rushing towards the end; Beowulf's fight with the dragon and subsequent death had nothing on the fight with Grendel. Therefore, it would not be a total stretch of the imagination if some of the original story thad been cut out, for being a little too interesting for the times it was finally recorded in. The movie is what the scriptwriters figured the story could have been originally, by reading between the lines and probably taking a good, long and entertaining guess.

In the beginning, the movie was slow to start, and there were parts where I thought it was overdoing the drama, but you realize soon enough, that the fight and killing of Grendel is only the start, as opposed to in the poem where it seems to be the start of the end. After that, the movie becomes more entertaining on many levels, mostly because you see some of the humanity in the story, which hardly existed in the poem version. We can only really connect with the uglier side of humanity, and here we see more complications in the plot that makes Beowulf a bit less about the computer animation and action.

When I went to see the movie and stepped into the threatre, there were actually rather few people, but most notably everyone that was seated was male. Not a surprise I suppose, but Beowulf seems to pose as a warning to men. Beowulf is obviously one of the prime examples of the male ideal (stereotype), but even a warrier like Beowulf can fall to such simple things, unable to imagine the consequences until it was too late. The paradox, I suppose in the film, is that while Beowulf was the strongest, greatest while he was young, he made the biggest mistake of his life, only to realize later on in his old age just how weak he was back then, defeater of monsters and all. The fall of a great man does make an impact, more of an impact than all of Hollywood's heroes. It was really nice to be able to see Beowulf in his old age, full of regrets. I like how this movie doesn't make anyone in it a hero, or any side the 'good' side because you're allowed to see the brutality.

...+Fractured Reality+...

Beowulf Movie